0 CommentsEvery January, I just know I’m going to become a better person. I’ll be more organized, more intellectual, more productive, more focused. I’ll live more in the moment, appreciate more, sweat not the small things. I’ll set lots of goals, which, ultimately, if I accomplished them all, would culminate in one end result: a big boost of happy.
I’m not alone. When asked what they want most in life, studies show, most people answer, “Happiness.”
But for all our focus on happiness, sometimes we don’t realize how we cultivate it.
Suzie Barber's aunt Barbara's daily emails and her photos spread happiness. This photo came with the quote: “A person of strength, like a waterfall, channels their own path.”
I asked friends to step back and think: What is it that makes them happiest?
Some had big answers. Tracy Kapiloff, who recently, with her husband, bought a home in Colorado, likes to escape to the mountains. “I love it there,” she says. “The fresh air smells great. I eat healthy. I just feel good there. Relaxed.”
But she can’t always get away. When she’s home, Tracy enjoys small things like walking with friends through the trees at Memorial Park or meeting them for coffee.
“Friends let me air things out and help me recharge,” she says.
Others get their happy in more solitary ways. One River Oaks mom says, “Happiness is my morning ritual. Prayers, a good run, breakfast and a good cup of coffee. And checking off my to-do list!”
Katherine Kardesch gets happy playing Words with Friends on her iPhone – something that’s both solitary and social. “Almost every evening when my day is done, I play Words with Friends in bed,” she says. “I probably have 10 games going on at any given time with friends, some who are close, and some who I don’t see very often.”
And then there are those who take a more meditative approach to joy. Debby Remels is busy raising three boys and working at Texas Children’s Hospital. She says she gets happy by slowing down, repositioning and “trying hard to remember every day that I am very lucky.”
Photographer Suzie Barber’s got a unique way of helping friends do just that – and of putting smiles on their faces.
Suzie’s aunt, Barbara Cahalan of Lakeland, Fla., started emailing inspirational quotes to her eldest son when he went to college 10 years ago. She wanted an unobtrusive way to keep contact with him, even while staying in touch wasn’t her son’s utmost freshman year concern. Eventually, she used the emails to stay in touch with all four of her children. She combined the quotes with her own photos, taken all over the country, and spent hours matching quotes with pictures, trying to create something that would make her children smile.
Today, 10 years later, Barbara sends her photos and quotes, which she calls “Morning,” because they come each morning, to a list of almost 200 friends and family. Many recipients – including Suzie – forward them along to their own favorite people.
“I started forwarding the quotes in 2009 to stay in touch with friends here when we moved to California,” Suzie says. “Now that we’ve moved back, my list has grown because I love sharing the happiness. I look forward to them every morning – they always put a smile on my face.”
Suzie’s aunt’s happy emails spread joy exponentially. A recent quote, “A person of strength, like a waterfall, channels their own path,” paired with a photo Barbara took of a waterfall, prompted smiles around the country. Some of Suzie’s friends say they are saving the quotes and photos to use when their own elementary school-aged children go off to college.
Jerry Ruhl is executive director at The Jung Center and author of Contentment: A Way to True Happiness. He recently taught a class to help students explore the deeper meaning of happiness. This spring, he’s teaching a class on emotions – joy being one of them.
“We like to believe that contentment comes from getting what we want,” Jerry says. “Most of us believe that we’ll achieve contentment just as soon as we get a better job, buy a bigger house, retire, or attain some other goal. But with this approach to life, contentment forever eludes us. Rearranging life on the outside cannot produce contentment. Contentment is an inner experience.”
Maybe it’s time to rethink all those New Year goals…and just be.
Wishing everyone much happiness in 2012.
