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The Testosterone Guide to Happiness
by TC
No one in history has done more to stifle communication skills than Harvey Ball. It's gotten to the point where, without liberal use of his invention, nary a man, woman or child living in America would know how to write an email or send a text message without having his meaning horribly misconstrued.
Back in 1963, an insurance company hired Harvey, a graphic artist, to cheer up its workers. With a little help, presumably, from his muse — who I happen to believe was the devil — Harvey whipped up the little graphic number we know today as the smiley face.
Burn in hell, Harvey Ball, burn in hell.
As a result, no one's needed to develop any type of writing ability. To hell with conveying nuance, irony, wit, or good ol' fashioned humor; all you need to do is slap a smiley face emoticon on the end of your email or note and people will know your true meaning is one of mirth; as innocent as a child's whoopie cushion.
Compare the following two email messages:
You're a butthead.
You're a butthead.
See? The first you take seriously. The second? Not so much. It's a love tap.
Anyhow, I take solace in the fact that Harvey never made much money off his invention. Even though 50 million smiley face buttons sold by 1971, his total take for his satanic invention, because he never thought to trademark it, was 45 bucks.
Maybe I'd be more forgiving of Harvey if his smiley face had the intended effect of actually making people happy. Unfortunately, happiness is a lot more enigmatic and elusive than that, especially in these nut-busting, gut-wrenching times.
Of course, even questioning or discussing happiness might be an incorrect strategy. British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, "Ask yourself if you are happy and you cease to be so." American philosopher Eric Hoffer echoed the sentiment in writing, "The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness."
While people with no money scoff at the old chestnut, "money can't buy happiness," it's probably true. Philip Brickman, a psychologist, described something he coined the "hedonic treadmill." Apparently, lottery winners ultimately derived less pleasure from normal events, like buying things or even talking to friends.
Of course, there are exceptions to this. Writer Eric Weiner, author of "The Geography of Bliss," describes yet another study that showed that women who bought big breasts never tire of the enjoyment it brings them (and presumably others).
While Sartre said, "Hell is other people," it doesn't seem to be true. Social scientists estimate that 70 percent of our happiness comes from our relationships, both their quantity and quality, with friends, family, coworkers, and even neighbors.
Likewise, usefulness or a sense of doing good seems to spawn happiness. While lawyers and bankers rank very low on the happiness scale, physical therapists, clergy, nurses, and fire fighters score high.
But then again, too much happiness might be a problem, too. Here's a news clipping from a Pakistani news service that appeared in "The Geography of Bliss":
Multan, March 16: A prisoner Haq-Nawaz, 70, died in New Central Jail Bhawalpur last evening when he was told that court has suspended his imprisonment and ordered to release him. When the jail authorities informed him that he was going to be released on Thursday, he could not control the happiness and his pulses [sic] stopped due to overexcitement. Haq-Nawaz's body was handed over to his relatives for burial.
So it goes.
To shed light on this modern malady, this unhappiness of not being happy, a wide range of people, including scientists, doctors, artists, philosophers, and even Tibetan Buddhists recently convened in San Francisco at the "Happiness and Its Causes Conference."
WebMd synopsized some of the main obstacles to happiness examined at the conference and listed some ways to overcome these barriers. Here are a few of them, followed later by a few recommendations I've picked up while dragging my dick across this largely unhappy planet:
Happiness Barrier #1: Complexity
Solution: Simplify
Do you know why monks and some nuns shave their heads? It simplifies their lives. They don't have to worry about straightening out that nasty cowlick, or whether they need Vidal Sassoon mousse with pro-vitamins to add luster or whether their bed head makes them look like a deranged squirrel.
Thupten Jinpa, schooled in Buddhist monasteries since youth, while no longer a monk, likes to apply some lessons of monkhood to his secular life. For instance, he and his wife only keep one car— fewer costs, less maintenance, and less pain in the Buddha's keester. Similarly, he only keeps one credit card, so as to minimize the temptation to buy shit.
"We often conflate quality of life with standard of life, says Jinpa, "but after a point the connection [between the two] disappears.
Happiness Barrier #2: A Breakneck Pace
Solution: Take a Pause
The same aforementioned complex often gets you wrapped up in a blinding pace of life that has you operating at breakneck speed during the week to get your work done, only to segue into a weekend where you employ that same breakneck speed in seeking recreation that, as a result, is ultimately as unsatisfying as a dinner date with Nadya Suleman when she can't find a babysitter.
Robina Cortin, a Buddhist nun and the organizer of the Happiness and its Causes Conference, recommends taking a pause every day to "recharge your batteries" and in thus doing, increase your happiness.
