12 Prescriptions for Happy Living

From The Magic of Forgiveness by Tian Dayton 

1. Have a Spiritual Belief System

2. Maintain Intimacy and Strong Relationship Networks

3. Stay Emotionally Current

4. Pursue Good Goals and Find a Life's Passion

5. Cultivate and Live by Good Values 

6. Exercise and Get Thirty Minutes of Sunlight Daily 

7. Develop an Attitude of Gratitude and Appreciation

8. Keep Expectations Realistic

9. Get Enough Sleep, Rest and Quiet Time

10. Eat Healthy Foods

11. Play and Enjoy Leisure Activities

12. Become a Keeper of Meaning 

Have a Spiritual Belief System 

Research has found over and over again that a spiritual belief system is beneficial to our health and well-being. Whether your faith is in God, Higher Power or nature, some sort of spiritually organizing principles help to give moral structure, spiritual purpose and meaning to our lives. They also provide us with like-minded communities to belong to. One of my favorite stories about this is from Father Dan Christopoulos of St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church in Minneapolis. When one of his parishioners was trailing him down the hall one day asking him if God was real, he turned to her with a smile and said, “Does it matter?” Why are we so busy trying to figure out if there is such a thing as God, when we can allow ourselves the benefits and inner peace that can be ours, if we're willing to live with the mystery and release our need to know exactly how it works? I don't see radio waves but I know they work. Nor do I watch voices traveling through the air into my cell phone, but there they are, plain as day. It seems to me that in our quest to have official evidence of God, we may be missing the obvious evidence of the miracle of life, nature and our world that we live with daily. One has only to witness a beautiful sunset, see a horse and her new foal against the verdant green of a pasture or touch the heart of another human being to sense a higher wisdom, beauty and purpose to this experience called life. I've always thought that people who fight about who is the right God haven't themselves had their own personal experience of spirituality. “Be still and know that I am God,” says the Bible. When we sink into our own reverie and meditation regularly, we do experience a deeper pulse of living. We do connect with the God or Guru or Higher Power that lives within us and through which we connect to the universe. And we do find and cultivate a kind of inner peace and create a reservoir of serenity from which we can draw peace throughout our day. Does absolute proof really matter? 

While Larry Dossey spent a decade researching prayer, he came to the amazing discovery that cardiology patients who were in a prayed-for group were five times less likely to require antibiotics and three times less likely to develop pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs). Literally countless studies prove the efficacy of prayer in healing the body. Time devoted to contemplation and prayer is also a way of healing the self and relationships, it would seem. In addition, it is deeply calming and allows us to have a sense of control, because prayer is something we can do, it is an action of sorts that we can take, while at the same time helping us let go of a problem that we can't solve immediately by turning it over to a power greater than ourselves. 

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Maintain Intimacy and Strong Relationship Networks.

Research bears out again and again that relationships are key to living a long and balanced life. People with secure relationship networks live longer, which should come as no surprise with all the talking we've done about the biology of connection. Essentially, this is the reason for writing, or reading, this book: to learn to preserve our relationships through rigorous self-honesty and a willingness to work through the kinds of issues that are blocking our ability to live comfortably in them. We all need to feel that we belong somewhere. These deep, limbic bonds allow us to stabilize our emotional world. Or our deep need for relationship can be seen by its opposite: how devastating it is when relationships rupture. This is why it's in our own best interest not only to learn to self-define and create healthy relationship boundaries, but also to learn to live and let live, to have a forgiving attitude, in addition to our healthy boundaries. Isolation tends to accompany depression, whereas a good network of relationships can help keep us from feeling disconnected from the world. 

Inherent in relationships, particularly in intimate relationships such as marriage, is a need to include another person in our thinking and planning. This inevitably requires a certain selflessness that we may experience as a loss of self. We may wonder who we are now that we're in a committed relationship. We feel a loss of who we were, fear of being overwhelmed by the other person, squeezed out of our own skin and into a shape we're not sure feels like us. But the truth of the matter is, this is a normal part of marriage or even a committed professional liaison. We grieve for the self we feel we're losing and don't yet know who we're becoming. The real question is, “Am I getting enough in this relationship so that it's worth my letting go of what I'm not getting?” If the answer is “yes,” then we step up to the plate and do our part to get things to work. This will entail asking and giving, listening and talking, loving and letting ourselves be loved. And it means enduring and having faith that building something worthwhile takes time and effort. It's also recognition that if we continually tear down what we're building, we undermine our own happiness and the happiness of those around us. This is not to say that relationships don't need to be redecorated or reconstructed from time to time, only that we must learn to respect and value the stability and sense of belonging that they provide and be willing to do the necessary work to maintain them.

