Inner180

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!

Suzanne left a comment to the post from a few days ago: The Joy of an Insolent Teenager.  She’s so right–the most challenging relationships are the ones we learn the most from.  I’m posting Suzanne’s comment here, so the you can listen to the song as you read it.

From Suzanne:

Part of me says “Thank goodness I have passed the stage and lived through it with my children.” One was easier than the other.  In hind sight the most difficult one was the one that taught me the most.

On his wedding day, the mother and son dance was the song by Carole King called “Child of Mine”.  Most of the song (see below the lyric) was very appropriate to my son and I wanted to honour him with it.  I must say I was and still am proud of that beautiful moment.

CHILD OF MINE

Although you see the world different than me
Sometimes I can touch upon the wonders that you see
All the new colors and pictures you’ve designed
Oh yes, sweet darling
So glad you are a child of mine

Child of mine, child of mine
Oh yes, sweet darling
So glad you are a child of mine

You don’t need direction, you know which way to go
And I don’t want to hold you back, I just want to watch you grow
You’re the one who taught me you don’t have to look behind
Oh yes, sweet darling
So glad you are a child of mine

Child of mine, child of mine
Oh yes, sweet darling
So glad you are a child of mine

Nobody’s gonna kill your dreams
Or tell you how to live your life
There’ll always be people to make it hard for a while
But you’ll change their heads when they see you smile

The times you were born in may not have been the best
But you can make the times to come better than the rest
I know you will be honest if you can’t always be kind
Oh yes, sweet darling
So glad you are a child of mine

Child of mine, child of mine,
Oh yes, sweet darling
So glad you are a child of mine

Child of mine, child of mine
Oh yes, sweet darling
So glad you are a child of mine

Last night, I attended Art Basel Miami Beach, a yearly international contemporary art exhibition that takes place at the Miami Beach Convention Center and other shows all over town.  I wandered among a huge crowd, inches from thousands of original works by Picasso, Miro, Chagall, Matisse, Hockney, Rothko, Calder, Kandinsky.

But this isn’t an art museum.  This stuff is for sale.  And people are buying.  I eavesdropped on a conversation about price:  “300,000?  Hmmm.”

I began doing nothing in the presence of the crowd: young New York hipsters in amazing, creative outfits, Cuban couples holding hands, women with straight red hair cut in angular shapes.  Everyone looked so beautiful through eyes looking out with joy.

I stopped at a photograph by a favorite, Sally Mann.  It was her daughter, probably about twelve, holding a candy cigarette as if it were real, the insolent, defiant face of a young teenager stopped in time and on full display.  I’ve seen the shot in a book I own, but there, full-sized, it was even more powerful.

I saw that same look on my daughter’s face so many times during that stage of half-adult, half-child.  A look of I love you but I’m going my own way now and I’m going to experiment and break rules and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.

I stood before the photo, happy to see it and even more happy that I don’t live with a thirteen year old girl right now.  A small crowd began to join me.  I turned to the woman next to me.  She was smiling lovingly too.  And everyone who had stopped was looking at this child in the photo with the same loving eyes.

We began to chat and laugh about the photograph. One woman said  she used to love candy cigarettes too.  And I remembered the fun of pretending to “smoke” them.  Someone else said they were living with that face at home right now—their own fourteen year old.  We all laughed together, in our collective adult wisdom.

I’ve never had this kind of experience at an art exhibit before.  Who knew there was such overwhelming joy in the presence of a defiant teenager?

I’m being visited by a family member who is a master at pushing my buttons.  Instead of experiencing the joy of connection, I’ve been going back to the truth exercises over and over.  It went on for two days out of a four day visit, with no relief.

It was so obvious that she is in pain.  And so obvious that I was accepting the invitation to dance an old dance again.  And I couldn’t stop.  (At least that’s the story I told myself.)  And we were having a rotten, miserable time together.

Then I remembered the exercise I wrote about on Day 14—Is our Loved One’s Pain Contagious?  When I initially wrote about it, it was in the context of becoming immune to someone else’s low spirits.  I just discovered that the exercise works with when our loved one is pushing our buttons.

Here’s what I wrote then:  realize that you are bigger than the other person’s emotion—so big that you can hold their emotion without it impacting you.  It can simply pass through you.

I began to imagine that I was literally huge, that I extended ten feet in every direction with compassionate, loving energy.  I visualized this both in and out of her presence.  I almost felt like I was floating, I became so large.

It worked.  Her “stuff” stopped bugging me.  I stopped wanting her to stop, I stopped asking her to stop, I stopped asking her to notice what she was saying and doing.  I was so large, it didn’t impact me. It passed right through me.

It worked like magic.  It stopped.  Our reactivity to each other vanished.  We began to connect again.  Now, we are smiling and laughing and hugging.  It’s downright joyful.

