Why Are We Happy?

We think we want a lot of choice in our lives. We modern folk think we are happy that we are free to have so many choices, compared to our forebears.

But what if all our choices are making us less happy? Could that really be true?

This seems to be a conclusion from a study by Daniel Gilbert on the relationship between happiness and choice.

I was watching a video of Gilbert’s TED talk, “Why Are We Happy?” In his talk, Gilbert tells us about two tests on happiness that he conducted. In the first test, he had two classes of students working on individual projects.  At the end of the session, each student had two large photographs they had to choose from.  In Class A, each student was told they could keep one photograph, and the other would be taken away, forever, no second chances. Class B had to make a similar decision, but they had a week to change their mind. Gilbert discovered that, regardless of the choice Class B made – whether they changed their minds or not – Class B was ultimately less happy with their final decision than Class A was. The class with the greater choice was less happy.

The second time that Gilbert conducts his study, he tells the students before they have selected which class they are going to take, that in one class they won’t have a chance to change their mind, and in the other class they’ll have a week to change their mind.

66% of students choose the class where they’ll be able to change their minds. As Gilbert says, 66% of the students choose the class in which they will be less happy.

Watching this video, what I saw was that the greater unhappiness of Class B was not because of too much choice but because of too much second-guessing their initial decisions. Did I make the right choice? Was that the photograph I really like the best? Maybe I should have chosen the other one. I’m going to switch back while I can. But wait, now that I have the other one, do I really like it better? Dang, should I switch back?

After watching this video I realized that I frequently second-guess the decisions I have made about what-to-do-next. As a self-employed artist/producer working from home, I have a huge amount of choice in my day. Pretty much every moment I have to figure out what I should do next. Sometimes it’s clear, as when I have a looming grant deadline. Most of the time it’s not and I have to figure it out for myself.

If I spent the morning just lolling around not really getting anything done, I would then spend time mulling and debating over whether or not I had made a mistake…was I being lazy or did I just need some quiet time to integrate things?

If I worked really hard, I’d wonder, was I getting obsessive? Did I remember to take a break? Am I going to burn myself out again like I used to?

So I conducted my own study: what would happen if I just accept whatever I have already chosen to do, leave off with the second-guessing, and just move on to the present? What if I stopped second-guessing myself? Would that reduce the occasional vague sense of dissatisfaction I experience regardless of how well things are going?

The week before I saw Gilbert’s video, I had decided that on Saturday mornings, while my husband and daughter were out at a kempo class, I would take that time to get myself into wilderness, because wilderness feeds me. Well, the day after I saw the video was Saturday. And it was pouring, drenching rain.

I spent the early morning thinking, “Oh, I don’t really want to go out in this? It’s cold and wet and I’m going to get drenched and – wait a minute, I’m second guessing myself, aren’t I?” So I went out anyway, despite my disinclination. It was of course fantastic to get into the wilds, despite the rain.

Simple, of course, but very helpful. We have more choices today than our parents did, or probably any generation before us. There aren’t a lot of tools we are given to know how to make good choices. So we second guess ourselves. I know I do. I’m going to keep practicing not second-guessing myself. As a matter of fact, I had thought this morning that I would go out and do some work in a coffee shop. But I’m writing at home. So I’m going to stop writing now and go get a coffee. Because staying here would be second guessing myself.

I feel better already.

What this has to do with art practice

Everything.

(yes, I'm writing in the coffee shop now)

You write a word, paint a brushstroke, record a vocal line.  You either second guess it or you let it be. If you second guess it - if you are anything like me - you become mired in a state of indecision. If you trust yourself enough to let it be, then that stroke/word/line is followed quickly by another, and then another. You accept all the gestures that come out of you, in a kind of compost-building, as my writing partner and I call it, which you can sift through and analyze with your critical brain later.

If you are an artist and struggling with your inner critic, who is interfering with getting anything out there, who is blocking you or impinging on your creativity in any way, instead of fighting to defeat the critic, just say, “I’ll be critical of this later, all at once, when it’s all out, all the compost has been created. Right now I won’t even look at it, I’ll let it be and I won’t go back until later, when I’m done with the output phase.”

