joy – Thought Canvas

Calm Is Contagious

Former Navy SEAL commander Rorke Denver described the best lesson he had learned from a master chief in the Navy – that when you’re a leader, at a minimum everyone is going to mimic you. So simply: “Calm is contagious.”

Staying calm even everyone around you is losing their composure and running around like headless chickens, means that you can stay detached enough from the situation that you can still think clearly and objectively.

But, as a byproduct it keeps everyone else a little calmer too. Nelson Mandela was once on a flight where he noticed that one of the plane’s propellers had stopped working. He notified a friend on the plane, who then relayed the message to the pilot. The pilot already knew about it and had already called the airport to make an emergency landing. And while the friend feared for his life, Mandela was just seen reading his newspaper, just like he had been before he noticed the engine fault. When the plane made the emergency landing and Mandela was on the tarmac, he leaned over to his friend, “Man, I was scared up there.” Mandela was just as frightened as his friend, but he showed the courage to stay calm. If he had displayed his fear and panic, he would have likely made everyone around him panic even more.

In life there will be times when you are a role model to others – whether to a younger sibling, friend, new hires at work, to your child, to your community. And so, it’s not only calm that is contagious. Compassion is contagious. Kindness is contagious. Joy is contagious. On the other hand, anger is contagious. Envy is contagious. Deception is contagious. However you act, there will be someone out there that will use that as a template for their own life. So act accordingly.

Emotional Bank Accounts: Are You Rich or Are You Bankrupt?

In every one of your relationships there is an imaginary emotional bank account, and it’s in a constant state of flux.

Whenever you spend quality time together, serve the relationship, listen to one another, and reach out, you are making deposits into the emotional bank account.

Whenever you fail to do what you said you’d do, forget to return a phone call, or deceive them, you are taking withdrawals out of the emotional bank account.

Think about your most important relationships: Are you making more deposits or are you making more withdrawals with them?

Neglecting to build on relationships can lead to emotional bankruptcy. You can lose relationships with people when you don’t tend to them or mistreat them. On the other hand, by nurturing your relationships and making frequent deposits, you will be rich in the love and joy you experience in your most important asset class – relationships.

Find Happiness in the Journey

Sometimes, in the hustle and bustle and the quest to achieve our goals in life, we give up feelings of satisfaction, contentment and happiness.

But the reason why we are trying to achieve the goals in the first place is, in one way or another, to be happy. Happiness that comes from externals is a false joy. Not that it doesn’t feel as intense – it just doesn’t last. This false joy always wants more – it’s greedy.

If we were to think of ourselves as mountaineers, how much of your life would be spent at the summit of a mountain, compared to all the time resting, preparing, training, and climbing? It’s the same thing if we were only to experience happiness once we have achieved a life goal. The joy of achieving would be fleeting.

The key is to find ways of enjoying the whole process of life, knowing that you will try your best to reach the summit, but not giving up the higher values of integrity, compassion, and happiness. Life is made up of moments, and only a small number of moments will be in real, tangible achievement. So accept the moments that come with appreciation of how far you’ve already come.

The Dalai Lama’s Eight Pillars of Joy

At the end of the day, human beings just want to be happy. So how do we do it? The Dalai Lama tells us how in The Book of Joy.

Perspective: Take a step back and view your situation from a variety of angles. Reframe it positively. Understand that things that may seem difficult now will seem unimportant in a few years’ time. Shift from focusing on I and me and mine to we and us and ours. Move away from self-centeredness into viewing the world as interdependent.

Humility: Lose the labels and simply regard yourself as a fellow human being – one of seven billion. When we view each other as the same, we understand how much we have in common. Just like in nature, growth begins in the low places, and being humble means you are willing to learn. Thinking that you’re special leads to isolation and loneliness. Instead, think of yourself as essential. Humility isn’t the same as timidity – still take responsibility to use your gifts to help others and share with the world.

Humor: Laugh at yourself and don’t take yourself too seriously. It punctures your own sense of self-importance. Humor is an effective way of dealing with the anxiety and stress of uncertainty in life.

Acceptance: Let go of the expectations of how life should be and just accept what is. Let go of the attachment to a goal or method, because in the end we don’t control the result. Instead focus on doing your best.

Forgiveness: Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we accept or approve of wrongdoing, it’s choosing not to develop anger or hatred and remembering the humanity of the person doing wrong. Forgiveness is the only way to heal ourselves and be free from the past – until then, someone else will hold the keys to our happiness, and that person will be our jailor.

Gratitude: It’s easy to forget how much we can be grateful for, starting with the opportunity of simply being alive right now. Feeling gratitude simply makes us happy. It makes us accept reality and give thanks for everything that has led us to this point.

Compassion: This is probably the core of the Dalai Lama’s teachings. The more time you end up thinking of yourself, the more you suffer. Think of how you can bring joy to others, and as a by-product joy will appear for you. Compassion makes our heart healthy and happy. Wish for the happiness and joy in all sentient beings.

Generosity: They say money doesn’t bring happiness. But spending money on other people does. Being generous makes us happy. In giving, we receive happiness. Sit loosely with your wealth and status – we are simply stewards of these positions and possessions and be generous. But don’t view generosity as a burden, give with joy. That too, is a great gift.

Why You’re Suffering So Much and How to Deal With It

Picture this: A car gets stolen.

Now picture this: Your car gets stolen.

Did you feel the difference? If so, why is there a difference?

Why is the feeling more intense or important now because of a small change in the sentence?

It’s the human ego that creates and preserves the concept of I, me and mine. Ego needs separation from others and differentiation. It likes to attach to objects of ownership. It reacts to loss, and feelings of inferiority. The ego is selfish, and doesn’t care about others. The ego wants to be a victim. Self-importance and being the centre of the universe is the ego.

The ego and its mental concept of I, me and mine one of the biggest traps we fall into and causes pain, misery and suffering.

If we think of a problem that we have, we feel pain and anguish. Now imagine that the problem wasn’t yours, but someone else’s. Would you feel as bad about it?

I first came across this phenomenon while I was on a vipassana meditation course. It involved sitting on the floor and meditating for ten hours a day for ten days. Sitting completely still for so long on the floor caused a lot of pain to my joints. My eyes were closed, but I was grimacing, with sweat pouring down my face as my thoughts went to how ridiculous the idea of doing the course was. I was then taught the concept of ego and I, me and mine. I was also taught the separation of physical and mental pain.

The next day, during meditation, my face was no longer grimacing, and I was sweating a lot less. The pain that would have rated at 9/10 the day before suddenly became a 3/10. I was flabbergasted. I was doing the same thing as before, feeling the same physical pain but I wasn’t suffering nearly as much! It was a combination of recognizing that physical pain didn’t have to equal mental pain, the detachment of my pain from my ego, and recognizing that the day before when I was suffering so much, everyone else in the room was going through exactly the same thing and I didn’t care at all about them! Oh that selfish ego…

The self-importance that we can sometimes get trapped in means that we end up taking ourselves far too seriously. So how do we stop needlessly suffering because of this?

During the meditation course, I replaced the vocabulary of I, me and mine with my name instead. So instead of saying “My pain, my problems…” it transformed into “Dong Ming’s pain…”. That way, I could metaphorically stand back from my mind and body, be more rational, more detached, and more objective.

Another way that I use to make seemingly difficult decisions is to imagine that I am advising someone in the same situation. This way, you sometimes end up realizing that the answer was simple and you just got caught up in your own self-importance, took life too seriously and tricked yourself into thinking the stakes were higher than they were.