What is the Why?

Sanitas:  Meeting my goals, Week Two – What is the Why?

This week things went better than I had planned, even on my 18 hour fast, which I did while traveling from San Diego to Grand Rapids.  Airport food is terrible anyway, so why not?  I actually met every single one of my 52 health tips this week.  And I had a couple of pieces of delicious Trader Joe’s dark chocolate along the way.  Surprising that when I ate the chocolate, it really wired me.  And I was wide awake at 10 pm.

What went well this week.. 

First this week, sleep went well.  I was able, for the first time in many years, to sleep a full eight hours and not wake up.  I actually am going to give the credit for this to my practice of moving my meditation time to just before bed.  It really centers me, brings my parasympathetic nervous system into play, and just takes me down into beautiful rest.

Second, speaking of rest, my Sabbath was lovely, spent going to church and catching up with friends.  Loved it.

Third, and probably my favorite, is the slowing down and thanking moments of my week.  To reach a fuller understanding of what I needed to do to get to this point, I read Martin Selegman’s book Flourish:  A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being.

This is one of the best books I have read about psychology and happiness.  The book outlines and discusses a theory of well-being and how he came to this theory.  There are key exercises in the book that you can practice to actually increase a sense of well-being in your own self.

For example, there is an exercise called What Went Well (WWW) where, every single day for thirty days, you write down three things that went well in a wellness journal and then you also write down the REASON that they went well.  The reason is sometimes the most difficult part.  It does encourage you to think about not just the what, but the WHY and the why we give as our answer tells us a great deal about ourselves.  For example, when I am thankful for a great conversation with a friend, what is the because there?  What is the why?  For some it could be, “I am good at being friends.”  For others it could be, “People like to hang out with me and be my friend.”  For me, as in most things, I thank my creator for this and wrote, “Because God gave me the grace of this friendship.”

My WWW practice happens every single evening before I meditate.  It offers a gracious moment to breathe the day in and out…and then to move into mindfulness.

In Flourish, Martin Selegman also points out that there are really five aspects that create a sense of well-being, and he abbreviates these to the mnemonic acronym PERMA:

Positive emotion:  Living a pleasant, pleasurable life.

Engagement:  Being completely involved in something you love to do, to the point that you lose track of time doing it.

Relationships: Sharing our lives with others.

Meaning:  This is knowing that you serve something bigger than yourself.

Accomplishment:  Having a sense that you are successful at something.  This could also be known as achievement.

At Penn State University there is now an Institute for Positive Psychology and they have a great website where you can take happiness and well-being tests, and you can participate in their research.  It’s very interesting and inspiring and I would encourage you to not only read this book, but also to go to their site and participate in these surveys and tests.  www.authentichappiness.org.

I feel, this week, that I have become addicted to good health.  It just feels so great to have this much energy and this much sense of love of life, even in the midst of a cold cold Michigan winter.  I thought, upon returning from my Christmas vacation in California that I would have difficulty making this healthy stuff work when in the grim midwinter.  But because the habits are so easy to keep and so life-affirming, it’s been a great week back and truly enjoyable.