That way the critic doesn’t have a chance to interfere. I won't even look at what I’ve just done – not a single glance at it – until later, when I’m done creating the first draft/version/layer.

It’s amazing how useful that (formerly nasty) little inner critic can be when faced with a pile of steaming compost, lush with nutrients and possibilities. It can sift through and find the gems, the good bits, wash off the stuff that isn’t useable (or paint another layer on top, or save into an old draft version).

I have learned to do this with my art, already. Now I’m learning to do it with the art that is my life.

No second guessing.

Images: 
Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness
Portrait of Daniel Gilbert
My painting of the woods at Harrison Hotsprings
Inner critic

Learning to Change Before Life Forces You To

Change is uncomfortable. But staying stuck is also uncomfortable.

I decided, a long time ago, to change before life forced me to. I discovered that when something bad happened in my life, my willingness to change was inversely proportional to how long the bad thing stayed in my life. The faster I learn my lesson, the faster the disaster rights itself.

Changing before the universe forces me to is quite addictive. There’s this thing called happiness that keeps flying in my window whenever I do it.

All the religious precepts say: wake up yourself, it’s the best thing you can do for the world.

As I change, I discover I am also waking myself up, more and more. And more and more I have love and magic and music and words and videos to offer to the world - it’s practically pouring out of me. Because I decided to change before life forced me to.

It is completely freaking me out some days. I am vibrating with so much change I practically knock myself out just standing there. It’s exciting though – thrilling – to wake up like this.

When something bad happens, I ask myself, “What am I supposed to learn from this? What is my lesson in this?”  And then I try to learn my lesson as fast as possible – let go of my unwillingness and my resistance, and change.

Recently we heard that a major client of DreamRider’s might have large budget cuts requiring the reduction or elimination of their funding. Part of me went straight to fear; they’ve been our major client for twelve years! What if we lose them?

(I completely ignored the fact that they used to be 100% of our revenues and now our revenues have grown so much they’re only 25%).

No, I didn’t say, “Wow, I was so smart to diversify our income like that!” No, instead, I panicked and worried and went straight to “My daughter will go unfed”, etc. etc.

My friend Erin said to me, “I think you’re supposed to have faith here.” I knew she was right.  Faith – trusting the universe – is hard for me. As it is for most.

So I focused on having faith that this was all for the good, somehow. Instead of panicking, I concentrated on changing myself – refusing to go to panic, fear and worry -  and instead I paid attention to looking for what good might come of this.

And the next day a new client called confirming they were going to do business with us.

I ran ahead in the direction that life was trying to move me. Life tested me, asking, “Do you have enough faith not to panic?” I threw my habitual patterns out the window and said, “Yes.”

I offered little resistance to learning my lesson, and so the situation righted itself right away.

This happens to me all the time. It is very cool. You might like to try it yourself.  When there is a situation in your life that you do not like, ask yourself, “What am I supposed to learn from this?” And try to learn it voluntarily.

But if you don’t come up with anything, here’s a trick:  What would you hate it to be? What would be the hardest thing? What is the thing you don’t want to hear?

Because, you see, if it was something you wanted to learn, a way you wanted to change or grow, you would just do it, and then life wouldn’t have to throw you a curve ball.

It’s almost always something I wish it wasn’t.

But I am always grateful to have changed.

How to Follow Your Dream Even When It’s Failing

When I was younger, I thought that my dream was a single dream I had all figured out. That my vision of my dream was the true, entire dream. But dreams, I’ve discovered, are fluid and changing. They evolve with your life. If you let them.

When I was seven I saw my first play. The world changed colours for me, and sitting there in the audience, I knew that this was what I wanted to do when I grew up. I went home and told my mother, who – sensing that this wasn’t just an idle wish in me – freaked. She found a clipping in the newspaper that said that actors earned about $6,000 a year and posted it on the fridge for me. Reading that, I thought, “Wow! $6,000! That’s so much money!” To a seven-year-old, it is.

Needless to say, we had differing opinions on my chosen career.

I persisted, in a back-and-forth kind of way. By the time I was an adult, I knew that my mom was right in that acting was not in any way a sensible career, especially since I wasn’t an ingénue (small, cute, skinny). I repeatedly gave up but was repeatedly drawn back by the persistence of my dream.

