Inner180

1.  It’s fun.

2.  Creativity is associated with positive emotions such as happiness, joy, and love. Contrary to popular myth, the negative emotions of fear, sadness, and anxiety stifle creativity.  Don’t believe it?  Read this.

3.  It’s useful.  When you need to solve a problem, you have more options to choose from if you can access creative solutions.

4.  It helps you access all of you. Creativity uses both right brain, wholisitc and image based brain processes as well as left brain, logical, verbal, sequential thinking.

5.  It requires you to take risks, which develops courage and confidence, and courage and confidence are handy things to have.

6.  It develops efficiency.  When you are comfortable thinking outside the box, you can get to new solutions more easily.

7.  It encourages you to experience “flow,” where you are so fully immersed in what you are doing, that you effortlessly lose your sense of time.

8.  It relieves boredom.

9.  It makes life way more interesting.

10.  Because you are creative.

A study at Harvard Medical School released in December found that happiness spreads through social networks in amazing ways.  One happy person can trigger a happy reaction in a friend who can trigger a happy reaction in another friend, who can trigger another happy reaction in another friend, who (you guessed it) can trigger another happy reaction in yet another friend. In all, this chain reaction can spread three degrees away from the original happy person.

The influence is not only on friends.  Family members and even neighbors catch it, too.  And what’s even more amazing is that this joyous effect can last up to one whole year!

Here’s another finding of the study:  unhappiness is not as powerful as happiness.  Sad feelings do not spread as efficiently as joyful ones.

The study analyzed data from nearly 5,000 people and found that friends, families, and even neighbors can influence each other in ways that spread to indirect relationships-your happiness can influence your neighbor and her friends, her friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends.

What are some practical implications for those of us who seek to maximize our happiness?  That’s right, hang out with happy people and their friends.  And be aware that your mood can influence others far removed from you.

We may be separated by six degrees, but we are connected by our happiness through three degrees!

After years of weight-loss dieting, I’ve discovered a huge secret–what goes inside my head is much more important than what goes into my mouth.  The whole point of being thin is to be happy, right?  Why not skip the middleman and go straight for happiness?  Whether or not I ever fit into my skinniest pair of jeans, I intend to be ecstatically, deliriously, divinely, serenely happy.

There’s actually good science behind this idea.  Research shows that we’re born with a happiness “set point,” which is in our genetic makeup.  But this only controls about half of our happiness.  Scientists in the field of positive psychology, the study of “what goes right with the human psyche,” have discovered that intentional practices to lift our spirits can increase our happiness significantly.  As much as forty percent of our overall happiness is within our control, and we can boost it with our thoughts and actions.  That’s a humongous bunch of happy.

So, I’m going for my forty percent upgrade. I’m going to follow a daily joy program for ten weeks, based on Martha Beck’s bestseller, The Joy Diet.  If you don’t know Martha, pick up an O magazine—where she writes a monthly column, or one of her New York Times bestsellers.  Her writing is inspiring, intelligent, and hilarious, just like she is.

My joy project is actually part of an eleven week telecourse I’m teaching for Martha, exploring the ten essential ingredients of joy she writes about in The Joy Diet.  And you are invited to participate.  We’ll have a one hour class each week, beginning Tuesday, September 30.  Each class, we’ll talk about one ingredient of joy, and then we’ll practice it for a few minutes a day for a week. The next week we’ll add another component.

The class will have the power of the group behind it, too.  Just like some weight-loss diets take advantage of group support, this joy diet will be have the same kind of group support, where we’ll talk about our progress in class, and I’ll write about it here, on this blog.  We’ll be able to inspire and motivate each other as we incorporate an intentional practice of joy into our lives.

The most successful approaches to reach goals, whether it’s weight-loss, success, relationships, or anthing else, always begin with bringing you to the feeling of satisfaction and happiness that the accomplishment of the goal would bring.  If you want to be skinny, feel the joy of skinniness right now.  If you want a relationship, walk around in love right now.  If you want success in something, whether it’s a sport or a business, imagine the joy of success and live in it right now.  So no matter what your goal is, this diet can help you get there.

I hope you’ll join us.  It’s going to be a blast!

The Joy Diet Group Diet Adventure

Eleven Tuesday mornings, September 30 – December 16, 2008 (except Thanksgiving week)

8 am Pacific, 9 am Mountain, 10 am Central, 11 am Eastern

Can’t make that time?  No problem.  All class will be recorded and a downloadable mp3 will be emailed to you the same day as class (if the internet fairies cooperate.)  You can listen at your convenience, on your ipod or your computer, and still participate with the group.

Cost:  $199.  Here’s a link to register.

For questions or more information, email me at  terry.demeo at gmail.com.