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Stay Emotionally Current

     Unresolved emotional baggage undermines personal happiness and zest for life. When pain is unconscious we aren't able to make choices about how to deal with it. And it is just this unconsciousness that all too often gets us into trouble; reenacting painful relationship dynamics that result in us doing the same old thing (that may not have worked in the past) but expecting different results. Unconsciousness can also mean that we make partially blind decisions. The more information we have about ourselves, for example, the better we're able to make life choices that are right for us. Tailoring our lives to suit our particular personalities, needs, drives, desires and ambitions inevitably leads to a happier life. We're responding not to whom we think others want us to be, but who we feel ourselves to be on the inside. We're making life choices that suit us and lo and behold, in living more congruently, our relationships often improve, too. For one reason, when we're taking responsibility for our own happiness, we tend to blame others less and support them more.

     The other aspect of remaining emotionally current is that we feel lighter inside if we're not preoccupied with “unremembered” pain from another part of our lives. When we have an overload of unprocessed pain, we're probably defending against feeling it. This drains energy. And running away from pain often gets us into more trouble than facing it. It can also lead us into a style of defensive thinking that gets us into trouble. Denial, for example may be a way of defending against emotional pain that we don't want to feel, but this rewriting of reality keeps us from being able to be open and realistic in dealing with our lives. We're living in our version of reality rather that closer to the truth of a situation. While it's natural for everyone to see things in their own way, denial is really an attempt not to see something. This not seeing impacts our ability to see things clearly in our relationships and our lives. Another thing we might do with unprocessed pain is to engage in high risk behaviors or self medication. Staying emotionally current is our best insurance policy against unconscious living and for living well in the present. A recent study conducted by Kennon M. Sheldon PhD of the University of Missouri-Columbia that appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology APA studied what made people happy. At the top of the list of what appears to bring happiness are autonomy (the feeling that your activities are self chosen and self endorsed), competence (feeling you're effective in what you do), relatedness (having a sense of connection with others) and self esteem. Staying emotionally current allows us the emotional and psychological freedom to live more consciously. (Magic Stream, What Makes People the Happiest? It's Not Money Or Popularity.Freud Oline http://fly.hiwaay.net/~garson/selfesteem0301.htm

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Pursue Good Goals and Find a Life's Passion  

Goals organize and mobilize, they help us consolidate our skills and talents, and realize them in some concrete form. Self-esteem is enhanced by a feeling of competency and a sense of engagement in meaningful activity. And once we've accomplished one thing, we can set new goals to work toward. For some, work and passion are connected. For others, work may be more of a “day job” and connecting with a passion might come through another channel. As women, many of us experience passion in our mothering and grand mothering. These roles aren't only natural, they also require us to learn and develop complicated new skill sets. Business studies reveal that women make the best middle managers. Certainly, managing a home and family is some of the best management training you can get, and that skill set appears to carry over into the workplace.

Having a passion is one of the most important ways to give our lives meaning and purpose. It connects us with ourselves and other people, and we're lucky enough to live in a country that provides more opportunities for cultivating and pursuing a passion than any other place in the world. Certain passions—say, for painting, writing, sports, cooking, teaching or whatever activity we're truly engaged in--can also allow us to enter what Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi of the University of Chicago calls the “flow state.” In his extensive research in this area, he has found that people are most likely to enter this state when their skill level and the difficulty of the task itself are properly matched. Too little skill leads to frustration, and too little challenge leads to boredom. In the flow state, time tends to disappear, we engage in a deep, effortless involvement where ordinary cares are out of consciousness. We're receiving immediate feedback and we're goal-oriented. While in this flow state, our concern for self disappears; however, when we emerge, our self feels stronger. In my experience, mothering, grand mothering or being with young children can also produce this state.