Persistence

When I was 28, I went back to acting for the last time. I was terrified: I knew that the likelihood of my success was almost nil. But the calling inside me was too strong. I thought, “Well, I’ll give it a shot, and then, when I die, at least I’ll know that I really tried. I won’t be tormented by ‘what if’s’. ”

I actually did better than I thought I would. I had about three gigs a year, which for an actor is a lot, but for someone trying to earn a living is not very much at all. Going to auditions – in case you don’t know – is a brutal way to earn a living. Eventually the pain of repeated rejection was so great that I wondered why I was doing this to myself. And I knew I had to stop, if I cared for myself at all.

And so my dream died.

A dream reborn

And out of the burnt, dessicated ashes of that dream, another dream emerged: the dream to write musicals.

When I started writing musicals, I was even more terrified than I was when I went back to acting at 28.

But this time I was terrified of the creative process inside me, not of dealing with the industry outside me.

If the pain of pursuing my acting dream had not been so great, I never would have been willing to face the fear of writing music.

Writing musicals led, in turn, to eventually producing musicals, and which eventually led to the full creative freedom and success that I am currently enjoying at DreamRider Theatre.

None of which would have happened if I hadn’t allowed my acting dream to die a horrible death.

When I turned forty, many actors my age that I knew were giving up and going into teaching and other sensible occupations. Others were refusing to give up their dreams; a few continued to work regularly (i.e. they were still doing the several gigs a year that is not enough for a living) while others just kept trying.

One old friend was a struggling actor ten years ago, trying to break in, and is still a struggling actor today, trying to break in. I cannot imagine the pain of such extended trying and trying and failing. Kudos for persistence, but it also reminds me of that adage, “insanity is trying the same thing and hoping for a different outcome.”

What does a dream need?

We hear those – “don’t let your dream die” and “persistence is the key” etc.

We don’t ever hear, “Sometimes letting your dream die is exactly what it needs.”

I believe, from my vantage point now, that that feeling of “my dream” and “my calling” is a pull from our higher selves in the direction we must go to fulfill our destiny in this life. But I also now believe that sometimes – or often – we need to keep our ears open to the possibility that we might have followed our path in this direction far enough, and it’s time for a left turn to something even better that we had not expected.

Sometimes we are so blind that the only way we’ll realize we missed the turn we were supposed to take, is through being “in pain about our dream” as I was. The gift of the death of a dream is that there is in fact always another to take its place. If you listen for it.

Or, said another way, my dream didn’t die, it just morphed into something unexpected.

How a List Transformed My Life

I have a personal values statement: a written list of the things that my life is all about. A declaration of the values that I consciously bring to my life every day. For over a year it's been making me exponentially happier and my life better - but I only recently realized it exists at all.

(I love realizing I’ve already done something important that I didn’t know I’d done, don’t you? “Leaves more time for beer,” Ian would say.)

Here's my personal value statement:

• To live meaningfully.
• To act according to my intuition and inspiration.
• To love and be loved.
• To enjoy life.

This is how it came about:

Last October, Ian and I hired Arts Club Executive Director Howard Jang to assess our companyDreamRider as an organization. As part of that process, Howard facilitated the creation of avalues statement for DreamRider.

Howard gathered stakeholders and friends of DreamRider together and asked them, “Who is DreamRider to you? What values do you see in them that make them DreamRider? Who is DreamRider every time, no matter what, in every situation?”

How to make your own personal values statement:

You can ask yourself the same questions Howard asked us:

• What are you here to do?
• What are the goals you want to accomplish in your lifetime, for yourself, your community, your planet?
• What do you stand for?
• What are you values?
• What are you, every time, no matter what, in every situation?

Out of all the answers, we crafted DreamRider’s values statement:

“DreamRider’s values are: fun, welcoming, meaningful, inspiring.”

It’s who we are: Whatever art we are doing, these four things are there.

But why is DreamRider’s art fun, welcoming, meaningful and inspiring? Because all of the art Ian and I do is fun, welcoming, meaningful and inspiring. It’s who we ourselves are, it's an expression of our spirits, and it’s what we ourselves want to experience every day: To live meaningfully, to act according to our intuition and inspiration, to love and be loved, and to enjoy life.

