I want to discuss the subject of happiness, not from a philosophical, but from a medical standpoint. Dr. John A. Schindler’s definition of happiness is, “A state of mind in which our thinking is pleasant a good share of the time.” rom a medical standpoint, and also from an ethical standpoint, I do not believe that simple definition can be improved upon.
Happiness is Good Medicine
Happiness is native to the human mind and its physical machine. We think better, perform better, feel better, and are healthier when we are happy. Even our physical sense organs work better. Russian psychologist K. Kekcheyev tested people when they were thinking pleasant and unpleasant thoughts. He found that when thinking pleasant thoughts they could see better, taste, smell and hear better, and detect finer differences in touch.
Dr. William Bates proved that eyesight improves immediately when the individual is thinking pleasant thoughts, or visualizing pleasant scenes. Margaret Corbett has found that memory is greatly improved, and that the mind is relaxed, when the subject is thinking pleasant thoughts.
Psychosomatic medicine has proved that our stomachs liver, heart, and all our internal organs function better when we are happy. Thousands of years ago, wise old King Solomon said in his Proverbs: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth up the ‘ bones.” It is significant, too, that both Judaism and Christianity prescribe joy, rejoicing, thankfulness, cheerfulness as a means towards righteousness and the good life.
Harvard psychologists studied the correlation between happiness and criminality and concluded that the old Dutch proverb, “Happy people are never wicked,” was scientifically true. They found that a majority of criminals came from unhappy homes, had a history of unhappy human relationships. A ten-year study of frustration at Yale University brought out that much of what we call immorality and hostility to others is brought about by | our own unhappiness. Dr. Schindler has said that unhappiness is the sole cause of all psychosomatic ills and that happiness is the only cure. The very word “disease” means a state of unhappiness—”dis-ease.” A recent survey showed that by and large, optimistic, cheerful businessmen who “looked on the bright side of things” were more successful than pessimistic businessmen.
It appears that in our popular thinking about happiness we have managed to get the cart before the horse. “Be good,” we say, “and you will be happy.” “I would be happy,” we say to ourselves, “if I could be successful and healthy.” “Be kind and loving to other people and you will be happy.” It might be nearer the truth if we said, “Be happy—and you will be good, more successful,] healthier, feel and act more charitably towards others.”
Common Misconceptions About Happiness
Happiness is not something that is earned or deserved. Happiness is not a moral issue, any more than the circulation of the blood is a moral issue. Both are necessary to health and well-being. Happiness is simply a “state of mind in which our thinking is pleasant a good share of the time.” If you wait until you “deserve” to think pleasgut thoughts, you are likely to think unpleasant thoughts concerning your own unworthiness.
Happiness is not the reward of virtue,” said Spinoza, “but virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain our lusts; but, on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore are we able to restrain them.
(Spinoza, Ethics.)
The Pursuit of Happiness Is Not Selfish
Many sincere people are deterred from seeking happiness because they feel that it would be “selfish” or “wrong.” Unselfishness does make for happiness, for it not only gets our minds directed outward away from ourselves and our introspection, our faults, sins, troubles (unpleasant thoughts), or pride in our “goodness,” but it also enables us to express ourselves creatively, and fulfil ourselves in helping others. One of the most pleasant thoughts to any human being is the thought that he is needed, that he is important enough to help and add to the happiness of some other human being. However, if we make a moral issue out of happiness and conceive of it as something to be earned as a sort of reward for being unselfish, we are very apt to feel guilty about wanting happiness. Happiness comes from being and acting unselfishly—as a natural accompaniment to the being and acting, not as a “pay off” or prize. If we are rewarded for being unselfish, the next logical step is to assume that the more self-abnegating and miserable we make ourselves, the more happy we will be. The premise leads to the absurd conclusion that – the way to be happy is to be unhappy.
If there is any moral issue involved it is on the side of happiness rather than unhappiness. “The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly,” says William James. “What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a way out of the difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation.”
