Today’s question we’re contemplating is, Does each of us get a limited amount of happiness? Is there only so much happiness to go around? Are you thinking that because someone else is happy, you can’t be? Well guess what? The answer is, No! In fact, I believe that the more happiness there is, the more there is to share. Its not that each of us get a limited amount of happiness, but more like it’s contagious and shared with those around us. I explain my thought process in today’s episode.
Resources I referred to this week:
Info I found on theDynamic Spread of Happiness Study
The Magic Penny Song – Malvina Reynolds
Who Do You Spend Time With? – The podcast episode on how who you spend time with makes a difference
21 Day Happiness Challenge Sign Up Page – we’ll be starting another one again soon!
I hope you enjoy this week’s podcast. Don’t forget we’d love to see you over on the Facebook Group, The Happier You Podcast! You can also sign up to get the podcast delivered right to your inbox here.
Episode Transcript
Hi, happy people. And welcome back. Today’s question we’re contemplating is, “Does each of us have a limited amount of happiness?” Or are you worried about running out of, or using up your happiness? Are you thinking that because someone else is happy, you can’t be? Like, there’s a limited amount of happiness to go around.
Well guess what, the answer is no. In fact, I believe that the more happiness there is, the more there is to go around. So more like it’s contagious than limited. I think if we stop and really think about what happiness is, the more you have, the more you can share. And it’s contagious.
I heard about this study called dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network.
And it was a longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham heart study. They figured out that people’s happiness can be influenced by others with whom they are connected. This provides further justification for seeing happiness, like health, as a collective phenomena.
So people who are surrounded by many happy people, and those who are central in the network, are more likely to become happy in the future. They’re saying you can even affect your neighbor’s happiness, and up to three degrees of separation. So a friend of a friend’s friend.
When I heard about this, I remembered a song from my childhood. When I was young and went to Sunday school, we always brought pennies on our birthday. For example, if I was seven, I brought seven pennies. And as I would put them into the piggy bank, the rest of the group would sing the magic penny.
Don’t worry. I won’t sing it. That’s not my talent, but I’ll share the lyrics with you because I think they’re powerful. Love is something if you give it away, give it away, give it away. Love is something if you give it away. You end up having more. It’s just like a magic penny. Hold it tight, and you won’t have any. Lend it, spend it, and you’ll have so many, they’ll roll all over the floor.
I looked it up. That’s by Melvina Reynolds. If you want to actually hear the song sung by her.
I started this journey deciding to learn how to love and accept who I am right now, flaws and all.
When I listened to the magic penny lyrics, I think it just all goes together. I think when you love and accept yourself, you have more love and acceptance to give others. When you surround yourself with people who are striving for happiness and self-acceptance, it builds and grows, and it’s easier to stay in that state because it starts to become normal and acceptable to seek your happiness by loving and being your authentic self.
I believe happiness begins with loving and accepting who you are right now in this moment.
Being happy is definitely easier when you are surrounded by others who value these traits and love and accept you for who you are too. But unfortunately, we’re not always surrounded by those people. Negativity is all around us and it’s hard to avoid it, and we often get sucked in.
One of the coolest things I have gained from this journey is the happiness community.
I wanted to put myself out there in case anyone else needed encouragement and support to take their own personal happiness journey. I felt very strongly that we need more voices saying it’s important to be You. Not to fit in and go with the flow. Not to live up to others’ expectations, but honestly find and share your authentic, beautiful self with the world.
Without realizing what I was doing, I was creating a community of supportive like-minded people around me.
I changed the conversations happening around me to more positive ones.
I hope I’ve convinced you that happiness cannot be used up and hoarded. Just because someone else is happy, doesn’t take away from yours. Definitely that 20-year study proved that when you are around happy people, you have a better chance of being happy. So, happiness can be shared. And in fact, in another episode I did entitled Who Are You Spending Time With? I addressed the question of how other people can affect your happiness.
Today. I wanted to talk about the fact that there is no need to be jealous of someone else’s happiness. And acknowledge that happiness can be shared and contagious. Happiness is something to be sought, figured out for each individual personally, and then shared and shared and shared, again. That’s what we’re doing here with the happiness community.
We’re figuring it out for ourselves and then lovingly accepting and encouraging those around us to do the same.
But here’s what’s really important point that I want to underline with all of this.
It is not someone else’s responsibility to make you happy.
I’m going to say that again, it is not someone else’s responsibility to make you happy. That power lies solely inside of you. I know we would all love it if someone swooped in and, quote unquote, made us happy. It doesn’t work like that.
