what the happiest women do

Blog Challenge: Day 17

Today's post builds on yesterday's, in which I discussed a series of Huffington Post articles concerning the decline in women's happiness over the past 40 years. In the third of the articles, Marcus Buckingham chose to focus on women who are indeed happy, as a way to glean insight as to the keys to happiness. In other words, he asked the following: If you could find the happiest and most successful women, women who had somehow bucked this downward trend in life satisfaction, women who had made life choices that strengthened them, who had become happier the older they got, if you could find these women and ask them questions and listen, what would you discover?

In actuality though, (similar to something Gretchin Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, often talks about) happiness doesn't come with a formula, so everyone's happiness secrets will be different. Nonetheless, looking for basic general patterns can be insightful. Buckingham asked: Despite all their differences--of style, age, career, wealth, value system--what if anything would they have in common? What would they share? Here is what was found:

What the Happiest Women Do:

1. Focus on moments, more than goals, plans or dreams. Certain moments in your life create in you strongly positive emotions--let's call these "strong-moments." Not all moments are strong-moments--some moments spark negative emotions, while some don't spark any emotions at all. But when you do experience a strong-moment, it is authentic. It is true, in the sense that the emotions you feel are true. You may not know exactly what you should do with your emotions, or what label you should give each emotion, but you know how a specific moment made you feel. You know this more certainly than you know virtually anything else in your life. (Miss A note: This makes me think of the concept of IMMD and the IMMD journal that I started with Nix. I talked about being mindful and how this helps me to take special notice of the little moments that add something small but significant to my days. Another benefit to this little email-chain-journal is that it will be cool to look back on later in time and remember the past in a different way...similar to a one-sentence journal)

2. Accept what they find. When you search your life for strong-moments, you don't always like what you find. In the words of one of the interviewees: "It's hard to admit, but I don't like playing with my kids. My daughter would come up to me and say 'Mom, you play the mommy, and I'll play the baby' and I would think 'Not again. I am the mommy, you are the baby.' The moments I love with my kids are when I'm teaching them something, helping them learn, but I'm bored silly by playing another game of dress up. I got my life back on track only when I rejected the idea of being the 'perfect' mother, and accepted the reality of which moments energized me and which didn't." Acceptance doesn't mean resignation, giving up on your dreams. In fact, more often than not, accepting which moments strengthen you and which don't reveals to you exactly how you can live out your dreams, whether at home or at work. It means not only being comfortable in your own skin, but also being creative in your own skin. (Miss A note: this goes back to the idea of "Be Anna." You can't really do too much to change your likes/dislikes or strong moments. My sister often has a difficult time when invited to parties because she knows deep down that they won't be that fun for her and she'd rather not go, but she often feels pressure to attend anyway. Recently she's been much more willing to pass up the parties for quiet nights at home. And I do believe she's happier when she does. So, her strong moments may not be the fun things that happened at the party last night, while her friends' strong moments may be. And that's perfectly fine!)

3. Strive for Imbalance. When someone tells you to try to have greater balance in your life, your immediate and appropriate reaction is a spasm of disbelief. "Balance?" you ask yourself. "How does that work? For every extra hour at work find another hour at home? For every extra kid at home, reduce my workload by exactly the amount my new child requires? For every school play I should attend, cut out a presentation on the road? For everything I say yes to, say no to something else? Is that it?" Not according to the people we interviewed. They didn't talk about balance much at all. They seemed to realize that not only was a perfect equilibrium nigh on impossible to achieve, but also that even if they did manage to achieve it, it wouldn't necessarily fulfill them anyway--when you are balanced, you are stationary, holding your breath, trying not to let any sudden twitch or jerk pull you too far one way or the other. You are at a standstill. Balance is the wrong life goal. Instead, do as these women did, and strive for imbalance. Pinpoint the strong-moments in each aspect of your life and then gradually target or tilt your life toward them. This means being as deliberate as you can about making them happen. It means investigating them when they do happen, looking at them from new perspectives, and celebrating them. Above all, it means giving them the power of your attention. (Miss A note: I admit, this one is hard to really process, because the search for balance is so ingrained in our society. The sentence about tilting your life towards strong moments puts it in a way that's much more real to me.)

4. Learn to say "Yes." So often you are told: "You must learn to say 'No.'" But, to live your strongest life, do the opposite. Learn to say, "Yes." Yes, to the strong-moments in each part of your life. Yes, to the people who help you create these moments. Yes, to your feelings as these moments happen. Say "Yes" with enough focus and force, and yours will not be a balanced life, but it will be a full life.

So, there you have it. These are four things that happy and successful women do. What do you think about this list. Do you excel/struggle with these? Anything in particular stand out to you?


Finally, because i LOVE music, I'm going to start ending each post with a song of the day. It may be a song I'm loving at the moment or a song that seems to fit well with whatever i'm writing about. I like to think that I have pretty eclectic taste in music...you'll see soon enough ;-) Today's song is one that was performed during the Grammys and I've been playing A LOT since. It's called "I Need You Now" by a group called Lady Antebellum...a lil country flavor for your day.



:-D