Happiness Does Not Lie in the Future but the Present
We are never living, but only hoping to live; and looking forward always to being happy, it is inevitable that we never are so
Blaise Pascal in ‘Pensees‘
I have found that one of the commonest causes of unhappiness among my patients is that they are attempting to live their lives on the deferred payment plan. They do not live, nor enjoy life now, but wait for some future event or occurrence. They will be happy when they get married, when they get a better job, when they get the house paid for, when they get the children through college, when they have completed some task or won some victory. Invariably, they are disappointed. Happiness is a mental habit, a mental attitude, and if it is not learned’ and practiced in the present it is never experienced. It cannot be made contingent upon solving some external problem. When one problem is solved another appears to take its place. Life is a series of problems. If you are to be happy at all, you must be happy—period! not happy “because of.”
I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear] to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot; they amount to fourteen”.
Caliph Abdelraham
Happiness Is a Mental Habit Which Can Be Cultivated and Developed
Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be
Abraham Lincoln
Happiness is purely internal. It is produced, not by objects, but by ideas, thoughts, and attitudes which can be developed and constructed by the. individual’s own activities, irrespective of the environment
Dr. Matthew N. Chappell
No one, other than a saint, can be 100 per cent happy all the time. And, as George Bernard Shaw quipped, we would probably be miserable if we were. But we can, by taking thought, and making a simple decision, be happy and think pleasant thoughts a large share of the time, regarding that multitude of little events and circumstances of daily living which now make us unhappy. To a large extent we react to petty annoyances, frustrations, and the like with grumpiness, dissatisfaction, resentment and irritability, purely out of habit. We have practiced reacting that way so long, it has become habitual. Much of this habitual unhappiness-reaction originated because of some event which we interpreted as a blow to our self-esteem.
A driver honks his horn at us unnecessarily; someone interrupts and doesn’t pay attention while we’re talking; someone doesn’t come through for us as we think he should. Even impersonal events can be interpreted, and reacted to, as affronts to our self-esteem. The bus we wanted to catch had to be late; it had to go and rain when we had planned to play golf; traffic had to get into a snarl just when we needed to catch the plane. We react with anger, resentment, self-pity—or in other words, unhappiness.
Stop Letting Things Push You Around
The best cure I have found for this sort of thing is to use unhappiness’ own weapon—self-esteem. “Have you ever been to a TV show and seen the master of ceremonies manipulate the audience?” I asked a patient. “He brings out a sign which says ‘applause’ and everyone applauds. He brings out another which says ‘laughter’ and everyone laughs. They act like sheep—as if they were slaves, and meekly react as they are told to react. You are acting the same way. You are letting outward events and other people dictate to you how you shall feel and how you shall react. You are acting as an obedient slave and obeying promptly when some event or circumstance signals to you—’Be angry’—’Get upset’—or ‘Now is the time to feel unhappy.’ “
Learning the happiness habit, you become a master instead of a slave, or as Robert Louis Stevenson said, “The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.”
Your Opinion Can Add to Unhappy Events
Even in regard to tragic conditions, and the most adverse environment, we can usually manage to be happier, if not completely happy, by not adding to the misfortune our own feelings of self-pity, resentment, and our own adverse opinions.
“How can I be happy?” the wife of an alcoholic husband asked me. “I don’t know,” I said, “but you can be happier by resolving not to add resentment and self-pity to your misfortune.”
“How can I possibly be happy?” asked a businessman, “I have just lost $200,000 on the stock market. I am ruined and disgraced.”
“You can be happier,” I said, “by not adding your own opinion to the facts. It is a fact that you lost $200,000. It is your opinion that you are ruined and disgraced.”
I then suggested that he memorise a saying of Epictetus, which has always been a favourite of mine—”Men are disturbed,” said the sage, “not by things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.”
When I announced that I wanted to be a doctor, I was told that this could not be, because my folks had no money. It was a fact that my mother had no money. It was only an opinion that I could never be a doctor. Later, I was told I could never take post-graduate courses in Germany, and that it was impossible for a young plastic surgeon to hang out his own shingle and go into business for himself in New York. I did all these things—and one of the things that helped me was that I kept reminding myself that all these “impossibles” were opinions, not facts. I not only managed to reach my goals—but I was happy in the process—even when I had to pawn my overcoat to buy medical books, and do without lunch in order to purchase cadavers. I was in love with a beautiful girl. She married someone else. These were facts. But I kept reminding myself that it was merely my opinion that this was a “catastrophe” and that life was not worth living. I not only got over it, but it turned out that it was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me.
