Simple living lifestyle challenge: choosing to be happy

Just sitting here pondering why would people not choose to be happy??  It is a question that baffles me frequently.  I know many people that are just generally unhappy.  They feel distressed with the worries of life, joyless in their daily interactions, and just feel like they got stuck with the “short end of the stick.”  Why would someone choose that wretched path of life??

If you were to ask someone what they most want out of life??  I would suspect that majority of people would give answers like, “to be successful,” “to make a lot of money,” and “to be happy.”  So why when given the notion they choose unhappiness?? By being happy, you can make more money, find a better job and be better motivated to reach those goals that will make you successful in your life.

Why make the change:

So why aren’t people happy??  If you look around  there are loads of books about happiness, the sermons at church are about being feel good and happy, you find magazine articles about the art of happiness.  Even in our US Constitution it says “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” So why is it so hard to make that decision to be happy?

Happiness is based on 50% of our genetics, 10% based on how much you earn from income, living conditions, and your job. The other 40% is based on intentional actions– what we choose to do to make us happy.

At about the time you hit the teenage age, your brain starts losing part of its chemical makeup that helps us be happy it is called dopamine.  Dopamine is what our brain makes when it is happy.  Depending upon circumstances and how you choose to react to situations, your brain either makes dopamine, or the cells slowly start to die off.  If you don’t use them by being happy, they will slowly start to whither away.  Research has shown that the cells do not regenerate. So it is a use it or lose it situation.

One way to help  use the cells and make dopamine is through physical activity.  Being on the move, exercising, doing things out of the “norm” to stimulate our brains in a positive way, are all good things to help dopamine growth.

People believe that if good things happen you will be happier, or if you have bad things happen your life will be bad forever.  But the reality is when you go through bad things people generally bounce back and do move on with their life in happiness.  Sometimes a bad thing needs to happen in order for us to learn from it and put things in perspective in our lives.

What made us happy before internet, television, cars,  etc?  Go back 80 years or go to remote village tribes who are void to all of our modernized world and their happiness is based on community.  Belonging to a “family”, helping each other out, being responsible for others in every aspect of their lives is what made and still makes people genuinely happier.

Compassion and love for one another is a lost art in our society.  Most of us, don’t even know our own neighbors.

 

How to make the change:

So what is the most effective in achieving happiness in life?  

Having gratitude, counting your blessings, and acts of kindness.  These are all great ways to achieving happiness. Things that help you look at something bigger than yourself so to say.  If you only seek your own happiness in life it is kind of selfish.  But once you worry about the well-being of the world your life grows.  You care about something bigger than yourself.  In a way you can transcend your life, your death by caring about these things that are bigger than yourself.

If each of us spent a smidgen of time each day practicing happiness or other virtuous qualities like compassion etc, our world would really be a better place.  We should really be looking at happiness as a skill. Like we want to learn to play piano, or to cook, we should really want to learn to be happier.

Formula for happiness is not the same for everyone.  But the things we do are the building blocks of our life.  Play, having new experiences, friends and family, doing things that are meaningful, and appreciating what we have, these are what makes us happy and they are free.  And with happiness the more we have the more everyone has.

So I ask you………Do you choose  happiness??

 

The challenge: to live paper and plastic free

I love being informed as a consumer and as a parent.  My husband and I quite often watch documentaries.  We love to think outside of what our government and society is programming us to believe.  Most of what we are taught  is untrue.  We as consumers need to start looking at things instead of just taking them as fact.

I  just finished watching a documentary on plastic called “Bag It” by Reel Thing Film.  Great video, I learned some things that I didn’t already know about plastic and things I should think more about that I don’t already.

Why make the change:

Plastic is made from fossil fuels, which is a non-renewable source.  Once they are gone there isn’t anymore of it.

In the United States we go through 1 million plastic bags per minute.

Many countries have banned ultra thin plastic bags.   In San Francisco, they decided to do that as well and charge for plastic bag use. But the American Chemistry Council, (who is a promoter for plastics), quietly pushed through a law not allowing businesses to access a fee for plastic bag use.  Because if given the choice to bring your own or be charged for each bag, most consumers would not pay for the bags.  Government knew a good way to stop that and they did!

So what is better paper or plastic?  If given a choice paper bags are 10 times more likely to get recycled than plastic bags.

They also talked about disposables.  Why are we making something like say a  disposable coffee cup, that we are going to use for maybe 20 minutes and then throw it away?  Especially when that item was made from a non-renewable source, and it took thousands of years to make. Plus if that coffee cup was made with styrofoam it is going to be around forever.

300 million disposable coffee cups per day are used.

1 million plastic cups used on airplane flights in 6 hours.

60,000 plastic bags consumed in the US every 5 seconds.

Recycling…something to look into, another big marketing scam from plastics companies.

That little continuous triangle that is put on all of our plastic containers, does not mean that they container is recyclable. Another good marketing trick for the consumers. The only ones that are recyclable have a #1 or #2 in them.  Most items giving to the recycling center gets thrown back into landfills because they can’t recycle them.

There is more plastic produced from 2000-2010 then the entire 1900′s.

Most all of the plastic eventually goes from landfills and gets into our water system which ultimately ends up in our oceans.

Do a google search on North Pacific gyre.  It is one of many huge garbage patches out in the middle of the ocean.  It isn’t so much big chunks of plastic that can be cleaned up, it is plastic that has been broken down into smaller chunks and it is just floating in masses out in the water.

There are many beaches that are just covered in tiny bits of plastic from all of the garbage that gets washed ashore.  Hawaii is one of them.  Do some searching on your own, it is there just not readily available.

The damage it is doing to our wildlife is dangerous as well.  Most of the dead animals that they do autopsies on having numerous plastic items inside their stomachs.  It would be like us having our bowl of cereal for breakfast plus a handful of styrofoam peanuts.  Yuck!

There are many dangers to plastic as well.   BPA and phylates have been in the media lately and thankfully some have been removed from items.  But not completely.  Chemical use in products in America is innocent until proven guilty that they are dangerous to humans.  In other countries it is the opposite, they have the consumers interest in mind verse their paychecks.

How to make the change:

So what can we do as consumers?

• Cut way back on single item purchases, like snack sized items.
• Don’t drink bottled water.
• Buy things with less packaging.
• Buy things used.
• Bring your own containers.
• Buy less stuff.
• Simplify your life.

Sometimes the best things to do are to rethink the way you do things.  Our grandparents never had plastics and they did just fine in life.  We just need to get creative in the way that we do things.  Think plain and simplify.

Are you up for the challenge this week?  Try and go all week without using a disposable plastic or paper product.  If you are going to be reusing them like a plastic bag that you will wash out, then that is okay.  But try and not use any that will be put in the trash for waste.  It will be hard.  But a little bit of cutting back is much better than none at all.