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Cultivate and Live by Good Values 

Values are the road map for our journey through life. Without them, we would have to decide anew how to behave in our personal worlds each time something different occurred. Values ground us. They provide a solid foundation upon which we can build a self, a family and a life. They also keep us steered in the right direction when we're having weak moments or can't think clearly. When we have good values and live by them, we have a certain congruency; our actions match who we are on the inside, at least, much of the time.  

All values don't necessarily make for the same level of happiness, though. Research has revealed that those who rate financial success, for example, more highly than self-acceptance, community feeling and relationships are less happy than those who don't. Once again, our human need to be a part of a relational network of some sort comes out on top as a value that leads to happiness. “It's good to forgive so that I can lead a life among people,” is a relational value. Even if our forgiveness doesn't lead to staying connected to the person we're forgiving, it opens the door to other relationships. Having worked through our painful feelings and come to terms with them, we're better able to risk opening up to further relationship connections, we no longer need to isolate or cut off to attain a feeling of safety because we have developed some confidence in our ability to survive being hurt.

 The kinds of values that tie us to a code of ethics, of basic human decency and care for others and ourselves, give us strength and a good feeling about ourselves and our world. And as what we believe and live by tends to manifest in our lives, we're creating our own, better world to live in, attracting those experiences toward us that fit our sense of a good life.

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Exercise and Get Thirty Minutes of Sunlight Daily 

Human beings were built to move and to need a certain amount of sunlight each day. We cannot deny our biology. Sedentary lifestyles mean our bodies can't operate as they were designed to operate. We become like poorly oiled machines: The soothing body chemicals that nature meant us to experience don't get a chance to work their daily magic if we don't stimulate them through exercise of some sort. This affects our moods, our motivation and our pleasure in living. We need a healthy amount of daily exercise in order to feel good about ourselves and our lives. We need dopamine, serotonin and nor epinephrine to be released into our bodies in order to feel good. This prescription, according to research, is as effective as any drug is for healing depression. In a recent study at Duke University, researchers Michael Babyak, Ph.D., and James Blumenthal, Ph.D., found that depressed patients who exercised had declines in depression equal to those who received antidepressants. In addition, those who continued to exercise after treatment were 50 percent less likely to become depressed again.  

A ten-minute walk gives you more energy in the long run than a candy bar. Researchers find that exercising in whatever way is most convenient works best. If it's a brief walk during a lunch break, walking the dog or biking to work, exercise seems to work well when it's combined with purposeful activity or works naturally into our lives. Research also reveals that exercising with other people helps us to make it a more regular part of our lives. (That relationship thing again.)

And thirty minutes of sunlight each day wards off depression, provides vitamins, and gives us a much-needed boost to our immune systems. When we try to get our lives to work on strictly a psychological level, we ignore the fact that we live in a body, and that that body has significant power over our moods. This is one of the easiest places to start to turn our lives around or to get out of an emotional slump. A daily, brisk thirty-minute walk outdoors is free, and one of the best habits we can cultivate for our bodies, minds and spirits. It can elevate our moods, keep us fit, control weight, relieve depression and give us time with friends. To say nothing about connecting us with the great outdoors. There's just no downside to this one.

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Develop an Attitude of Gratitude and Appreciation 

What we appreciate tends to persist and grow in our lives. It's exactly the same as watering a plant because the universe is alive and growing and so are we. Appreciation is like Miracle Grow. It nourishes and feeds, it helps something to take root and get strong. Try it for yourself: If you want something in your life to expand, appreciate that something in thought, word and deed for the next three weeks, and silently send it your good thoughts, prayers and energy. Develop an attitude of gratitude. Like anger, gratitude is an energizing and organizing emotion that motivates us toward a particular way of thinking or acting. Because of this, it's is a good antidote for sadness. While sadness can make us feel as though we're falling apart, gratitude can help pull us together. We still need to feel the sadness; we just don't want to get stuck in it. Making a gratitude list or cultivating an attitude of gratitude in no way implies that we aren't accepting and processing our pain, nor should it mean this. It simply allows us to stand on firmer ground when we do feel our pain. Gratitude helps us organize and mobilize our thoughts and emotions in a positive direction. And it helps us appreciate the life we already have.