The Attitude That Makes for Happiness
It has been pointed out earlier that since man is a goal striving being, he is functioning naturally and normally when he is oriented toward some positive goal and striving toward some desirable goal. Happiness is a symptom of normal, natural functioning and when man is functioning as a goal-striver, he tends to feel fairly happy, regardless of circumstances. My young business executive friend was very unhappy because he had lost $200,000. Thomas A. Edison lost a laboratory worth millions in a fire, with no insurance. “What in the world will you do?” someone asked. “We will start rebuilding tomorrow morning,” said Edison. He maintained an aggressive attitude, he was still goal-oriented despite his misfortune. And because he did maintain an aggressive goal-striving attitude, it is a good bet that he was never unhappy about his loss.
Psychologist H. L. Hollingworth has said that happiness requires problems, plus a mental attitude that is ready to meet distress with action toward a solution.
Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer’s inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its sting can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it cheerfully; that a man is simply bound in honour, with reverence to many of the facts that seem at first to disconcern his peace, to adopt this way of escape. Refuse to admit their badness; despise their power; ignore their presence; turn your attention the other way; and so far as you yourself are concerned at any rate, though the facts may still exist, their evil character exists no longer. Since you make them evil or good by your own thoughts about them, it is the ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.
William James, ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience‘, New York, Longmans, Green & Co.
Looking back on my own life I can see that some of the happiest years were those when I was struggling through as a medical student, and living from hand to mouth in my early days of practice. Many times I was hungry. I was cold and ill-clad. I worked hard a minimum of about 12 hours a day. Many times I did not know from month to month where the money was coming from to pay my rent. But I did have a goal. I had a consuming desire to reach it, and a determined persistence which kept me working toward it.
I related all this to the young business executive and suggested that the real cause of his unhappy feeling was not that he had lost $200,000, but that he had lost his goal; he had lost his aggressive attitude, and was yielding passively rather than reacting aggressively.
“I must have been crazy,” he told me later, “to let you convince me that losing the money was not what was making me unhappy—but I’m awfully glad that you did.” He stopped moaning about his misfortune, “faced about,” got himself another goal—and started working toward it. Within five years he not only had more money than ever before in his life, but for the first time he was in a business that he enjoyed.
Practice Exercise: Form the habit of reacting aggressively and positively toward threats and problems. Form the habit of keeping goal-oriented all the time, regardless of what happens. Do this by practicing a positive aggressive attitude, both in actual everyday situations which come up, and also in your imagination. See yourself in your imagination taking positive, intelligent action toward solving a problem or reaching a goal. See yourself reacting to threats, not by running away or evading them, but by meeting them, dealing with them, grappling with them in an aggressive and intelligent manner.
Most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves, either in imagination or practice
Edward BulwerLytton, English novelist.
Systematically Practice “Healthy-Mindedness”
The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere
Ralph Waldo Emerson, famous moralist
The idea that happiness, or keeping one’s thoughts pleasant most of the time, can be deliberately and systematically cultivated by practicing in a more or less cold-blooded manner, strikes many of my patients as rather incredible, if not ludicrous, when I first suggest it. Yet, experience has shown not only that this can be done, but that it is about the only way that the “habit of happiness” can be cultivated. In the first place happiness isn’t something that happens to you. It is something you yourself do and determine upon. If you wait for happiness to catch up with you, or “just happen,” or be brought to you by others, you are likely to have a long wait. No one can decide what your thoughts shall be but yourself. If you wait until circumstances “justify” your thinking pleasant thoughts, you are also likely to wait forever. Every day is a mixture of good and evil—no day or circumstance is completely 100 per cent “good.”
There are ments and “facts” present in the world, and in our personal lives at all times, which “justify” either a pessimistic and grumpy outlook, or an optimistic and happy outlook, depending upon our choice. It is largely a matter of selection, attention, and decision. Nor is it a matter of being either intellectually honest or dishonest. Good is as “real” as evil. It is merely a matter of to what we choose to give primary attention—and what thoughts we hold in the mind.
Deliberately choosing to think pleasant thoughts is more than a palliative. It can have very practical results. Carl Erskine, the famous baseball pitcher, has said that bad thinking got him into more spots than bad pitching.