She suggests mindful meditation, such as sitting in a quiet place and concentrating on your breathing. When your mind wanders, gently nudge the bastard back to thinking about breathing.
In this way, we break away from an existence completely dominated by our senses and we pay attention to our minds, thus regaining a measure of control.
Happiness Barrier #3: Negativity
Solution: Let Go
"Your prison is nothing in comparison with the inner prison of ordinary people: the prison of attachment, the prison of anger, the prison of depression, the prison of pride."
That's what Lama Zopa Rinpoche said to a California prisoner.
Granted, Lama Zopa probably didn't consider anal rape or having a shiv lodged in your liver, but his point is well taken by those of us who aren't in prison.
The Buddhist view is that happiness is achieved by giving up these neurotic obsessions. Rather than obsess on these toxic thoughts, we should observe these emotions "with compassion" and ask ourselves, "What can I do about this?"
Happiness Barrier #4: Suppressing Sadness
Solution: Feel the Real
James R. Doty, M.D., director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, suggests that parents who try to protect their children from any kind of sadness actually produce the opposite of the intended effect.
Suffering, suggests Doty, makes you a whole person and allows you to acclimate [to the problem] and move forward in your life.
Similarly, David Spiegel, MD, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, says that, "Happiness is not the absence of sadness." By suppressing sadness, you end up suppressing other positive emotions as well. People who try to suppress negative emotions end up being more sad and depressed.
They suggest using friends as sound boards to deal with sadness. In that way, you can convert anxiety and depression into targeted feelings you can combat with specific solutions.
Happiness Barrier #5: Navel-Gazing
Solution: Connect With Others
A recent 20-year study involving over 4,000 participants showed that happiness isn't just influenced by immediate friends and family, but even the happiness of a friend of a friend — someone you've never met — can also influence your happiness. Happiness, supposedly, can spread through a social network like a virus.
Self-absorption is deemed bad, as the more you shut yourself off from the world, the more your world closes in, making you unable to see outside yourself. According to Buddhist Jinpa, you need to use a "wide-angle lens" that allows you to see the universality of suffering. Feeling joined by others who share similar feelings provides comfort and happiness.
Author Robert Sapolsky, in his book, "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers," notes that primates who groom each other after a stressful event experience a reduction in blood pressure. However, grooming others has more a calming effect than getting groomed.
This ape phenomenon seems to confirm what Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama said, "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."
While the preceding suggestions are good, they don't necessarily comprise a complete recipe for T-man happiness. With that in mind, I present my list. You might not find most of them tacked on the walls of a Buddhist monk, but you might find them useful nonetheless.
Here they are, in no particular order:
1. Do Dangerous Things
"Dangerous" is a relative term. Obviously, when motocross star Jeremy Lusk did a header into the dirt this week, it didn't lead to happiness.
What I mean is to force yourself to do things outside your comfort zone, things where the outcome is unknown. I'm not talking about mindless recreation for the sake of recreation, doing stuff solely for the sake of distracting yourself from your otherwise miserable life. I'm talking about continually opening your mind to new experiences so that it can continue to learn about this here thing we call life.
Dangerous things are the things from which memories are made; these are the things that will make you smile when, inevitably, you're engaged in the occasional inescapable humdrumness of everyday life.
Do enough dangerous things and you'll want to replay the video of your life over and over again in your mind. In other words, if you only get to choose one film to watch, make sure it's Braveheart instead of Paul Blart: Mall Cop; make sure your life is a blockbuster instead of a "direct to DVD" film.
2. Do a Friend Dump
Throughout my life, I've been puzzled by friendships that die because of changes in circumstance or proximity. The friendship was no longer convenient and required extra effort to maintain, so it fizzled.
According to an acquaintance of mine, psychologist Dr. Paul Hatherley, "It is clear that relationship was not backed up by genuine sharing and real caring, and certainly not by love."
Similarly, I've had friends or relatives who, while professing to care, were just offering shallow sentiments. Again, Dr. Hatherley:
"When you observe yourself committing time, effort, and attention, while also becoming competent to feed needs, you can be sure that your caring is genuine. On the other hand, if you feel sentimental, but your feelings are not backed-up with a commitment of time, effort, attention and competence, then you can be sure your caring is only a façade that is not supported by reality."
So when I see this type of indifference — despite my best efforts — in friends or family members, I do a dump. I surely don't get dramatic about it; I just decide to let the relationship dissolve.
Otherwise, we affirm what Sartre thought, that "hell is other people," and we end up surrounded by a coterie of emotional vampires who suck out our happiness.
