Self-Help Happiness Blog

As suipporters of the 12for12k charity innitiative, we are proud to introduce the April charity we are supporting.  Yehu.org is a microfinance organization in the rural coastal region of Kenya for the poor, run by the poor. It provides financial and other support services for small businesses owned by very poor people.

Yehu operates in conjunction with Choice Humanitarian, an international NGO specializing in village development. It was created based on the principles and procedures of the world-renowned Grameen Bank.

Yehu Microfinance works with BasaBody and Coast Coconut Farms to empower poor rural entrepreneurs in Kenya to help create a sustainable living for themselves. This is done through enhanced accessibility to sustainable financial services, business opportunities, and skills training.  In other words, we are not giving them fish; we are giving them fishing rods so that they can catch their own fish.  This is the part I really like.  From a “happiness” perspective, we are helping people both materially and psychologically, by giving them the means to create a worthwhile life for themselves.

Please contribute:

In our continuing support of the 12 for 12K Challenge, we are pleased to share with you the februrary charity, which is Stop the Silence. 

It is estimated that about 150 million girls and 75 million boys are vicitims of sexual abuse, and that the majority of all sexual abuse victims are girls who are minors.  Pretty scary.

Here is a short video about Stop The Silence…

(If the video does not appear, click here.)

Note: When using the ChipIn widget to make your donation, the email on the front page will be the main 12for12k Charities one. However, your payment does go directly to Stop the Silence and your PayPal or Credit Card receipt will show this.

Is there a good reason to fight?  Most people will say yes, Mahamta Gandhi notwithstanding.  It is just to fight in the cause of justice.  The rational for Western nations removing the Taliban from Afghanistan was to free women from slavery and all Afghanis from various levels of opression.   Most people in the world, whether they like the war or not, seem to agree that this sort of situation justifies fighting.

Beyond saving people from opression, slavery and torture, is there any reason why fighting should be tolerated?  I suggest not.  The fact is that fighting does nothing to reduce anger.  Acting upon one’s anger actually feeds the anger, as I wrote in Climb Your Stairway to Heaven: the 9 habits of maximum happiness.  Yet fighting persists, despite common sense and criminal laws against assault.

The latest on this is in a Maclean’s article that rips away the ludicrous arguements that keep grown men fighting in the NHL (National Hockey League).  The death of player Donald Sanderson is bringing the issue to the surface again, but seems to be falling on deaf ears amongst NHL leadership.   My question is, “What planet do these guys live on?”

Actually, I have two other questions, which I wrote as follows in a letter to the editor of Maclean’s:

There are two big questions to answer.  First, fighting is not “part of the game”.  In fact, it is against the rules; that’s why there are penalties against it.  The only question for the leagues is whether the penalty matches the crime.  And that raises the second question, because there are already penalites in Canada for punching someone, which is a crime called “assault”.  Why do thousands of police officers, night after night, watch live broadcasts of crimes in progress and in recent memory only Marty McSorley and Todd Bertuzzi were charged?

So what can you do?  back off from potential fights.  Don’t express your anger with fists or harsh tones of voice.  As I said to my daughters this morning, “At 5 and 7 years old, don’t you think you girls can control your body parts?  Isn’t it a bit embarrassing that you let your hand hit your sister and your tongue shout mean things you know you shouldn’t?”

I mentioned a while ago that we are supporting the 12 for 12K Challenge, a charitable campaign launched through social media.  Each month in 2009, a new charity will be selected, and we are asking you to consider a small donation ($10, but feel free to give more if the spirit moves you).

The first charity, for January 2009, is War Child.  Why?  There is a good piece where Danny Brown puts the value of $10 in perspective. 

Here is a quick overview of the War Child Charity:

…and below is a video of Little Lady and Little Sister protesting against poverty.  In truth, they did this 100% spontaneously the first time, but I did not have a camera handy then.  So this is actually a “re-enactment” video.  Note that the banner reading “PlYSE” is supposed to read “Please” (not bad for a 7-year old learning to write in French), as in PlYSE support the 12 for 12K Challenge.

YouTube is not embedding this correctly, so here is the direct link to the video: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ajimCKvI6-E

I’ve just sent my $10 donation; why not send yours now?