I spent the evening with a group of long time friends.  I practiced being in my joy diet place of peace while at this gathering.  It was amazing how much love and tenderness I felt for each person there.  It seemed as if I was able to experience each of them in greater detail than ever before.  Without worry and envy and judgment I was able to really see and hear and feel each of them with more intensity.  It really came alive.  More peace, more life, more joy.  Pretty good, this joy diet.

I went to a lunch meeting today, and practiced doing nothing in the presence of others.  I found that I was less judgmental of those around me.  But I also noticed that I tended to be quiet, and worried about that.  I judged others less, and me more.  Interesting, isn’t it?  I don’t think I’ve mastered this step of the joy diet yet….

This week our joy diet focuses on relationships, and encourages us to be truthful in them to maximize our joy.  Although we’re encouraged to begin with small steps, I got a bigger opportunity, right away.

Last night I worked with a group of coaches-in-training and got caught up in my own “stuff.”  Blindly.  Unintentionally, to be sure.  But to be honest, I steered the session they were coaching in a direction I wanted it to go.  In other words, I got attached to the outcome.

This violates a fundamental rule of good coaching.  I was there as their mentor, a Master Coach, doing the exact opposite of what I’m there to help them learn.  And the joy diet principle of playing at work so that it becomes more like a game, where the outcome is less important than the process?  Let’s just say I forgot about that too.

In the discussion that followed the coaching session, I was initially bewildered by what one of the participants said:  “You wanted it to go in one direction and I had a different direction in mind.”  Ouch.  What made her statement painful was its truth.  She was absolutely right.

As we talked further, I recalled an earlier moment in the session when a remark the coaching client made touched an old sore place within me–something I thought had healed and resolved long, long ago. I wasn’t even aware of it until we began de-briefing the coaching session.   And there it was, open and oozing again, this time right in front of my students.  And being recorded as well.  I suddenly felt very defensive.

And then I got it.  I woke up to what had been going on inside me.  And I told my students the absolute truth—that I had a personal agenda.  Because my old judgments and hurts had been triggered.  We call this coaching in our blind spot.

Once I saw what had happened and opened up to my students, my confusion and defensiveness melted right on the spot. Immediately, I felt such a profound connection with these wonderful people.  I felt such admiration for the woman who’d spoken up to me about my pushing.  That took amazing courage.

The trainee who was getting coached by us had been discussing a very personal and painful topic in her life. She graciously emailed me after the class and I want to share her words because they demonstrate the awesome power of truth in our relationships:

“Thank you for your coaching tonight but most of all for being so TAO [transparent, authentic, and open] with us. I understood (intellectually) . . . how important it is but tonight I felt how important it is thanks to your sincerely being transparent, authentic and open with us. It will totally effect my coaching as well as my life.”

Tears welled up in my eyes when I read this.  I felt so honored to have screwed up in a way that helped her.  And helped the group. And helped me enormously.  I’ve struggled mightily with my perfectionism.  Last night, there was almost no struggle, as my perfectionism exposed its soft, pale belly to the light.

And you know what?  I think even if I had a chance for a re-do, I wouldn’t change a thing.  It was so much better this way.

My deepest thanks to all of you on the call last night.  You are awesome coaches!

Election fever is burning here in Miami.  There are yard signs everywhere; on some streets, every house has one. Early voting has opened.  I walked to City Hall with some neighbors yesterday so they could vote. It was Sunday afternoon, and several hundred people were waiting in line.

It was a big outdoor party.  A group of drummers were pounding Caribbean rhythms and blowing horns as they stood in line, a woman on stilts danced to the drums, volunteers (affiliation unknown) handed free water bottles to waiting voters.   A truck from a church unloaded folding chairs for whomever wanted one. I chatted with old friends and people I didn’t know.  It was fun.

Everywhere I go, people are asking each other, very respectfully, whether they have voted.  My friend Lise, who lived in Haiti under Baby Doc’s governance and is now a proud US citizen, laughs and says she will only vote on election day.  She’s superstitious about having her vote count.  My postal carrier smiled and told me she will take off Thursday to vote.  I’ve heard that an 80% turnout is expected here.

My strongest desire today is to continue this heightened sense of connection and to be of service.  What can I do after the election is over, to continue this exciting feeling?

Today’s ideas: volunteer in a library reading to kids, volunteer to do something in the schools having to do with civics or the law, continue to speak with strangers after the election as if there was still a good reason to do so, collect supplies for a school in Jamaica, raise money to renovate a school in Jamaica.

The idea that gets my attention today is to continue to speak with strangers, even after the election, as if I  had a good reason to do so.  And I do have a good reason, actually.  It’s called connection and joy.