By: Christine Disant

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When we look around at all the issues in the world, how can we possibly be happy? How selfish to laugh while we know about all the world's misery and unhappiness, when we know about war and hunger and all the rest of it? Or is it? What if science showed us otherwise?!?! Unhappiness, grief, sadness, it's all around us. And when it's far away, we might feel there's not much we can do about it, except providing funds or maybe going there and helping on the ground, which not many people "can" do, whether we're considering the human side or technical/logistics side of it. If we consider something slightly easier and look at health issues, we hear daily about clinical studies focusing on problems, such as stress, diseases etc...More problems, more unhappiness. How often do you hear about a clinical study exploring a solution? For example, are you aware that there are studies about the positive impact of relaxation? That article from the University of Maryland Medical Center provides a good review of the impact of relaxation on our health. That might explain that more and more hospitals are offering meditation and relaxation services. But my preferred one is this one : "Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study". In plain English : "Is Happiness contagious?" And guess what the conclusion is: "People's happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected. This provides further justification for seeing happiness, like health, as a collective phenomenon.". Layman's terms: "Yes, happiness is contagious!" You'll find all the detail about this study, involving 4739 individuals followed from 1983 to 2003, on the British Medical Journal (BMJ) website. Therefore, what about being selfishly happy? Now that we know scientifically that to spread happiness, we have to FEEL it, what about making happiness grow in our life? That doesn't make all the unhappiness and misery in the world any more acceptable, and when we can do something practical about it, by all means, let's do it, but isn't it a bit easier to think about solutions when we're happy and relaxed instead of worried and tense (there are medical studies about that too...)? It seems we CAN ALL do something for our direct neighbours to begin with: let's see the happiness in our lives! What made you happy so far today? Did you say "thank you" or feel gratitude for it? What about taking a minute to find out right now by reviewing your day, or even your last week? On the same topic, you might want to read again the blog about "Being loving or being love...". Be happy!

By: Christine Disant

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My version of it involves 3 steps :

• Step one:

  identify one person you have great respect and/or admiration for. It can be anybody, from a fairy tale character to a public persona or somebody you met or somebody who is part of your daily life.

• Step two:

  Write them a letter where you explain to that person what you really appreciate in them. What their best qualities are and how that person either sets a good example for you or makes you feel better. For once, this is not about specific events, but only about values and general qualities. The important bit is to put your heart into it. You won't have to show this letter to anybody, so don't worry about what others might say, just be fully honest.

  Start with “Dear xxxx”, and finish signing with your name.

• Step three;

• Well if I tell you now what step 3 is, it will loose all its fun. So if you're reading a printed version of this newsletter, you'll have to do step one and two, and only then, find out here what to do next. Enjoy!

By: Christine Disant

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For a lot of people, maybe for everybody, the initial reaction might be overwhelm, powerlessness, sadness, anger, resentment (why us?), despair. But beyond the shock of the diagnosis, as always, we have a choice: stay with the overwhelm and take this situation as a burden, or take it as a love challenge?

To be honest, I don't know what my own reaction would be, but I know what I would like it to be. I would like it to be just like Lou's parents. I don't know them or their story, but when I saw the video below, what I saw was a teenager. A different teenager, indeed. A teenager with a gift. We all have gifts. Our role is to find them and nurture them. In an ideal world, our parents, teachers, friends can show us how to do this and we can accept that guidance. What I see in that song is just that, the result of the perfect and loving match between parents and their child, creating a beautiful person, an opportunity for love and creativity.

It does take courage to get to such a result. Where could you find the courage, if it was not in love itself?

I don't know anybody who was not touched at some level when they listened to this song. Some cried, some just found it beautiful or thought provoking. If this triggers a reaction in you, I'd suggest tapping while watching it, and repeating the song until you clear whatever feelings were triggered.

Note we all react according to our own world. We might feel that our parents did not efficiently help us to nurture our gifts. Does it mean that they didn't give their best with their knowledge and abilities, emotional and otherwise? Plus, it takes two teams to play. What if we hadn't been ready to receive their nurturing at the time? Whatever others do, in the end, we are the only ones who can nurture our own gifts. So if you don't know your gift yet, or didn't dare nurturing it and giving it to the world, could now be a good time to find out and share? And by the way, there are as many gifts as there are human beings. That gives quite a large catalog to choose from! Some have the gift of listening to others, some have the gift to create joy around them, some have the gift to fix engines, some have the gift to organise things, some have the gift to cook... What's yours?

Many thanks to Lou for this beautiful song, words and music, and thanks to his parents and anybody who participated in creating the video and making it available to us across the language barrier.

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By: Christine Disant

Hits: 177

Step 3 :

So you've written your letter and wondering where this is taking you?

First notice what it feels to be writing compliments that come from your heart. Is it a pleasant feeling? If yes, you might want to be grateful for this nice feeling. If not, what is unpleasant about it? Something to tap away..

Then you might have heard a saying which tells us how easy it is for us to see the mote in another person's eye while it is more difficult to see the beam in our own eye? Which by the way is one reason why we get better results tapping on our issues with someone else than on our own..

The same goes for positive aspects. We can be quicker to see our own defects and other's qualities. However, we cannot see what we have no knowledge of.

You might have heard the story which says that Native Americans could not “see” Columbus ships. The story actually seems to originate from Captain Cook arriving in New Zealand, where the natives showed no reaction at the sight of the ships, until Cook's men landed on longboats. The natives had no concept of what the ships were and what they might mean, hence no reaction, but armed men disembarking on longboats did mean something, which led them to react.

The point is, all these compliments you paid to the person you wrote to, you couldn't have made them if you didn't have personal knowledge of, and personal sensitivity to them yourself.

So now take your letter, where you wrote “Dear John”, put your own name, and where you signed with your name, replace it according to your preference with “your friend”, “your client”, or maybe “your admirer” :-)

How does it feel? Do you feel you have these qualities? What does it trigger in you? You might want to tap along as you are re-reading your letter, either to let the good feelings in or let the bad feelings out. Your subconscious will pick what needs to be done! Hope you enjoyed this.

 

The original idea for this exercices come from Margaret Lynch.