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Keep Expectations Realistic 

Eastern philosophy tells us that expectation is the mother of disappointment, and research seems to agree. One prescription for happy living is to lower our expectations. Though at first glance this may sound defeatist, it actually produces a greater sense of well-being. In studies done on animals, the relationship between expectation and the body's release of dopamine (also known as the pleasure or feel-good hormone), was explored. Dopamine levels went up when the animal received a pleasant surprise. The more unexpected the pleasant stimulus, the higher the rise in dopamine. However, when a stimulus was expected but did not come, the animals' disappointment could be measured by a drop in dopamine levels. Stable expectations produced stable levels, pleasant surprises elevated ones, and disappointed expectations a drop in levels.

One advantage of forgiveness in light of this research is that we're, in a sense, choosing to put an end to this cycle of expectation and disappointment. Once we forgive, it should follow that we are more accepting of human frailty, ours and others, and consequently, are more likely to adjust our level of expectation to what is more realistic. We've accepted that perfection is probably not likely (at least our version of it, anyway). We may discover that if we expect a little less, we may be able to take more pleasure in what we actually do get. We may also come to realize that people aren't meant to live their lives meeting our particular expectations, and that to wish them to do so is not only a guarantee of disappointment, but also can be controlling if it gets out of hand. We have a right to our reasonable expectations, they're part of a stable relationship and important for our ease and trust, but the line between reasonable and demanding can get fuzzy and is worth reexamining from time to time.

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Get Enough Sleep, Rest and Quiet Time 

When Shakespeare referred to sleep as “knitting the raveled sleeve of care” he may have been right on the money. According to Rosenthal: 

Researcher Thomas Wehr at the National Institute of Mental Health conducted studies during which he had people lie down in a quiet, darkened room for fourteen hours each night, conditions similar to those under which we evolved during the millions of years before the discovery of artificial light. Under these conditions, the subjects reported a state of pleasant relaxation coupled with a crystal clear consciousness.

Also, while they were in these states of relaxation and clarity, their pituitary glands were releasing prolactin into their blood streams. Meditators also release prolactin, which is associated with a state of calmness and serenity. As the name implies, this chemical stimulates the breast tissue to release milk in nursing mothers. But even a slight, low level of anticipation during sleep was enough to keep prolactin from working its magic. In separate experiments, the researcher told subjects that at some point a nurse would enter the room to take blood. This semi-conscious awareness during their sleep that they could be interrupted at any time was enough to stop the release of prolactin. (Men also release the hormone prolactin when they meditate or are in a state of deep relaxation.) 

I will never forget the feelings of serenity that accompanied breastfeeding my children; they even made getting up in the middle of the night pleasurable. One easy way to give yourself a little shot of prolactin, according to Rosenthal, is to take a warm bath because research shows that “heat causes prolactin to be released into the bloodstream.” You can also rest in a darkened room or meditate. I go into how to do deep relaxations and meditations in detail in the first section of part II. Following the instructions for deep relaxation and meditation is very revitalizing, and clearly has restorative effects on the mind and body. It's what nature built into us as a daily way to restore ourselves. Yogis use these techniques to “give their minds rest,” and in light of this research, these techniques also seem to release prolactin. Because prolactin is secreted by the pituitary gland, which begins to be more regularly stimulated in midlife, we may find ourselves desiring more quiet time for reflection and reverie as we enter this period of our lives. 

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Eat Healthy Foods  

This is a subject so well covered in the popular literature and media today that it's amazing we haven't all gotten the message. Our bodies are biological, they run best when we give them what they were built to use as fuel. Emotional eating or feeding our emotions, instead or feeling them, can make it hard to do right by ourselves when it comes to healthy eating. This is yet another good reason for working through the kinds of painful emotions that might cause us to use food in ways that are self destructive. Food should feel like comfort, but part of the comfort needs to come from the enjoyment of thinking up something yummy to eat, imagining eating it, taking the time to assemble and prepare it, and then relaxing and eating it.  

