Happiness is Already Inside You: JNJ Talks to Dr. Robert Holden

Happiness expert, world renowned author of several books, including Shift Happens! and the forthcoming Be Happy, Dr. Robert Holden is the founder of The Happiness Project.  He is one of the pioneers and innovators in the field of positive psychology, and is dedicated to helping people realize their own authentic success.

Robert recently joined the JNJ team to discuss what happiness truly is, and how we can all enjoy more happiness in our personal lives.

JNJ: Let’s begin right at the beginning.  Your work is so well known.  I’m very curious about how you got started and what drew you to this work.  How did you become an expert on happiness?

Robert: That’s a good question, and an important one.  It all goes back to the family, and Mr. Freud — you can’t avoid what’s behind you.

When I was growing up, my mother suffered with serious bouts of depression.  The depression was debilitating, to the point where my Mum would be in bed for weeks.  In some ways, the depression was like an invisible guest.  It would arrive unannounced, and it would also leave unannounced.  And that was difficult and disturbing.

At the same time, when I was about fifteen, it became clear that my Father had been drinking heavily for some time.  We asked him to stop, and he did, and then he didn’t… Eventually he wound up leaving the home, and he’d spent the last ten years of his life homeless.

So there I was in a position where both of my parents were pretty well taken out by life.  This somersaulted me forward into what turned out to be a lifelong inquiry about life and happiness, the big issues.  I became a philosopher at age fifteen — which was not a terribly popular thing to do, but it was very necessary.  Later, I squeezed into psychology, and that’s when everything changed.

There was a mature student in our class — I write about him in the book, his  name is Avanti.  He was very mysterious to all of us: he’d be the last one in and the first to leave.  To give you a visual, he was the spitting image of Danny DeVito, but Indian, with this great curly hair.  He was always smiling, which added to the mystery.  What was he smiling about?

Several weeks into the term, I ran after him, quite deliberately, and said hello.  And in the course of our conversation, I asked him, “So why did you choose this course?”

In all seriousness, he replied, “I came to meet you.”  Avanti explained that while he appreciated what we were learning in the psychology course, there was another psychology, a psychology of joy.  This philosophy is rooted in Eastern psychology, and he introduced me to many things.  This was the start of a lifelong meditation on happiness.

I will always remember the first meditation he taught me.  He said, “I want you to meditate on the place inside yourself where you are already happy.”

This was a revelation to me.  I’d always thought that happiness was something that was going to happen.  I did not know there was a place inside me where I was already happy.

From Avanti, I learned that we all contain two selves.  One self is searching for happiness, and the other self is already happy.  There is an individual self, that feeds on the pleasures and pain of the world — we might call this individual self the personality or even the ego.  Then there is a universal self, that silently watches all that goes on.  I describe this as our unconditioned self, which is already happy.

The personality, on the other hand, is not always very happy. Your personality can give you such a hard time, that you don’t even realize how happy you are.

JNJ: That is an eye opener for many people, that you can choose to be happy.  I’ve been practicing this exercise, since I saw you speak, where you wake up and ask yourself, “Do I choose to be happy today?”  And you would think that people would automatically choose happiness — but there are those days where you find yourself saying, “Nah! That sounds like way too much work!”

Robert: You’re raising a good point.  It comes back to the attempt to locate happiness.  The minute you identify happiness as residing outside of yourself, you put yourself in a position where you’re shopping for happiness. And you never really quite get it, do you?

At that point, you’ve objectified happiness, you’ve turned it into a thing you can acquire. Or perhaps you define happiness as a destination, a place you need to reach in order to experience joy.  Happiness can be a time: many people have big plans detailing when they’re going to be happy.

Choosing happiness can be quite a difficult thing to do.  You can wake up, quite resolved to choose happiness, and then someone cuts you off, and you begin considering athiesm as revenge! “I was trying, God — but look what happened!”

The concept of choice really needs to be investigated.  What I’ve discovered, what I’ve found, is that choice is not a one-off thing.  You have to come back to that choice, and choose happiness repeatedly throughout the day.

We have already, internally, chosen how happy we can be.  We create what I call ‘familiar points’.  These points mark the range of happiness we’re familiar with, that we’re comfortable experiencing.  So let’s say we’re at a 7/10 on the happiness scale — which is where I’d say most people are.  We are good at being semi-happy.  What we’re less certain of, less comfortable with, far less sure of, is joy.

Let’s say I wake up feeling miserable.  I’m convinced that glum mood, that dour outlook, will stay with me.  But if I wake up happy, I’m sure it will be over by lunchtime!

We all have an internal belief about how much happiness is possible, versus how much joy is just too good to be true.

JNJ: Many times, especially with health care providers, there’s a question of how happy do we deserve to feel?  So many of us are motivated by a strong need to help others, to the point where we perhaps matryr ourselves.  We keep giving, giving, giving, thinking that that is the route to happiness.

Robert: What we’re really talking about here is the relationship between happiness and guilt.  Guilt is an emotion — but for many people, it is also a way of life.  The things we want the most are often the things that we feel the most guilty about.

There’s a belief that you have to deserve happiness.  This mindset transforms happiness from a natural state into a divine reward.  I don’t believe that.  No one deserve happiness anymore than they deserve to have a left leg. Happiness is part of us.  It must be accepted.

And once happiness is accepted, it is yours to share.

Happiness feels good, but it feels even better when you share it.  There’s a strong link between happiness and altruism.  Happiness is our gift to those around us.  This is particularly relevant for healthcare professionals: your joy is a gift for those you’re caring for.