DreamRider’s values are my values. That's how I wrote my values statement without realizing it.

It made a difference to DreamRider when we gathered with friends of the company and wrote down those values together. We knew we were those things, but we didn’t realize how much other people saw those as values that we offer. We wrote down what they told us. And we said, “Yeah, that’s us. We do work that’s fun, meaningful, inspiring and welcoming. That’s our values statement.” You can try it too: ask friends what they think you value.

Writing it down was critical. It made it concrete, in the world, not just an idea in our heads. And then we started expressing those values in everything we did. We started showing people who DreamRider really is. And that’s when the company really took off.

How it changed me

Having a written personal values statement helps me to remember who I really am, why I am worth loving, and what my spirit is here to express in the world.

It helps me choose from among the millions of information bytes that flash by every day. I can surf the stream with my values as my guide.

Now, when faced with any choice, I ask myself, “Is it fun? Is it meaningful? Is it inspiring? Does it help me open my heart to the world?”

I can stop wasting time on stuff that isn’t actually important, and instead, in those moments, find a little piece of meaning by expressing my true spirit. In simple small ways, it’s transforming my life.

Moment-by-moment, I am becoming more like the person I would most like to be.

I am showing my true face.

Links:

Mandalas by Erin Dragonsong

How to Recover from Perfectionism

Beauty in art can be found in the recovery from mistakes

Sometimes people ask me how I have time to create so much and do so much. I do, in fact, sleep, and I do rest - a lot. The real reason I create so much? I let go of perfectionism. Done is better than perfect. My perfectionism used to stop me from creating – or finishing – anything that wasn’t exactly perfect. Untold wasted hours.

But now I’m learning ways to make peace with the mistakes and the wrong bits while they’re here. I’m trying to listen to them.

Today, I am making a pot. I am a complete beginner potter. I have yet to make a perfect pot. It’s a good place to practice my recovering perfectionism.

But again my finger slips.

And a small dent forms, marring the edge.

This time, instead of fighting the dent or throwing out the bowl, I follow the truth of the dent.

I look for a way of incorporating this new information, this accident, into the pot I am making.How to smooth the edges of it, in harmony with the rest of the pot. How to incorporate this dent.

And the pot learns a new direction, a new way of being a pot that was not included in my concept of “pot”, before.

And I learn a new way of making a pot that I did not previously have in my understanding of pottery-throwing.

My finished pot looks like an artist made it - an artist working in a new material, perhaps, but someone who can express herself in pottery.

And what did I express? I expressed the incorporation of a mistake into my art. I did not create a “perfect” pot. I created an artful pot.

Through accepting my beginner’s mistake.

(Left: Ian, the martial artist.)

My husband and creative partner, Ian, is widely read on a multitude of subjects, including the origins of many words. He tells me that the word “sin” in the Bible is a mistranslation of a word that comes from archery that in fact should have been translated as “mistake”.

So it’s not that we have original “sin.” It’s that we are born imperfect. In other words, we are not complete, finished, perfect human beings.

And now I am finding the artistic gold in that place where the imperfection lies.

Art without this recovery from error is sterile. Pure pattern, without accident, is empty. Pure pattern is Bach the way a computer would play it, not the way Glenn Gould would play. Gould’s humming and heavy breathing, and the creaking of the seat he’s sitting on, are part of what make his performance of Bach so alive.

(Right: Glenn Gould, reknowned

Canadian interpreter of Bach)

Breathing with my mistakes

Today I am drumming. My brain knows a lot about music, but my hands are learning conga from the beginning just like anyone. My practiced, professional musician’s ear has been keenly aware and keenly critical of my hesitations and mistakes.

But lately I have been responding differently to a missed slap on the conga.

I’ll be in the livingroom, with light crossing the parquet floor towards me. I’ll be practicing a particular simple conga pattern, when – yak! – I miss a beat.

But this time I tune into the echo of the empty sound, the space following the missed or incorrectly played beat.

Inside me, a steady pulse is still thumping in the silence, “1-2-3-4”, keeping the beat.

I know that when it comes around to “1” again, my conga pattern can start over.

I start my conga pattern over.

