Fill your Happiness Cup

I hope you all had a nice weekend. I have been developing a new KLARITY Mindsette workshop on Happiness and was inspired to share some of it with my classes last week. 

Happiness is a lofty topic. It is truly what we all strive for. The Dali Lama talks about our level of happiness being directly correlated to the quality of our relationships. Psychologists have a name for this as well, it is called Social Fitness. Even with all of our evolution, we remain a species that requires social connections to thrive. In fact, loneliness is more than a two fold risk factor for mortality over obesity. With our current culture promoting the individual over community and separateness over togetherness we are unhealthier, lonelier and more depressed than we have ever been. One could argue that this culture of separateness is literally killing us. 

However, we don’t have to despair…. there really is a powerful flip side. Studies show we only need one truly authentic deep connection in order to cultivate happiness. And in addition, most of us actually experience something called micro-connections daily and those too can contribute to our overall well being and happiness. Micro-connections are small everyday interactions; a greeting from someone as you walk your dog, pleasantries with a bus driver or the coffee barista, the mailman or your yoga teacher 🙂 … all of these can create positive moments that promote happiness.

There are only two things we need to do in order for both the deep connections and the micro-connections to “hit the happiness bank account”. We have to be present to notice them and we have to experience gratitude for them.

This was our focus on the mat last week.  As we know, the physical yoga practice is just that…. practice. On the mat we take time to notice both the large and small movements in the body. From there we have the opportunity to find gratitude for what is available and train ourselves to let go of what is not. We can translate that practice to our social fitness as well. Paying attention and cultivating gratitude for both the deep connections and the micro-connections together can fill up our “happiness cup” and keep us healthier and happier. 

Now back to work for me… I have a lot more happiness practice to explore. I hope you “fill up” on happiness today.