I hear people saying they feel guilt feeling joy when they’re caring for someone so gravely ill.  But your guilt doesn’t help the patient.  You can empathize with the patient — which does help! — and still be centered in your own love and joy.  Your smile is medicine. Your quiet joy can transmit itself to another person.

JNJ: One of the things you talk about, and write about in your books, Robert, including the forthcoming Be Happy, is the relationship between happiness and optimism.  You’re one of the pioneers in the field of positive psychology, which talks about the power of the positive attitude.  Can you explain how  happiness and optimism are related?

Robert: Let’s start with happiness and cynicism.

Cynicism is a choice.  You’re entitled to it — and if you’re cynical, it may be that you have very good reasons to be so.  Bad things, things that caused you tremendous pain, often result in cynicism, which is an attitude we adopt to protect us from pain.

It’s entirely understandable, and I don’t want to take away from that.  What I do want to say is that cynicism is about the past.  Your past experiences, your past pain, lead you to a point where you’re now cynical.  Try imagining that you haven’t a past at all, and then try to be cynical.  It doesn’t work.  There’s no such thing as a cynical newborn baby.

If we want to be happy, we can’t live in the past. Psychologists talk about the components of optimism.  These include basic trust.  You believe that what happens in life, happens for you.  Somewhere in every experience, there is a gift for you, waiting for you to discover and appreciate it.

JNJ: I think that’s a realization that people grow into over the course of time.  You need some life experience to be able to appreciate that, to learn to be able to say “There’s a pony in here somewhere!”

Robert: Absolutely.  In Shift Happens, there’s a chapter entitled, “The Best Gifts Come Badly Wrapped”.

In my work, we talk about being honest about what you’re experiencing, and the emotions you’re feeling.  This isn’t Botox for the inner self.  You need to be courageous to be open, but when you’re open, you’re open to all the potential of what could happen.

JNJ: You write a great deal about the tools and approaches people can use to discover their inner happiness.  One of our favorites, of course, has to do with  humor and laughter.  Can you discuss the relationship between humor, laughter, and happiness?

Robert: It’s all part of what I call “The Happiness Contract”. In the back of our minds, under all the thoughts, you have a pretty clear idea about how much happiness you think is possible.  And you have certain conditions you assume must be met before you can be happy.

Let me give you an example.  One man I worked with, he was a real “Mr. Responsibility”.  At work, he was the one to make sure everything ran smoothly.  He caught the mistakes, he ensured everything worked properly.  Then when this man got home, he did the same thing with his family.  No sooner would he get in the door than he’d be helping out with his wife and the children.  This is all entirely noble — and yet he was having absolutely no fun.

His Happiness Contract stated, “Once I’ve taken care of all the responsibilities, then I can come out and play!”

He’s caught on, now, that the responsibility never ends.  He had to develop what psychologists call the “Third Place”.  He has time for work, and time for family, but he needed time for him.  In this, he discovered that taking time for himself has made him better at work, and better at home.

The point is to enjoy life as it happens, rather than saving up for it.

JNJ: One of the things that nurses — and all of us, really  — experience is that we’re socialized that being professional means being solemn.  God forbid someone sees you laughing or having fun!  We’re afflicted with Terminal Professionalism.

Robert: The modern workplace has evolved — and this is a real tragedy — into a place where we go to work without love and without joy.  Employee engagement is getting lower and lower, while employers want more and more in terms of employee commitment and creativity.  It’s not going to happen, not if the workplace culture doesn’t support it.

I was giving a workshop on liberating talent, for example, and an attendee shared this story.  He was asked how things were going on a Friday, and he, being honest, said he’d never been happier.  On Monday, he was given notice that he ws being moved to a different department.  This was totally out of the blue, so he went for some clarification — only to be told that if he’d never been happier, clearly he wasn’t stretching!

Compare this experience with another story. We have here a sales manager, who told his team, “This year’s targets are so hard to achieve that I want you all to go out and have as much fun as possible trying to reach them!”

Of course I had to ask him why he said that.  His reply was simply, “I trust these people.  They’re my top 200 performers.  I can count on them to do the best they can, and they need to have a good time while they’re doing it.”

In a culture where we don’t know each other, where everything is so impersonal, how can we have that trust? When people trust each other, when tehy enjoy each other’s company and what they’re doing, they perform better.

JNJ: We’re talking about impersonal workplaces.  At the same time, many nurses are experiencing the workload increasing, the demands increasing, and there’s simply no time to socialize at work.  And shifts are getting longer — from 8 hours to 10 hours t0 12 hours and more — meaning everyone’s too tired to socialize after work.  We see the result: we’re not as kind to each other, we’re not as bonded.

Robert: When our focus is service, as it is in healthcare, there’s a tendency to treat others far better than we treat ourselves.  Yet if we are committed to putting ourselves first — which can be very difficult — we’re better positioned to help others.

Healthcare now is so manic, so busy, you have to be like a machine to make it through the day.  Yet we have to, we need to, be more loving and kind to each other.  Right away, we need to start doing this for each other — and the patients will clearly benefit.

JNJ: We want to thank you, Robert, for an extraordinary interview.  Let’s direct our readers to your website, www.BeHappy.Net
so our readers can learn more about your work. Are there any final words you’d like to leave us with?

Robert: First thing, let’s give up the search for happiness.  We’ve been doing that for a while now, and it’s not been working.  It’s a denial of what’s already there, within us.  Happiness is something you bring with you.  Happiness finds you.

Let’s not try to make ‘a happy life’.  Let’s make today a little happier than you thought  it would be.  We can choose to bring happiness with us.