Fast food and junk food are ruining our eating habits, wrecking our relationship with food, and undermining one of the best bonding rituals we've got going: eating with each other. It's okay to make food preparation simple and easy; as long as we still preserve the rituals around food preparation and eating that are good for us. Each of us has our own pattern that works best, a personal formula for success when it comes to eating, and it's important to find it and use it, as long as it's healthy and provides adequate nutrition. Again, we're not looking for perfection here; we're looking to have a healthy relationship with food, neither a perfect nor a self-denying one. Self-denial is the other side of the coin of overeating, and both indicate an obsessive relationship with food.  

But here's another critical point. It's not only what we eat but how we eat that's important, that impacts how we digest and enjoy our food. Eating as a family is one of the most important bonding rituals available to us. Wandering through the kitchen inhaling good smells goes straight to the oldest part of the brain and soothes. Helping Mom or Dad get dinner on the table bonds families, makes children feel useful, important and part of the group, and teaches kids how to one day take care of themselves and run their own households.  

I really think that a lot of problems in our society would clear up naturally if families and friends took the time to prepare wholesome food, and sit down together and eat them. Even if you can't do it every night, don't worry; a few times a week is enough to do the job, and once or twice is so very much better than nothing. Variety is okay if enough time together sets up the pattern. The dinner table is where we learn manners, social skills and camaraderie. For instance, Rose Kennedy used the dinner table to train some of the most important politicians of our day by putting an article of interest on the bulletin board, getting her sons to glance it over and discuss it enthusiastically at the table. One of the reasons we learn social skills at the dinner table is that it's best to stay away from emotionally charged material while we're eating and digesting. Consequently, we learn the art of polite and lively conversation around subjects of the day. This is also a moment each day when parents can keep in touch with their children's lives and find out how their day has gone, and when partners can reconnect after a day apart. It's where we learn the art of living. If it's the family's orientation, it's also one more opportunity for conscious contact with God through a before-dinner prayer.

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Play and Enjoy Leisure Activities  

Almost every species of animal engages in some form of play. According to Marano, researchers feel that it may help them to learn the adaptive behaviors that increase their chances of survival. Play performs two important functions for animals, according to Bletcher and Carpenter and Aune. First, it allows them a safe way in which to release aggressions. Second, it gives them practice in behaviors that are typically associated with adulthood. Play seems to perform a similar function with children, allowing them to release their pent-up aggressions, play out their authority issues and get practice at playing adult roles. “You be the Mommy and I'll be the Daddy; now you be the teacher and I'll be your student.” Children are constantly slipping in and out of roles, releasing pent-up frustrations, becoming, for a moment, the admonishing authority or the nurturing, all-knowing parent. This gives them a chance to gain some relief from the confines and frustrations of their child roles, and at the same time practice at more mature roles. Children who've just met can seem like old friends by the end of an afternoon, after the bonding power of play has woven them into each other's worlds. 

Adults spend too little time at play according to research, and would benefit greatly from spending more time at it. In the workplace, for example, “adult play helps to alleviate boredom, release tensions, prevent aggression, and creates workgroup solidarity,” says Norman C. H. Wong of the University of Hawaii. It also facilitates organizational learning, creativity, community-building and group cohesion, and overall, enhances adaptivity, attentiveness to quality and performance.

Play is defined by researchers as an activity that encourages positive emotions and allows people to complete high-order relational goals, such as getting to know each other, learning about each other or engaging in a mutual interest together, at a higher rate than expected. Play is accompanied by smiling and laughter, and should also allow participants to control their onset and their offset in the activity. In other words, play is not forced; it encourages autonomy, spontaneity and creativity. Friends or couples who play together report feeling greater intimacy and closeness. And this sense of closeness develops at a faster rate than normal. 

Guarding our time for leisure and play is important for our mental health and the mental and emotional health of our relationships. Couples who play together, for example, report having greater intimacy than those who don't. We all need to cut loose and engage in playful, spontaneous activities where we're not caring how we look, sound or are coming across. We abandon the constraints of “normalcy” and take a momentary break from the daily conventions that constrain us. Play is an activity that interrupts those patterns for a brief time so that we can temporarily turn our world on its head. “Curiouser and curiouser,” said Alice as she looked through the looking glass and described her new view of the world, as play and imagination transformed it into her “adventures in wonderland.” Play can open doors into and out of a safe space, where we can experience ourselves and those around us in innovative and novel ways.