And just so you know, some of you don’t even know what your happiness looks like yet.
You just know you’re unhappy. Your happiness starts with you.
How are we going to go about increasing your happiness and then in turn sharing that happiness with those around you.
All right. Well, as I always say,
Number one, you have to start where you’re at.
There’s no reason to berate yourself for not being where you think you should be right now. That’s simply not true. You are where you are because of the life experiences you’ve had.
All of your experiences make up who you are today.
So, moving forward, we start from where we are at. And we move forward from here. Sounds basic. But for some of us accepting things as they are right now, without blaming someone else, or even ourselves is really hard.
It ultimately comes down to acceptance. It is what it is. So let’s work with what we’ve got.
For example, I’m always working on loving acceptance of myself. I like to be fit, healthy, and active. My body and I are not in agreement right now. And the fit, healthy and active part is eluding me. I’m not going to put other things in my life on hold, especially my happiness while I figure it out. It is what it is and I’m just going from here and figuring it out along the way.
I don’t use it as an excuse to hold me back from being grateful for all the other positive things in my life.
Number two. Let’s start by working on the little things inside your control.
Like I mentioned, in a previous episode, it often feels like happiness is just outside our comfort zone. We need to start with the things inside our comfort zone for now and work up to the big things that are outside our comfort zone later.
What’s an example of this? A gratitude practice.
Noticing all the amazing blessings in your life, instead of focusing on what you don’t have.
Or figuring out what play is for you and adding more of it into your life. Little things like that. Little things that take some time to figure out, but the payoff is huge.
Number three is build momentum.
As we build momentum. You will start to do little tweaks and changes in your life and you’ll get to see glimmers of your happiness. You’ll start to recognize the little things that bring you joy, and you’ll learn to add more of those into your life and figure out how to remove and deal with things that don’t bring you joy. By focusing on what positive changes you can make, instead of feeling like there is nothing you can do, you start to take control and make decisions about your life and your happiness.
As this momentum builds, it starts to get addictive and draw you in.
Some moments will be big, exciting aha moments, and others will be really hard to admit to yourself or challenging to set and hold boundaries with loved ones. But as you build this momentum, you will grow into your happiness and get excited about figuring out new ways to increase your happiness, and self-acceptance. It really does get addictive.
An example of this is recently one of the happiness community members sent me a note that she had been really frustrated at work. She finally pulled up the courage to confront a coworker about their issue working together. She said it was scary and really hard to do, but when it was done, she felt amazing. And guess what? The coworker thanked her for having the courage to confront her and get the issue figured out. How cool is that?
Number four is gain confidence.
As I said, when you build momentum, you start to gain confidence and try some of the things that scared you or didn’t interest you in the beginning. This could be something like journaling. That seems like this big, scary thing when you first start out.
Or even meditation. Those are both things I struggled with for years. It took me keeping at it and realizing the benefits to fully integrate them in my life.
Number five is sharing.
As you start to feel the benefits of living your authentic, happy life. You will want to share that with others. You will change the conversations happening around you. It all starts to become natural and easier.
All right. So, happiness is contagious.
Just because someone else is happy with their life doesn’t mean you have to be any less happy with yours.
As you find more happy in your life, you’ll see that your ability to find it and nurture it will grow. As you learn that skill, you will be able to share it with the people around you. You can help others see the world differently with a new appreciation for all that you have. Instead of focusing on what you don’t have.
Your quote for this week is from The Bhagwad Gita. And it says,
It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly, than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.
Bhagwad Gita.
All right happy people, this week your challenge is to look for people in your life who are genuinely happy. Or who are at least striving for real happiness. Not online, showy, happiness. Like, hey, look at me, my life is awesome because I just got a new… fill in the blank.
I’m talking about those people whose energy you can feel is real. And they are working on living every square inch of their One, True, Authentic Life. Not living up to someone else’s expectations.
Notice them and what they’re doing differently.
Before I let you go, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the 21 Day Happiness Challenge. It is a great way of getting to know yourself. Building a resource guide for yourself, of little things you can do on a daily basis to help you focus on you, and your happiness. I run it at different times throughout the year, and you can sign up for the wait list for the next one, at https://thehappieryou.net/21-day-happiness-challenge/.
If you don’t want to wait until the next group, one starts, then please reach out through the contact form on the website. We have successfully run the challenge for private groups before, and we can help you set that up.