One sermon has helped me overcome pressure better than the advice of any coach. Its substance was that, like a squirrel hoarding chestnuts, we should store up our moments of happiness and triumph so that in a crisis we can draw upon these memories for help and inspiration. As a kid I used to fish at the bend of a little country stream just outside my home town. I can vividly remember this spot in the middle of a big, green pasture surrounded by tall, cool trees. Whenever tension builds up both on or off the ballfield now, I concentrate on this relaxing scene, and the knots inside me loosen up.
Norman Vincent Peale, ed., ‘Faith Made Them Champions‘, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1954.
Gene Tunney tells how concentrating on the wrong “facts” almost caused him to lose his first fight with Jack Dempsey. He awoke one night from a nightmare. “The vision was of myself, bleeding, mauled and helpless, sinkjjjg to the canvas and being counted out. I couldn’t stop trembling. Right there I had already lost that ring match which meant everything to me—the championship. . . . What could I do about this terror? I could guess the cause. I had been thinking about the fight in the wrong way. I had been reading the newspapers, and all they had said was how Tunney would lose. Through the newspapers I was losing the battle in my own mind.
Part of the solution was obvious. Stop reading the papers. Stop thinking of the Dempsey menace, Jack’s killing punch and ferocity of attack. I simply had to close the doors of my mind to destructive thoughts—and divert my thinking to other things.
A Salesman Who Needed Surgery on His Thoughts Rather Than His Nose
A young salesman had made up his mind to quit his job when he consulted me about an operation on his nose. His nose was slightly larger than normal, but certainly not “repulsive” as he insisted. He felt that prospects were secretly laughing at his nose or repulsed because of it. It was a “fact” that he had a large nose. It was a “fact” that three customers had called in to complain of his rude and hostile behaviour. It was a fact that his boss had placed him on probation, and that he hadn’t made a sale in two weeks. Instead of an operation on his nose, I suggested he perform surgery on his own thinking. For thirty days he was to “cut out” all these negative thoughts. He was to completely ignore all the negative and unpleasant “facts” in his situation, and deliberately focus his attention upon pleasant thoughts. At the end of thirty days he not only felt better, but he found that prospects and customers had become much more friendly, his sales were steadily increasing, and his boss had publicly congratulated him in a sales meeting.
A Scientist Tests the Theory of Positive Thinking
Dr. Elwood Worcester, in his book, ‘Body, Mind and Spirit‘, relates the testimony of a world-famous scientist:
Up to my fiftieth year I was an unhappy, ineffective man. None of the works on which my reputation rests were published. .. . I lived in a constant sense of gloom and failure. Perhaps my most painful symptom was a blinding headache which recurred usually two days of the week, during which I could do nothing. “I had read some of the literature of New Thought, which at the time appeared to be buncombe, and some statement of William James on the directing of attention to what is good and useful and ignoring the rest. One saying of his stuck in my mind, ‘We might have to give up our philosophy of evil, but what is that in comparison with gaining a life of goodness?’, or words to that effect. Hitherto these doctrines had seemed to me only mystical theories, but realizing that my soul was sick and growing worse and that my life was intolerable, I determined to put them to the proof. .. . I decided to limit the period of conscious effort to one month, as I thought this time long enough to prove its value or worthlessness to me. During this month I resolved to impose certain restrictions on my thoughts. If I thought of the past, I would try to let my mind dwell only on its happy, pleasing incidents, the bright days of my childhood, the inspiration of my teachers and the slow revelation of my life-work. In thinking of the present, I would deliberately turn my attention to its desirable elements, my home, the opportunities my solitude gave me to work, and so on, and I resolved to make the utmost use of these opportunities and to ignore the fact that they seemed to lead to nothing. In thinking of the future I determined to regard every worthy and possible ambition as within my grasp. Ridiculous as this seemed at the time, in view of what has come to me since, I see that the only defect of my plan was that it aimed too low and did not include enough.
He then tells how his headaches ceased within one week, and how he felt happier and better than ever before in his life. But, he adds:
The outward changes of my life, resulting from my change of thought have surprised me more than the inward changes, yet they spring from the latter. There were certain eminent men, for example, whose recognition I deeply craved. The foremost of those wrote me, out of a clear sky, and invited me to become his assistant. My works have all been published, and a foundation has been created to publish all that I may write in the future. The men with whom I have worked have been very helpful and cooperative toward me chiefly on account of my changed disposition. Formerly they would not have endured me. .. . As I look back over all these changes, it seems to me that in some blind way I stumbled on a path of life and set forces to working for me which before were against me.9
Elwood Worcester and Samuel McComb, ‘Body, Mind and Spirit‘, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.
