Oprah started the show (15/10/2007) with five people on the stage and she asked the question “How happy are you?” sparks started flying in my mind and I felt a bit low. How happy am I? , I am at a phase I would label “pre-30 reevaluation” – I have seen my friends go through it and I was determined not to. This is a depression phase where you realize you are fast approaching 30 and may only have another 25, if lucky a little more than that, years to live.
The questions you tend to ask yourself are
• Am I happy?
• Have I achieved all I thought I would by 30?
• Would I be proud of myself when I turn 30?
• Will I be proud of any achievements when I die?
• Have I achieved anything worth celebrating?
• What will most definitely be the highlight of my years before I turned 30? And 40?
• What went right or wrong?
• How can I still achieve those dreams by the time I get to 30?
• Is it too late to find those dreams?
• What now?
Believe me, those questions are depressing when you try to “pre-30 reevaluate”.
So as I listened to Oprah complain about the tight pants she was wearing on a live show, I thought “Why not change them? They are uncomfortable and will not answer my questions! I am not sure I am happy. Help me!” Eish! Our own issues always seem bigger than everybody’s and our impatience doesn’t help anyone. She ignored me and proceeded to ask the audience to vote for who they think is the happiest person of the five people on stage. They were all looking very happy, I thought. But how many people do we walk past and genuinely look extremely happy, until you ask them, then they roll out all their unhappiness carpets and you almost wanna kiss God for not making you go through what they are?
(pic - Happy 5)
Anyways, Oprah gave some background info about the five peeps to make the voting process easy…
#1 Peggy: 44 years old, married, 2 teenage boys, Father and sister died last year, her mother disgnosed with Alzheimer’s, she works as a family business bookkeeper
#2Noreen: 52 years old, divorced, 2 teenage children, works in the ops department of a mahjor airline, passionate swimmer
#3Lachelle: 27 years old, married, 2 dogs, no children, lost 4 friends and 2 family members in a 6 month period last year, works 2 jobs
#4 David: 53 years old, married, 2 sons, works as a funeral director – Looks at dead people all day
#5 Lorrie: married 15 years, 6 children, works in retail, vice president of her PTA
I voted Lachelle because she was just beaming and had lost too many people in her life so could have found a way to be happy. The audience voted the funeral director, David, as the happiest of the five people. I was flabbergasted! What? The guy that directs funerals, the guy that deals with dead people every day his entire life! Well, Oprah was shocked too. How could he possibly be the happiest? David’s response was “Being successful in life is not what really matters. Being significant in life is really the core root of what matters." What made Paggy and Lachelle so happy? Lachelle says “Negative out, positive in” Her father had groomed her to believe in always focusing on the positive. Even in the hardest of times, to just be focused on the positive. Peggy says her husbands love and “appreciation” is what makes her happy.
These individuals had taken the happiness test, and Peggy, David and Lachelle had the highest score. What is the happiness test? Well, the Oprah Expert Dr Robert Holden who is a founder of the Happiness project in England, has written a book “Happiness Now” and has dedicated his life studying “The pursuit of happiness”. Did the doctor get this “work” title from that movie – or he genuinely used that phrase to describe his job even before the movie? That’s beside the point – The message he had was more important than his “work” title.
(Pic - Dr Holden)
Dr Holden says the happiness test is a benchmark for you to gauge your happiness. The Happiness test is 5 questions you have to answer with a rating. So you rate each question with a figure between 1(lowest) and 7(highest).
The happiness test
1. In most ways, my life is close to ideal.
2. The conditions of my life are excellent.
3. I am satisfied with my life.
4. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.
5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing
The lowest score you can get is a five, so that’s when you need help pronto! And the highest is a 35… you are a teletubby! Always happy and beaming! Is it that easy to know if you are happy? A simple five question rate yourself exercise? So I took the test and scored a measly 13… Not helping at all with my “pre-30 reevaluation”, I must say!
