Secrets for Happier Life 4-22-2010

 

Secrets For A Happier Life: Ideas, Inspiration & Practices Quick Links   YouTube Visual Musical Secret    Joy Coaching     Boca Smile Center             I would love to hear from you      Share your happiness tips and see them in a future newsletter                                             Email Link                           (561)487-4555      Spread The Word Want to live around happier family and friends?    Smile of the Week        “Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory”    Albert Schweitzer Be Happy Now April 22, 2010 Dear Michael,        Welcome to Secrets For A Happier Life.    Like rain dripping into and filling a bucket, your life can become happier one drop at a time. For over 25 years I have gathered thoughts and experimented with practices related to increasing joy.  I am happy to share them with you.    Yogi Berra is reported to have said, “It’s like deja vu, all over again.”  Was he talking about our lives and how we  seem to be on a merry-go-round bumping into the same problems over and over again?  What does it take to step off into a new direction?   If he were asked how many psychologists it takes to change a light bulb Yogi might have answered, “only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.”  Are you ready?  How is your light? Your happiness?   Right now what can you do to add another drop of happiness to your life?  Remember, happiness is a road you travel along, not a destination.  I invite you to begin with Small Moments of Happiness and Quick Changes below.    Yours truly,     Michael Selzer DDS   Small Moments Of Happiness   Notice that when you laugh you are happy. Notice especially that when you are laughing your whole body is moving. It’s in motion. You have stopped thinking, have let go and relaxed and allowed your body to move and shake. You are happy for at least that moment. And then like the ripples settling down in a pond the waves and motions of laughter settle back to our routine level of being. The trick to being happy is to have more small moments of happiness and then let the natural brain chemistry learn to stimulate this happy response more and more often.   Quick Changes   Right now recall a moment when you were happy. Expand the image of that or the sense of that moment of happiness. Make it big and bigger in your minds eye. Put it on a TV screen, a movie screen, an I-max screen.                                                                        Or, you can also pretend. That’s right, merely make up a good thought. It works just as well. The brain does not differentiate between real and pretend. It just registers a path for each thought. As you have more happy thoughts the path gets deeper and easier to access and reverberate with other thoughts. That’s it. Hold onto the awareness of happiness and let it soak into your body down into your finger tips and toes.    The trick is to continually just let go of unwanted thoughts and replace them with happier ones. Gradually the groove of happy thoughts becomes the routine.   Do this practice 3 to 6 times a day or whenever you realize that you are not as happy as you would chose to be. Allow the groove of happiness in the brain’s chemistry to get deeper and deeper.   Happiness: A Puppy’s Perspective   Or just take a puppy to the beach 1. More drops fill your bucket faster.  Every hour think ten happy thoughts.  They can be real or pretend.  The groove in the brain will get deeper either way.  For those old enough to remember that may be where, “it’s groovy” comes from.   2. When an unhappy thought comes up, immediately think the opposite.  Turn it into an opportunity to experience a happy thought when you most need it.  Again, its okay to pretend.   3. Before you fall asleep at night review happy thoughts.  Form an intention to continue filling your bucket with happy thoughts tomorrow.  As you sleep the brain continues to process the last conscious thoughts you have.   Upcoming topics in future newsletters *More on how to train your brain *How awareness to body sensations deepens happiness *How to enhance the good moments of each day

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Tea Kettle Illusions 2-10-2021

SECRETS FOR A HAPPIER LIFEInspiration and PracticesTEA KETTLE ILLUSIONS I had been sitting quite still watching the falling snow as the sound of the heater turned back on. Instinctively my head turned in its direction. My glance crossed over the tea kettle resting on the stove, just sitting there. Oddly I saw past the tea kettle to the wall behind it. This replaced the routine ordinary flat view of things, similar to looking at a photograph, with a greater awareness of the three dimensionality of life. The tea kettle now stood out from the background of the stove. It appeared as a silhouette that needed something behind it in order for me to see the tea kettle as a seemingly separate object.  Then I noticed that the stove became separated from the background of the wall behind it. And I realized that there is a foreground that I am seeing and background behind it that is mainly not noticed and remains as just background. Next I realized that the background I am now aware of can switch and become the foreground for whatever makes up the background that is behind it.  I started exploring and reviewed that the tea kettle was the foreground to the stove as its background. And then the stove became the foreground for the wall that was its background. Not just the part of the wall that I could see but the entire wall of the room I was in. Next the wall became the foreground for the house as its background and the house became the foreground as the earth formed its background. The earth became the foreground for the background of space behind it and then the background of space became the foreground for its greater background of God.     And I slipped into this surreal sense of seeing, thinking and feeling. I realized that not just images have a sense of foreground and background. Sounds, emotions, thoughts, insights and sensations all have both their routine foreground that is perceived against a larger background. And interestingly that you can shift going in deeper and deeper and then up and back going from one to the other until you get so enmeshed, so unstuck in the foreground of one seeing the next background and then becoming unstuck in that background seeing the next one and the next and the next and the next. Until this becomes immersed within your emotions, going through multiple levels where each emotion is foreground for the background of a deeper emotion behind it. I was quickly reminded as the sound of the heater came on again that this extends to sounds as well. The sound of the heater coming back on again is just the foreground for the background of the OM of all of the sounds pulled together within the Universe. I found that by allowing the foreground to be there by focusing on its background and then allowing the background to also be there I become unstuck in the foreground.  As you become unstuck layer by layer by layer you may find your way into the center of your happiness.  I INVITE YOU TO VISIT MY WEBSITESArchive of NewslettersSpiritual GravityMichael Selzer DDS (retired)Happiness CoachingCharlottesville, VirginiaMikeSelzerDDS@aol.com

A Simple Thought 1-10-21

SECRETS FOR A HAPPIER LIFEInspiration and Practices‌It often surprises me that the simplest thoughts turn out to be the most profound. I was watching a Ted Talk on inspiration and happiness.  In one segment the speaker was noting that a significant factor in illness was related to being alone or separated from others as many of us are now with covid.  My mind leapt into the thought that separateness is not necessarily only from others but may also be separateness from whatever you are doing.  If you are not fully focused on whatever is happening right in front of your right now you are actually separated from it.Mindfulness of what you are doing reduces distractions and allows a greater concentration and most notably an enhanced enjoyment and appreciation of any experience. Connecting fully to what you do is like plugging a heating pad into the electric outlet.  As the focused electricity passes through the by-product of radiant heat is naturally warm and soothing. When the focused attention of mindfulness is flowing through you what do you radiate? 🙂I INVITE YOU TO VISIT MY WEBSITESArchive of NewslettersSpiritual GravityMichael Selzer DDS (retired)Happiness CoachingCharlottesville, VirginiaMikeSelzerDDS@aol.com