And, whoosh! I am back into the swing of the pattern I am practicing. For the first time, I have left my total-beginner player status. I can leave the beat for a moment, go somewhere not predicted, and come back again.

I am becoming a real conga player. Out of my miss/taken miss/step I have regrown new art.

It’s like the beauty of an old tree, grown gnarled around a once broken-off limb.

Or the way the firs on my grandmother’s Georgian Bay island all grew in a sharp slant because of the force of the wind.

The music is more beautiful when I accept and incorporate my errors.

More and more I let myself breathe with the mistakes when they occur. Because I do, I find my balance much more quickly, and the art flows out of me much more smoothly.

I stopped hating and regretting my errors. I started accepting and loving them for where they are bringing me.

And then I watched my creative spirit grow.

How to Find Your Path as an Artist

To take action, or not to take action, that is the question.

In many fields, the career path is clearly defined and marked out by others: first, get your engineering degree, then apply for a job at XYZ company, etc.

In the arts, each of us must make her own way. This is one of the hardest things about being an artist – and the most wonderful.

Critical to success and continuing as an artist is knowing when to act and when not to act. Otherwise, you can get burned out doing useless things that lead nowhere. Or stuck in writer’s block. Or trapped in indecision about what the best next step is.

Wu Wei - the art of knowing when or when not to act

Knowing when to act and when not to act is the art of wu wei. Wu wei is a Taoist name for something I have been learning to practice for twenty years.

My husband Ian told me a story that illustrates wu wei very well.

Ian is martial artist, student of mysticism, and my resident expert and source of knowledge of pretty much everything (in other words, I don’t need a reference library, I have Ian). He’s also my creative partner. Here’s his wu wei story:

Once Upon a Time...

In ancient China, a young apprentice runs from the fields into his master’s house, where his master is beginning to prepare the afternoon tea. The apprentice enters the room, shouting, “Quick, master, a brigand is coming!” The master quietly continues his tea preparations. The apprentice jumps up and down in front of the master. “Master! Did you not hear me? A brigand is coming. We must defend ourselves!”

The master does not respond, but continues his tea making. The young apprentice panicks. “Master! He is coming!” He runs to the door and looks. “He’s almost upon us! We have to do something! He'll kill us!” The master says, “It is not time yet. Now I am making tea.” The brigand bursts through the door, arms ablaze. The master lifts up a knife that had been on the table, and turns to the apprentice. “Now is the time to act,” he says, effortlessly stopping the brigrand with a single gesture with his knife.

Spilling Tea: Trying to control my fate

Wu Wei for me is a practice. “Listening for the right action” mostly means waiting until an action feels right to me, before I do it. At the moment, this process still doesn’t feel very comfortable. I am like the apprentice, who now trusts his master enough not to run around in a panic, but is not yet able to calmly prepare tea instead. I might be able to prepare tea, because that’s the small action that is before me, right now, today, but there’s a good part of me still yelling, “They’re coming!”

So I’m still spilling tea, in other words. But I’m waiting for right action, too.

Working with the Flow

Because wu wei means letting the universe take care of how your dreams unfold, while you take care of the small detail that is before you, needing to be done right now. Then you are working with, not against, the flow of the universe.

For the past year, I have been consciously practicing wu wei. For the past year, I have started to finally achieve the artistic success that I had been struggling to reach for decades.

Doing unnecessary things blocks the flow of the universe. It blocks the flow of your own creativity by exhausting you for no reason.

Listening to the Resonance

Listening to the resonance is important. It means not rushing to the next step before considering the fact that the previous step is done. Listening to the resonance doesn’t have to take long; it might even just be for the space of a single breath.

Listening to the resonance helps you be ready to look for and see the next small right action, instead of just jumping from one thing you think of doing to the next.

Instead, you feel for the next small right action.

I am walking that clear path. I can feel it. Sometimes inside I’m still yelling, “They’re coming!” but I’m on the path. By practicing wu wei at each step.

Links:

Wikipedia: Wu Wei http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei

Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way (http://www.theartistsway.com/) teaches art as a practice. Highly recommended.

Eckhart Tolle: http://www.eckharttolle.com/eckharttolle teacher of presence: how to be here now. His "A New Earth" is the best book I ever read on the subject - and I've read a lot of books on the subject.