The Book: Happiness

What could be more obvious in a healthy, happy person than their own demonstrated joy? Even a child understands that happy people laugh and share more. And children gravitate towards happy people. We adults are also drawn to happy people – marketers use it all the time. How many ads have sad faces in them?

But how does one get happy? This book is a list of traits of happy people and if you are fortunate enough to be one of the few who demonstrates many or even all of these traits, then I’ve found that you are a genuinely happy person. But is there a route to this trait short of inculcating all of them? Yes, I believe there is because I have felt it. Others, including trained psychologists, (yes, I’ve been submitted to and indulged in, spots of therapy here and there), have seen it in me -- when I become animated by my true goals.

The trick is discovering your true drives. And the test is having the courage to pursue them. On a regular basis, in a moment when the world is not demanding your attention (over a quiet cup of coffee, early morning is a good time), set aside all the doubts and nay saying that run through your mind and ask yourself, “Who am I? What do I love to do? What am I here to create or accomplish?” At least for the next several minutes as you read this chapter, indulge the dreams that you have or have had for yourself. And if you have none, you are not listening to your heart, your inner voice. And for the life of me, I don’t know why you’re reading this.

Before you think me too Californian, this is a recurring theme in literature – a theme that is terribly relevant in today’s money-hunting, status-seeking, power-hungry societies. The theme is one that Sinclair Lewis illuminates brilliantly in “Babbitt”. Here is modern man, financially driven and rewarded for it, but he is the person who declares in the last line of the book, “I have never done the thing that I’ve wanted to in all my life!” Babbitt is spiritually hollow, empty of the juice of life.

If there is one sensation that I expect you to feel it is a dull, gnawing discontent with your job or your daily routine. If the faces in the subway tell a story, it is one of ennui, of bored resignation with day-to-day duties. For many, it’s worse. It’s a feeling of entrapment. You are stuck because of economic demands by children, mortgages, spouses, social standing, blah, blah, blah.

But if you are to find what the great professor of comprative religion, Joseph Campbell argues is our true, individual goal of feeling alive, then the way to do it is to “follow your bliss”. This phrase of Campbell’s is mysterious enough to be mocked and misunderstood. To me, it’s not mysterious at all. It’s the notion that you have ambitions that truly energize you, your self, your spirit.

Campbell could see it in his students when he met with them one on one to discuss their academic, professional and life goals. He tells Bill Moyers in “The Power of Myth” that he could see it in their “eyes and complexions” when they talked of their innermost purposes. I have felt it whenever I think of this book and this message. I truly believe that my roll on this planet is that of a messenger. I think that’s why I became a journalist. Strangely enough it is also how I became a real estate agent. Not that helping people buy and sell property is somehow my life’s great goal. But being in Sonoma, retreating from the media, to this beautiful, serene setting was a detour that has helped me spit out this book.

To give you an idea of how foreign the world of big media can be to creativity and even quality, I'll tell you a story about Roger Ailes -- the head of the Fox News Channel: In the fall of 1993 Roger was briefly running CNBC where I was the Washington correspondent. I had decided that I would leave the young business channel and go work for Barry Diller at QVC. I had been in the TV news business for 12 years and was frustrated with always waiting for news and newsmakers. I wanted to work with a newsmaker who was doing truly exciting things. Diller had taken over QVC and was talking about tectonic shifts in business through the computer. I went to work for him.

One of the first persons I told that I was leaving was Jack Welch, my penultimate boss and the Chairman and CEO of General Electric. Jack liked me and said, "You can't leave! Barry's a good businessman but Let me talk to Bob Wright and see what we can do for you." Within an hour, my bureau chief Larry Moscow called me and said, "What the hell have you done! Jack Welch called Bob Wright who called Roger Ailes who called me. Once you've wrapped up your current assignment, you're getting on a plane to New Jersey."

I flew up to Fort Lee New Jersey, where CNBC was headquartered and Ailes took me out to lunch. Over a heaping plate of spaghetti and meatballs, (Roger likes to eat), Roger asked me, "So what motivates you, money, power or fame?" I paused. Of course all three appealed to me in a way. But none of them was what motivated me. I looked at Roger with his napkin tucked into his shirt and said, "Well... I really want to create great programming. Ummm, I really think that we can be much more interesting about the way we report on business and the economy."
Roger would have none of it. He repeated, "Sure, but which is it? Money, power or fame?" I am a reporter by nature. Giving people good, valuable and even life-changing news IS WHAT MOTIVATES ME.

I was working for Diller the following Monday.