Happiness can be found wherever you look for it.  For instance, in the Dancer from Khiva.  This is a Russian book, translated into English, about Bibish, who was kidnapped and driven out to the desert to be gang-raped…and life rolls on from there with all the consequences, such as never being able to be married as a result (but she does).  And never being able to dance because dancing is frowned upon in her village (but you know the title of the book!)

There si a more complete review of the book here, but they message for you today is that we all are driven down the road of circumstance, but we all have the option of turning the steering wheel.  Yes, some things happen that really suck.  It is up to you to decide just how badly they will suck and how happy you will choose to be, despite circumstances.

Today’s Los Angeles Times has a feature on happiness, my favorite topic.  The feature helps debunk a lot of myths, mostly that things and circumstances make us happy, sad, angry or whatever.  Here is the paragraph that most people should read:

Lyubomirsky and her colleagues analyzed studies on identical twins and other research and came to the conclusion that happiness is 50% genetic, 40% intentional and 10% circumstantial. “Half of your predisposition toward happiness you can’t change,” she says. “It’s in your genes. Your circumstances — where you live, your health, your work, your marriage — can be tough to change. But most people are surprised that circumstances don’t account for as much of their happiness as they think.”

Just for the record, there really is not an accurate way to measure happiness, because ti is such a subjective issue.  However, a 50-50 divide between genetics and environment is generally considered a good rough estimate by more happiness researchers.  Depending on the effort you make or do not make, I am sure that number is very elastic, but let’s play with that number for now. 

The L.A. Times feature continues on other pages, too.  For instance, there is an excellent list of handy tips for “cultivating happiness” .

 Happy reading.

Can happiness come from the state?  Not likely.  The state is there to help us organize our society to some extent, at least to avoid chaos and help us protect ourselves from individuals and groups who might want to harn us.  As such, it acts as a bit of an insurance against total misery.  But now some UK city councils want to develop policies to help us increase happiness.

 I doubt this will lead to much, but it certainly is a step above just promoting economic well-being.  Read about it here.

Over at the Accumulating Peripherals blog, there is a discussion on the pros and cons of happiness research.  Matt offers explains his beef with happiness research and I have commented also on the discussion.

Much of the happiness research out there is based on self reporting.  In other words, it asks you if you feel happy.  OK, so the questions are more complex, but it basically asks for your opinion.  On the one hand, that is poor science, because our perceptions of things are rarely accurate.  A good example is how a couple high-profile crimes can get a city or even a whole country talking about how the crime rate is on the rise and it’s about time we stop the growing menace — even while statistics show that year after year the crime rate has slowly been declining.

On the other hand, happiness is a subjective thing.  It is something we feel, and it could be argued that the only valid measurement of happiness is our perception of it.  Please feel free to go over to Matt’s blog and comment.  And then please come back here and comment, too.

Yes, travel opens the mind to new ideas and new ways of seeing things.  And when we experience the wonders of this world, it can’t help but make a person happy.  And some travel opens the mind more than others.  For instance, if you take a tour of seven cities in seven days and stay in hotels, you will find you are passing your time with others from your country and seeing the sights, but not experiencing the people and the way of life.

On the other hand, if you do some work travel or stay in private homes, you are more likely to experience the real flavor of the place.

I took Little Lady for a trip to Hungary, where we saw some of the places her Nagymama grew up.  For a girl of (almost) seven, this was a very educational trip.  We stayed in an apartment and wandered pretty much on our own.  I would classify this as mid-way between a our and a real visit.  Just for fun, here are a few photos.

This is the moment she professes to be the highlight of her trip:

Even though I could tell that it was dancing to the street musicians…

And making new friends…

…even though she could not speak Hungarian with them…

…any of them!

But it was the dancing that she did the most. This was her favorite street musician, whom she patronized several times where Vaci Uta spills into Vorosmarty Ter.

She was a little less freewheeling with the food (can you say “McDonald’s” or “Pizza Hut”?), but we did enjoy palacsinta a few times together.

The May / June edition of No Limits Magazine features a story by somebody I know well…me!  It came as a surprise, but it was arranged by my Australian publisher, where you can pick up a copy of 9 Habits of Happiness if you live in Australia or in New Zealand.

The story, by the way, is one of my favorites from a few years back, when we ran into some unexpected adversity on what should have been a highlight of our honeymoon…and how we turned things around (so it ended up being a highlight of our honeymoon, despite the Wicked Witch Stella!).

The story is just one of many tales I weaved into the book.