Looking for a little advice about your relationship? Perhaps you have questions about parenting? Ask Andrea! Our social worker, Andrea Liss will pick one question a month and answer it in our mid-month bulletin. You can submit your questions anonymously to her at https://forms.office.com/r/F3rxQKvTdQ
Dear OUTCAN Community.
In follow-up to last month’s column on being in the present moment, I thought I’d write about happiness. What better time than the holidays?
What is Happiness?
We tend to think of happiness as a state that fluctuates. The first feeling words that we learn as children are happy, sad, scared, and mad. But happiness is not actually considered a distinct emotion. According to Harvard professor Arthur Brooks, happiness appears to be more of a way of living, being and doing with others than a feeling. Happiness according to Brooks has three main ingredients: Enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Let’s go through each of these.
Enjoyment is more than just pleasure. I could drink a wonderful cup of tea on my own and this will give me great pleasure, but without the company of a dear friend, the pleasure of tea won’t sustain me. When I take tea with my friend Anna, no matter what city or place we find ourselves in, this is pure happiness for me as I have built up a composite memory of building our friendship over a series of stimulating conversations. Memory + People + Pleasure = Enjoyment.
Satisfaction is the feeling of completion after working at something, finishing it, and achievement after effort. It’s seeing the fruits of our labour. When my husband and I went to Krakow and took a pierogi-making class, we both felt quite proud of ourselves once we saw the table of plump dumplings laid out before us. It was a task to cut, fill, and crimp the pierogi but the end result - a pillowy yummy mouthful, made it all worth it. Meaning, the third ingredient of happiness, has three components: Coherence, significance and purpose.
Coherence is when we are able to understand that something happened for a reason. It’s understanding why things happen. This requires a certain reasonableness. Coherence contributes to happiness in that, events are explained. This is very important in long term processing of shocking, difficult, or tragic events.
Significance relates to the feelings and thoughts of being alive in order to do something that contributes to a person or group, whereas meaning is holding the belief “My life matters.”
If you are asked “Why are you alive?” and “For what would you be willing to die for?” and you come to be able to settle on some answers, according to Brooks, you will better be able to articulate your purpose.
There are several interviews with Arthur Brooks and he has co written a book with Oprah Winfrey. To see for yourself, check out the following short videos on YouTube.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays OUTCAN!
If you would like to pose a question for the Ask Andrea column, please send your anonymous question to https://forms.office.com/r/F3rxQKvTdQ and Andrea will do her best to share some of her ideas.
Andrea has a master’s degree in Social Work and is a Registered Social Worker (Ontario) with over 20 years of experience. She maintains a faculty appointment at McMaster University where she teaches in the Masters of Science in Psychotherapy program. Andrea is your MFS OUTCAN Rest of World Social Worker. If you are a CAF family member and would to speak with her or join the spousal support group for all OUTCAN spouses that she runs please email her at liss.andrea@cfmws.com.