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Become a Keeper of Meaning 

If you were lucky enough to have a grandmother who was a Keeper of Meaning or kept the family flame burning, this idea will require little explanation. If you didn't, here's what they do. These special people recognize their very important place in the family system, and sometimes the larger community, and take it very seriously. They support and love the generations beneath them, each in their own way. They also gather the clan and maintain family rituals in a variety of ways, from sharing holidays to Sunday lunches to family vacations. The ones who are successful at this seem to do it with a gentle hand, without pressure, recognizing that people's schedules change, and all gatherings will not look exactly alike. They are our holders of personal history. They remember stories about how naughty, young and vulnerable their grandchildren's parents were once upon a time, and they share those stories with their grandchildren. And they nourish and attend to their grandchildren, recognizing that this benefits the youngest generation, themselves and the generation in between, that this is the right and good way to be for all concerned. They “teach and mentor,” passing on what they know, whether it's how to turn hospital corners on a bed, make the perfect pot roast, tie fishing flies, or save and invest capital. They are not afraid to mentor in the art of living and they share their accumulated wisdom, recognizing the power of their own example. They love for love's sake. They have the emotional distance and freedom to know that most things work out eventually, and that you might as well enjoy the ride, because that's what life is: the ride. These are the people who become the family lighthouses casting their reassuring glow far into the night. They are often grandparents, and if you're lucky, they are aunts and uncles, too. Or they are special and valued members of a community.  

“To grow old successfully,” says George Valliant who spearheaded Harvard's Study of Adult Development, the longest study of its kind in the world, “you have to be able to learn from the next generation.” The successful agers in his study all recognized that “biology flows downward.” That, to age happily, you need to be connected with the generations beneath you, and not only “hold the fort,” but also be open to learning from those younger than you. Whether it's the computer or a new variation on hide-and-seek, part of staying young ourselves is having strong, mutual connections with younger people. Valliant calls this being a “keeper of meaning.” Certainly, this is why we're going through a process like the one outlined in this book, so that we can pull meaning and wisdom out of the events of our lives. And what we learn we'll be able to pass along to those we love, both in the words we say and by the examples we set. 

Valliant also encourages people to shift from being a human doing to a human being as they age. He warns against needing to be forever in the “big honcho” role and encourages us to learn to take pleasure in family, friends, a walk on the beach and a long and restful look at the setting sun. Those who cannot comfortably let go the reins of power have a hard time as they grow older and power naturally shifts away from them. They are caught in an old identity and cannot make the transition to a different mode of operating. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that, for generations, women seem to have aged better than men. Our roles traditionally developed the kinds of skills that would be needed as we age. Focus on friends and family, taking pleasure in the simple things of life and being relationship friendly are all skills that women need to effectively raise a family and run a household. Perhaps as women shift into power roles in the workplace, we too may experience the loss of authority as we age and move into other roles. In our second half of life, our roles shift. Inevitably, as we lose our parents, we're no longer the children coming home, but the adults creating the home that our children can return to. The demands of our new roles may need some redefining. 

When we can forgive those younger than us for taking what used to be our place in the world we're better able to enjoy them and the rest of our lives. We “adjust our expectations,” learning to seek pleasure in what is realistically available to us which, like the animals in the experiments we discussed earlier, allows us to release increased amounts of pleasure chemicals into our bodies; so even though what we have might seem like “less,” we can experience it as “more.” And when we're in this state of mind, we're more likely to be a pleasant and giving presence to be around, which enhances our relationship experience. When I asked my grandmother what her secret was for living till ninety-four happy and healthy she said, “I'm easy to please, honey, easy to please.” She was the one we always wanted to be around. Whether a family holiday, a trip down the river on my sister's boat, a movie or a hamburger at the local deli, Grammie was easy to please. By extension, that meant that, when we were in her presence, so were we, and anything we did seemed like fun. 

Though some of these modes of aging may not enter our lives until a decade or two after midlife, others will, and it's well to have a sense of where we're going and what might work best, both as and when we get there. We'll resent getting older less if we can invest in the next generation more. We'll realize that, though we have no choice about growing older and eventually leaving our lives all together, we do have a choice about the legacy we leave. Forgiveness is a legacy worth leaving; it pays itself forward, seeding tolerance and love into the generations that follow, and the very act of planting it nourishes and sustains us.

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