Dr Holden clearly knew that some “non-happy” victims, like me, were watching so he went on to explain the different types of people and their happiness kinds. Like he said, as a Psychologist you need to create illnesses so he has his own list… and what you need to do to be happy. His KEY points are
We already have the happiness inside us; we need to tap into it and run into the world to spread it. We don’t need to chase happiness.
Be an optimist. Like Lachelle, make the choice to focus on the positives. Use the “like attract like” principle, be optimistic and you will draw similar people or experiences to your life.
A happy mother has a happy family. Lorrie is a classic example of some illness Dr Holden quoted - Pity I did not write it down- She has fooled people into believing she is happy, she wears a happy smile and gives to everyone all the time. It goes along the lines of “Always trying to make others happy and neglecting yourself”. This is when you drain yourself thinking that making others happy will make you happy; I might be suffering from this illness. I always want people around me to be happy; even when I am unhappy about something – their happiness comes first; mine doesn’t matter. This was a light bulb moment for me because I realized that you cannot give happiness unless you have, and own, happiness too. I need to be happy and this will ensure that everyone around me will follow suit. Not the other way round.
(pic -Reggie )
Oprah’s Make up artist, Reggie Wells; who is a” chronic complainer” as Oprah calls him, was AGAIN on the show. We had met Reggie a couple of weeks ago when Oprah had another “Good news” show. She had brought a minister who gives away wrist bands that are supposed to remind us to stop complaining. Reggie was given a band by Oprah and the minister that day. But Reggie still complains and is “getting whiplash on his wrists” as he needs to move the band to a different wrist each time he complains. Oprah then decided Reggie needed to get some exercise and must go for “Laughing Yoga”; developed in India and now practiced in 53 countries. This looked ridiculous! I still don’t get it. The concept is you combine laughter, exercise, yoga and stretching. So all the time you are exercising you will scream or rather chant “Ha ha ha” with each exercise move. This relieves stress. Reggie swears it is “goofy” and works; so if anyone knows where I can catch a class please tell me.
(pic - Reggie at Laughing yoga)
Dr Holden says Reggie is a “happy-chondria with a destination addiction”; people that believe that “happiness will come when something happens”. They “live in the not-now” because they feel “tomorrow, more, next and there” will bring happiness. So they feel that “the next destination will bring happiness” and it won’t because they’ll set “the next destination”. When I buy the car; I will be happy, when I get the job, I will be happy, when I get that huge salary, I will be happy, When I get married, I will be happy, when I get children, I will be happy… So they postpone being happy by always needing something to bring them happiness. They live in “fear of happiness” because the goal posts always move when they reach their next happiness destination. They attach material possessions to happiness so will always complain even when they get what they think will make them happy. So happiness doesn’t last; Reggie needs to trust that happiness can last and dare life to be great.
(pic - Happy Liz)
True Oprah style guest, Liz, was an Oh! Moment for me… Liz was a bank executive at 29, earning a lot of money on Wall Street but she was not happy. She did not feel that her job was fulfilling her quest for happiness. So, she quit the job to be a trapeze artist. Yes, she took a 90% salary cut to pursue what she felt happy doing. I am actually at Liz’s stance career wise. My “real” career is moving quite fast now; with promotions looming all over the show, but my need to be happy just as a writer is really what I want to do. So, Do I quit my “real” job for a dream? It will be a huge salary cut, almost 98%!
Dr Holden closed the show by saying we need to let go of the past. “We have to learn to let go of our past, we have to give up all hopes for a perfect past. Let the past go, it's gone." After that, he says, "Take a vow of kindness. Be kinder to yourself and to others. It’s never too late to be happy”
The universe works in ways that we mere mortals will never understand so as I watched Oprah and listened for my specific needs, the answers I needed were right there! I know they did not say anything that can bring back the dinosaurs or earth shattering but they spoke about things that felt really relevant to my state of mind.
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(PS - Not happy about the picture upload thingy - Will upload them as soon as I can access them)
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