QUALITY QUESTION: What ONE new habit can lead you to happiness?

Wait a second… one? Are you saying that developing just, ONE, new habit can lead me to happiness?

Well, Yes.  That is actually EXACTLY what I am saying.

I recently finished reading Happy For No Reason by Marci Shimoff. (This was the first book in my self-proclaimed book club.  Book 2 is coming August 2010 when I get back from Europe! Be preped!)

So how the heck can a habit lead me down a path of happiness?  Well let’s do the dip over to Dictorary.com to break down this word of wonder: habit.

Dictionary.com defines a habit as “an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary.”  Okay Cool – So we can take two things from that.

  1. A habit is something that has been acquired (developed).
  2. A habit is something that has been followed (practiced) until it is almost involuntary. (AUTOMATIC!)

Are you starting to see the AMAZINGNESS of what a habit is? Something that is developed through practice and then becomes automatic!

When we start to understand that we are the almighty creators of our most horrendous habits, as well as the makers of our most magnificent ones – we find the path to improving our lives… step by step, habit by habit.

CHECK THIS OUT:  Did you know that the garment that a nun wears is called a HABIT?! A habit is something that is worn, not something that is a part of us.  SO I ASK:

Are you wearing your habits or are your habits wearing you?

In Happy For No Reason, Marci says:

“All of your habitual thoughts and behaviors in the past have created specific neural pathways in the wiring in your brain, like grooves in a record.  When we think or behave a certain way over and over, the neural pathway is strengthened and the groove becomes deeper, in the way that a well-traveled route through a field eventually becomes a clear-cut path.”

Marci continues:

“Unhappy people tend to have more negative pathways. This is why you can’t just ignore the realities of your brain’s wiring and decide to be happy! To raise your happiness set-point, you have to create new grooves”

HERE’S THE COOL PART:

“When you think, feel, and act in different ways, the brain changes and actually rewires itself. You aren’t doomed to the same negative neural pathways for your whole life.  Leading brain researcher Dr. Richard Davidson… says ‘Based on what we know of the plasticity of the brain, we can think of things like happiness and compassion as skills that are no different from learning to play a musical instrument or tennis… it is possible to train our brains to be happy’” (!!!)

Now it’s time to drop the happiness bomb into the habit arena… ka-boom… peep game:

Marci interviews the 100 happiest people she can find, “The Happy 100,” and finds these repeating qualities threaded throughout them, over and over and over:

  • Having a sense of lightness or buoyancy
  • Feeling alive, vital, energetic
  • Having a sense of flow, openness
  • Feeling love and compassion for yourself and others
  • Having passion about your life and purpose
  • Feeling gratitude, forgiveness
  • Being at peace with life
  • Being fully present in the moment

SO, my challenge to YOU is to PICK ONE – just one – anyone that you could use some improvement in the area of (NOT one that you have already mastered), and make it a habitual practice to be conscious of it.  Check in with yourself a couple of times a day and see if you’re in integrity with it.

IMPORTANT: Please, please, please, please, please – PICK JUST ONE… It’s my most sincere encouragement to TAKE A BABY STEP, the kind of step that will lead to growth.  Not the kind of step you take running a race that leaves your ankle sprained when you didn’t warm up – OUCH.

PICK JUST ONE! And then commit 3 weeks to make it a habit to wear, until you no longer think about putting it on! You can remind yourself of your newly committed practice with any number of creative ways: calendar entries, alarm buzzers, significant ringtones, notes to yourself, signs at your desk, symbolism, and any other number of cool creative ways that your heart’s juice gets jumping for.

I will leave you with one last quote from his holiness himself, the Dalai Lama:

“One begins identifying those factors which lead to happiness and those factors which lead to suffering.  Having done this, one then sets about gradually eliminating those factors which lead to suffering and cultivating those which lead to happiness. That is the way.”

So ask yourself: What ONE new habit can lead me to happiness?

(and share below!)