3. Find the Female Goose to Your Maverick
As most of you know, I have mixed feelings about marriage. Most people, I feel, shouldn't get married. It almost always leads to misery. However, that's because most people aren't evolved enough to handle the institution. Most people get married because they're looking for someone to make them feel good through feelings of security, approval, and passion.
Ain't that sweet. Ain't that spay-shul.
Well, physical passion usually dies. Security and approval are selfish desires that could just as well be fulfilled by a large dog or a yappy dog.
If you're truly mature enough to handle a marriage, you look for someone who you can share reality and purpose with; you look for someone, as Dr. Hatherley describes it, "you can share quintessential moments" with.
You need the female Goose to your Maverick. If Viper challenges you to a game of beach volleyball, you gotta' oil each other up and take that spikey-haired prick down. A wife or husband is your teammate in life.
Or let's say you're watching Two and a Half Men and it's amusing the hell out of you. If you married wisely, your impulse is to cry out to your wife, "Hey Sweet Cakes, come watch this! Alan doesn't know that the girl Charlie's screwing is Judith's sister!" If you married unwisely, you keep the volume down real low and chuckle quietly to yourself so wifey doesn't know you're watching TV.
Okay, my examples are a little weak, but I think you get the idea.
4. Experience Debauchery
Man, I don't know how many Buddhist monks would nod embarrassingly to this suggestion, but I'm a little more Druid than Buddhist when it comes to sex.
In my darkest hours, I haven't resorted to pills or prayer. Rather, I've thought back on some incredible sexual experiences. Doing so took an engorged baseball bat to my navel-gazing, self-absorbed self and knocked my mind into a different place, a happy place filled with heaving breasts and hot breath and moist thighs.
It's good to have an extensive library of such thoughts on hand in case of emergency.
5. Own Less Shit, Eat Less Shit
I have to agree with Buddhist monk Jinpa on this one. Owning too much shit complicates our lives. Multiple cars, multiple houses, and multiple pretty much anything takes time away from all the other items on my list or the previous list.
People associate happiness with wealth, i.e., the ability to fulfill any hedonistic pleasure at any given moment, which is exactly what a small child wants. It seems sad that this primary motivation doesn't change over the course of a lifetime.
As Thoreau said, "Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify."
Similarly, and as you well know, Americans eat too much crap. We have access to the healthiest food in the world, but most of us choose to eat the worst. Again, we eat like a small child who, if left to his own volition, would eat anything and everything he wants. Adults eat what they need, not what they want.
6. Look Inside People
I've lately picked up an incredibly useful skill. Whenever I feel dissed by someone, whenever I'm blown away by someone's rudeness, ignorance, or stupidity, I take a moment to question his or her motives.
I ask myself, "Is this action personal, or is it part of their flawed character?" Are they really "out to get me," or are they just poor wandering fucked up pilgrims like the rest of humanity?
I do the same thing on the T-Nation forums. Admittedly, there are occasionally some people on the site who appear to be evil mothers spewing venom, and I've sometimes handled them poorly in the past.
I now realize, thanks to Dr. Hatherley's book, "The Five Principles of Enduring Human Happiness," that most venom spewed on the forum (or in life) isn't personal.
The fact is, just about everybody on the forum (and in the world in general) needs approval. They want to be recognized as knowledgeable, funny, and wise. The trouble is, it's not our job — nor is it anybody's job — to give approval. Rather, it's our job to acknowledge these people. Acknowledgment is honest, accurate, and unemotional. It's done with warmth, acceptance, and compassion.
So if someone on our forum thinks they're the Master of the Weightlifting Universe, or if they attack us, we should assess them and address them without emotion. If we fail to do this, their feelings are hurt, and they either strengthen their attacks or they find other Internet homes where they spend their unfulfilled lives attacking us.
7. Make Your Body a Piece of Art
I'm going to make a huge, Grand Canyon, Evel Knievel leap and assume that if you're reading this site, you're already trying to master this happiness tip.
Even if you are, you might not know it's a secret to fulfillment. Working on achieving an esthetic body is, regardless of how many snickers it might elicit in the average Joe, a spiritual thing.
Working towards symmetry is, believe it or not, a tribute to nature, biology, the universe, God, all of the above. While it may reek of narcissism to the uninitiated, every time we look in the mirror in the morning, we're (hopefully) reminded of our quest for physical perfection and it makes us smile. It's a good thing. It's an important thing. It's a quintessential part of our existence.
Likewise, if your body is a piece of art and something stands to harm it, like that one nut job who mistook Michelangelo's Pieta for a pinata and whacked it to pieces, you'll protect it from physical harm as well as spiritual harm.
That's about it. I know dozens of others, but I'm saving those to put on the bottom of a smiley face poster and really rake in some dough.
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