Finding happiness in every day situations

Happiness cannot be found. It is something we experience.

I am a Humanist educator and teach humanist approaches to happiness.  Seeking happiness is a sure fire way to be unhappy.   The reason seeking happiness leads to unhappiness appears to be that it causes us to think selfishly. We tend to experience happiness in those moments, when we are focused on the needs of others.  When we get out of our heads and thinking about how we might help other people. The active practice of compassion is helpful and necessary to this process.

Let’s consider commuting as an example. 

If you take public transport – your goal is to get from point A to point B. You have to do a lot of things to accomplish this. You have to get your fare, get to the right place, get on the right transit vehicle and get off at the correct stop. Chances are – it is probably crowded.  You may be tired but there are no seats. It is hard to be “happy” or “content” in this sort of situation. Why – because everything I just described is your thoughts about your tasks and other people – are seen as obstacles to your success.

If, on the other hand, you view everyone with compassion. Instead of seeing obstacles everywhere, you now see fellow travelers – all trying to do the same thing you are.  Who are these people? Where are they going? Those are interesting questions. Have you ever struck up a conversation to find out?  Even if you don’t, the attitude of – thinking about others compassionately – feels good. Way better than feeling frustrated that all these people are in your way.

The question you have to ask yourself is this – which would you rather feel – curiosity and solidarity? Or frustration?  Rationally – most people would chose curiosity and solidarity. All it requires is a slight shift away from your thoughts – to thinking about others.

If you are commuting via car – the same dynamic plays out. These other people in their cars – are in YOUR way. It’s frustrating.  But, if you instead view yourself and everyone else stuck in that traffic jam with compassion, your entire viewpoint changes. Now, you feel solidarity with the people in the cars around you. You are in this together.  Getting through it together. How can you help everyone get through this?  Practicing conscientiousness to help others in similar situations, isn’t a burden – it’s liberating.  It gets you out of your head with your concerns – and opens up your mind and helps you feel connected to other people.

One of the biggest existential angsts we humans have is feeling isolated. Compassion – helps us feel connected. It helps us feel – happy.

Hope this helps.  FYI – I have an online course where I teach these “tweaks” to how we think. https://humanistlearning.com/livingmadesimpler1/  

Practicing Humanism When You Are Angry

Being a good person is sometimes very hard. Especially when mad. The point of morality though, is to do the right thing, even when under stress.

This is why I describe Humanism as a practice. Yes. It’s a philosophy. But it’s also a moral framework through which I make decisions. This framework is only useful – if I actually use it.

Most of the time, that is easy. But sometimes it isn’t. Like when I get mad. It’s very hard to see the humanity in people who scare me and make me mad. Because let’s be clear – we get mad when we get scared.

Knowing this about myself and about everyone really, helps me to step back from my anger and think about the fear that is driving it so that I can think more rationally and therefore compassionately about the situation I find myself in.

Sure, I could blame the people scaring me. Or … I can remind myself to put my Humanism into practice and practice what I preach.   Sometimes this is easier to do than others.  But it is always eventually doable if I keep reminding myself that I should act in accordance with my values.

Do I do this perfectly? Oh heck no. No one does. This leaves all of us open to being called a hypocrite. And we all are. Every one of us. The next time you go all holier than thou on someone and you are ready to call them a hypocrite. Don’t. Look in the mirror first.  In order to claim the moral high ground, you must first be moral.  And that means, stepping back from your anger, reminding yourself of your values and making a conscious decision to use your values in deciding how best to respond to the situation that is scaring you and making you angry. The goal is to not kill your values with the very hands you use to defend them.  It’s a challenge to be sure, but taking on that challenge is what it means to be a moral person.

To learn more about how to more effectively live by your values – take my course – Living Made Simpler.

https://humanistlearning.com/livingmadesimpler1/

Don’t let past wrongs keep you from enjoying your future.

Not everyone is nice. Don’t let the jerks of the world keep you from living life fully.

It would be nice if everyone was nice. If no one every bullied or put you down. If everyone helped you instead of competing with you.  That would be nice and it would make life a lot easier.

But not everyone is nice and not everyone is capable of being nice and some people will compete with you and beat you.

If you want to enjoy your life, you need to figure out how to make sure that the jerks of the world don’t prevent you from reaching your potential. You need to make sure that the wrongs that have been done to you in the past stay in the past so that they don’t affect your present or your future.

