How we change what others think, feel, believe and do

The ChangingMinds Blog!

ChangingMinds Blog! > Blog Archive > 23-Dec-08

Tuesday 23-December-08

Lifting spirits

What makes you happy? What lifts your spirit? There are some things that bring a pure joy to our heart. Is it the innocent child? That crashing riff? The view from the mountain's peak? What blows your trumpet voluntary? Just remembering those times is a reservoir we sometimes forget and which can lift us up when we are down.

Some things are almost guaranteed to bring joy. Some of these things are almost predictable and some come unbidden. I remember, many years ago, walking along the sea's edge on a sandy beach at dusk, feeling inexplicably happy. I'd been listening to Santana's 'Samba Pa Ti' and it was going round and round in my head. The waves were breaking gently and sliding up the sand to meet me. I felt totally at peace and could have forgiven anybody anything.

I sometimes wonder about that time and why I felt that way. I've felt good since but maybe never quite that good. Not that I regret this -- I'm grateful for the experience and remember it fondly, rather than grasping at past glories. Maybe there's something too about getting older, where memory's glow gets rosier.

'Jouissance' is a term that means 'pleasure too much to bear'. Joy can be like this, which is why tears can accompany extreme forms of the emotion. It's strange how happiness and sadness are so circular, even how hysterics can end in laughter.

One of the most uplifting things you can do is to lift up others. Helping others gets you out of your own head, where dragons often lie. It connects you with other people in affirming and positive ways. It shows you are good and let's you know you are good. Others praise you and you can give yourself justifiable pats on the back.

Joy is where you find it, and I do hope you, kind reader, find it everywhere you look this Christmas season.

Your comments

 You were fully within the moment, that is what you felt. ;^)

-- Donna

Your entry also speaks to the difference between seeking validation and giving validation. Instead of simply seeking validation and sucking up other people's energy, one may validate him or herself by helping others. By validating and helping others, one feels a sense of fulfillment like nothing else. As Shakespeare said, 'it is twice blessed, it blesses him that gives and him that takes.'

-- Dan M.

Dave replies:
Interesting, is it not, how validating others makes us feel good. I wonder what the evolutionary imperative of this might be.

What makes anyone happy is something easy to explain: Getting invited or being proposed by someone (family or friend) to do any shorter or longer activities, for fun or to have a good time, with a good mood and treating you with confidence, but also with respect.
Easy, isn't it?

-- Carlos B. H.

Hi Dave,
Christmas may be over (as well as coming) but thoughts about happiness and joy are never out of date. Probably predictably (and not at all originally) I'm going to suggest that "thoughts about happiness and joy" are actually the greatest barrier (apart from mental or physical illness, loss and grief) to feeling happiness and joy.
Thinking about anything nice, I usually want some more of it. Wanting it, I immediately spawn a mixture of hope and fear in my mind, maybe with sadness or anger thrown in according to the outcome. This is more likely to make me unhappy (and perhaps also unpleasant) than to fill me with joy and peace. Well, I know you know all that - just as you know I'm going to mention http://www.wanterfall.com - where I talk about such things at more length. Does this mean we're both psychic? Would that make us happy? Hmmm...

-- Gordon C

Dave replies:
Hello Gordon. Great comment. Thinking-about is a cognitive state that could anchor a person away from just feeling. I often find myself thinking about what I feel, then think about whether I'm standing back from life too much. Thinking is an emotionally safe position. It also has something to do with travelling hopefully rather than arriving and maybe being disappointed.