How an Inventor Used “Happy-Thoughts”
Professor Elmer Gates of the Smithsonian Institution was one of the most successful inventors this country has ever known, and a recognized genius. He made a daily practice of “calling up pleasant ideas and memories” and believed that this helped him in his work. If a person wants to improve himself, he said,
Let him summon those finer feelings of benevolence and usefulness, which are called up only now and then. Let him make this a regular exercise like swinging dumbbells. Let him gradually increase the time devoted to these psychical gymnastics, and at the end of a month he will find the change in himself surprising. The alteration will be apparent in his actions and thoughts. Morally speaking, the man will be a great improvement of his former self.
How to Learn the Happiness Habit
Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other. The word “habit” originally meant a garment, or clothing. We still speak of riding habits, and habiliments. This gives us an insight into the true nature of habit. Our habits are literally garments worn by our personalities. They are not accidental, or happenstance. We have them because they fit us. They are consistent with our self-image and our entire personality pattern. When we consciously and deliberately develop new and better habits, our self-image tends to outgrow the old habits and grow into the new pattern.
I can see many patients cringe when I mention changing habitual action patterns, or acting out new behaviour patterns until they become automatic. They confuse “habit” with “addiction.” An addiction is something you feel compelled to, and which causes severe withdrawal symptoms. Treatment of addiction is beyond the scope of this book.
Habits, on the other hand, are merely reactions and responses which we have learned to perform automatically without having to “think” or “decide.” They are performed by our Creative Mechanism. Fully 95 per cent of our behaviour, feeling, and response is habitual.
The pianist does not “decide” which keys to strike. The dancer does not “decide” which foot to move where. The reaction is automatic and unthinking.
In much the same way our attitudes, emotions and beliefs tend to become habitual. In the past we “learned” that certain attitudes, ways of feeling and thinking were “appropriate” to certain situations. Now, we tend to think, feel and act the same way whenever we encounter what we interpret as “the same sort of situation.”
What we need to understand is that these habits, unlike addictions, can be modified, changed, or reversed, simply by taking the trouble to make a conscious decision—and then by practicing or “acting out” the new response or behaviour. The pianist can consciously decide to strike a different key, if he chooses. The dancer can consciously “decide” to learn a new step—and there is no agony about it. It does require constant watchfulness and practice until the new behaviour pattern is thoroughly learned.
PRACTICE EXERCISE
Habitually, you put on either your right shoe first or your left shoe. Habitually, you tie your shoes by either passing the right-hand lace around behind the left-hand lace, “or vice versa. Tomorrow morning determine which shoe you put on first and how you tie your shoes. Now, consciously decide that for the next 21 days you are going to form a new habit by putting on the other shoe first and tying your laces in a different way. Now, each morning as you decide to put on your shoes in a certain manner, let this simple act serve as a reminder to change other habitual ways of thinking, acting and feeling throughout that one day. Say to yourself as you tie your shoes, “I am beginning the day in a new and better way.” Then, consciously decide that throughout the day:
- I will be as cheerful as possible.
- I will try to feel and act a little more friendly toward other people.
- I am going to be a little less critical and a little more tolerant of other people, their faults, failings and mistakes. I will place the best possible interpretation upon their actions.
- Insofar as possible, I am going to act as if success were inevitable, and I already am the sort of personality I want to be. I will practice “acting like” and “feeling like” this new personality.
- I will not let my own opinion colour facts in a pessimistic or negative way.
- I will practice smiling at least three times during the day.
- Regardless of what happens, I will react as calmly and as intelligently as possible.
- I will ignore completely and close my mind to all those pessimistic and negative “facts” which I can do nothing to change.
Simple? Yes. But each of the above habitual ways of acting, feeling, thinking does have beneficial and constructive influence on your self-image. Act them out for 21 days. “Experience” them, and see if worry, guilt, hostility have not been diminished and if confidence has not been increased.
This is a chapter extract from the book, ‘Psycho-Cybernetics‘ by Maxwell Maltz