In short, coping skills for dealing with adversity are a basic life skill. We all need to learn how to cope with:

• Broken Hearts
• Death, dying and grief
• Bullying
• Not getting your way or what you want
• Jealousy
• Money management skills
• People not being responsible

and more.

We also need to learn how to not compound our problems and make things worse.  That’s a tall order. But it’s not as hard as you might think.

The reason Humanists keep trying to teach the world critical thinking is because critical thinking helps us cope with the difficulties we encounter more effectively.

All of the problems I listed above are problems. Problems that need to be solved. What’s the best way to solve a problem? By thinking about it. Sure, you can run on instinct and hope for the best, but we Humanists actually want to solve our problems. Hoping for the best isn’t enough. Not when we can take constructive action to make things better.

If you want to cope better, you need to learn how to think better about your problems. I can help with that. Check out my “Living Made Simpler” online course and my book – The Humanist Approach to Happiness.

3 Strategies to Help you Make Better Decisions.

Three ways you can eliminate bias in your decision making process.

Question: 

Do you have to make important decisions all the time? How does one get better at making them, and feeling confident with their choice?

Answer: 

I always encourage people to do their best to make reality based decisions. The task is to try and eliminate confirmation bias and figure out whether what you think you know about something is really true or not.

Something might look good in a brochure or in a commercial, but until you see it in person, your judgment may be clouded by wishful thinking.

Here are 3 strategies I use: 

My mother always encouraged me to make pro and con lists – consider the benefits and the downsides to all my options and then use those as a guide to help me prioritize what is really important to me.  This works wonderful.

Sometimes you just have to give it a little time. If all things are equal in my mind and the pro and con list didn't help, I will often decide not to decide right now, if I have that luxury.  What usually happens is that my true preference becomes clear within a few weeks as my brain relaxes out of decision making mode and starts to contemplate what the future might be like. And it usually really likes one of the options. So – that’s what I go with. Again, I only use this method when I have no other way of making a decision or when I find I’m too confused to make a decision.

Finally, there has been some recent research that suggests if you don’t have a good reason for making a decision, you may be better making a random decision. So, if all things are equal – go ahead and flip a coin and see what happens.

Feel like you don’t make good decisions. Learn how to integrate your ethics and science into your decision making process with my Living Made Simpler Course:
https://humanistlearning.com/livingmadesimpler1/ 

Scientific Literacy is a Basic Life Skill

What the vaccine debate can teach us about the importance of scientific literacy

On a parenting discussion board, one of the parents was discussing vaccines. She doesn't trust the government and so doesn't trust the government’s guidelines on vaccination schedules for her kid. And when presented with the evidence that the vaccination schedule is actually REALLY good and that kids and society benefit from vaccines she said this: “There are all kinds of studies that prove or disprove and it is hard to decide what to believe.”  In other words, in the face of evidence to the contrary – she is sticking to her decision.

I don’t want to get into a vaccine debate here. What I want to do is to debunk her comment that “there are all kinds of studies that prove or disprove and it is hard to decide what to believe,” because – that simply isn’t true. Anyone who is scientifically literate can figure out which studies to believe. It isn't actually all that hard to figure out which competing claims are reality based or not. It just takes a little effort to get the information and to see if there is any information debunking the claim.

Given the life or death nature implications of the vaccine debate it is clear that the scientific literacy required to judge whether any particular study is reality based or not should be considered a basic life skill.

Scientific Literacy

To figure out which competing claims are true and which are false requires a skill known as scientific literacy. Being scientifically literate is something you can learn if you make an effort to do so. To be scientifically literate means you know how to evaluate claims being made using basic science.

For instance, what constitutes a valid study? What do the statistics used in a study mean or don't mean? What constitutes a statistically significant finding? Scientific literacy also requires that you cultivate the critical thinking skills necessary so that you can recognize the most common logical fallacies and a few other thinking skills that involve overcoming personal biases in your own thinking.

Saying - it's so hard to figure it out - is a cop out. You are basically telling everyone that you are too lazy to think well and that you suffer from confirmation bias so you didn't bother to question a claim because you didn't want to have your opinions challenged by actual facts.

It's good this woman was willing to hear competing information, but having asked for that information she shouldn't have then claimed that it's too hard to figure out what is true and what isn't. It isn't too hard. You just have to put in a little effort. More if a claim confirms your personal biases as we all have our blinders.

To learn more about how to figure out if a claim is true or not – consider taking “Living Made Simpler – https://humanistlearning.com/livingmadesimpler1/