Now the really exciting part -- if you pursue your true life goals, and only you can know what they are, then you will put yourself on a path that Campbell says has always been there waiting for you. You will in fact employ or be helped by “invisible hands” as Bill Moyers puts it. Sound nutty? If you’ve ever had a spiritual moment or if you are a person who’s even just been curious about faith, then think of it as aligning yourself with the invisible dimension that all religions, all cultures have recognized throughout history. It’s not nutty at all. An invisible dimension that supports our visible lives, is the oldest, most common metaphysical idea in human history.

I’m afraid that many people these days are so trapped in their daily duties that they don’t even remember or know what they truly want and ought to be doing. So, it’s no easy trick for many of us to know what we’re supposed to be doing, or how we’re supposed to be being. Until my early thirties I didn’t even understand this question of “Who are you?” When first asked this in a life goal exercise, my answer was, “I’m a journalist” and the answer was, “No, that’s what you do.” And then I tried, “I’m a WASP” and the answer was, “That’s only your racial or cultural heritage, you fool!”. I have to tell you I was flummoxed. When pressed, my answer was, “I’m a brother, a friend”. Finally, my inquisitor accepted that, but only as part of who I am. But to be honest, not until one night when a lover whispered, “Who are you?” and I answered without thinking, “I am a messenger”, did I have an idea of why I’m here.

Ask yourself who you are… meditate on it. Don't expect an answer right away. Ask yourself where you ought to be, not just physically, though that’s important but also where you ought to be in terms of your life goals. Ask yourself, “Am I chasing the wrong goals? Am I making the classic mistake of valuing things as an aggressively material world, values them?” There’s an old sermon illustration that goes as follows: The world is like a shop window where some gremlin has snuck in during the night and changed all the price tags. So that the truly valuable things are often priced as if they’re cheap and the less valuable things are priced as if they’re dear. And many of us mistakenly chase after those things that are priced dearly and are not truly valuable. We waste our lives working to pay for those things that are not worthy of our selves: Status symbols such as fancy cars, bigger houses, jets, status. We measure our self-worth by our bank accounts, our possessions and most of all by how we stack up against our friends, neighbors, competitors. As Warren Buffett puts it, “It is not greed that drives the world, but envy.”

Don’t get me wrong, most healthy, happy people I’ve ever met, value financial resources. But they also value money as a way to widen their choices, a conduit for more freedom and security, not things. They live beneath their means. And they live according to that small voice within. Henry Hillman is a very successful investor and businessman and a family friend. He told my mother years ago that Pittsburgh and Toronto and Phoenix were places where we worked and spent much of our lives, but that Muskoka (beautiful lake in southern Ontario, Canada) is where we really “live”. She never forgot it.

I have two beautiful, intuitive step-cousins named Mary and Rachel. They’ve always been mindful of a spiritual dimension and hyper sensitive to how others are faring psychologically and spiritually. They’re beguiling in their empathy. They are exceedingly gentle as they probe your innermost concerns and anxieties. We joke that they feed on woes, hovering close, seeking and drawing the pain out of you!

Once they visited me in Southampton, where I had rented a tiny, charming cottage on Big Fresh Pond. I was discontent then as an anchorman for CNN and the now defunct, CNNfn. I didn’t know how to move out of that world and into one of my own editorial purpose. They urged me to “be still and to listen to that small voice within”. A part of me thought they had just done too many wacky retreats. But their love felt so whole and pure that I couldn’t doubt their intentions. And as they left on the train that September Sunday, I felt such love and loss that I felt an obligation to trust their advice.

That guidance has served me well. I left CNN (to the screams of Jeff Gralnick who barked, “You’re crazy -- throwing away a very promising broadcasting career for a risky dot.com?!”)
That small voice, gave me courage to retreat to the mountains of northern California to sort out my thoughts for this book. I found stillness there. I heard the small, inner voice. I found the
love of my life as well in Damian Smith, a Principal Dancer with the San Francisco Ballet. I am on my path.

I gave up being a national anchorman for this life. I sometimes wonder if I’ve done the right thing and people constantly look at me in wonder at this choice. But, I feel it’s been my path to something more valuable to the world. I may be crazy. I may simply end up helping people locate themselves to a beautiful valley in California. But I don’t think so.

Most of the other people cited in this book do the same thing. Ann Bancroft (the polar explorer not the actress) put it this way, “The other thing I would say is that I can't stop dreaming. I hope that is going on with other people. I might be odd in going to Antarctica but I don't think I'm odd in the dream department… What we want to do is to say, "We're doing our childhood dream, what's yours?"

Follow your dreams and you will find happiness.

Cheers,

DVM