Social Comparison

I've read a lot about social comparison lately – the tendency to compare ourselves with others. This morning I was listening to the song Goat Girl by Tanya Donelly. 

I find it quite cute the way she says she wanted a Lion but she ended up with a Man who wanted a Gazelle. We wish we were wealthier, more elegant and thinner and we look at other spouses, wondering if they are more like Tanya’s Lion. We all have our faults and failures and people tend to put on their best side when in public. I can guarantee you that Lion you've been ogling also farts in the bed and leaves his underpants on the floor.

How much time do you spend wishing for your life to be different? Wishing for your partner to change or for that bigger house, car, better job, fancy holiday, more sparkly jewelry. None of those things can hurt but they are not the source of happiness. What others have is great for them but having more of anything won't make you happy. Research shows that it only temporarily lifts happiness and that you will return to your happiness default. When happiness windfalls happen, we adapt to the good fortune and incorporate it as our happiness norm. This is called hedonic adaptation.  

I know someone who was brought up in a poor household, with many siblings. They are not skilled but married into a wealthy marriage, after breaking up a family. With no boundaries, they enjoyed fulfilling every whim - holidays overseas, new cars annually, fancy food, country clubs and any material asset one would desire. And yet they are the unhappiest person I have ever known. 

One of the key ingredients of a happy life is gratitude. And in being content within yourself. Stop wishing for something else and start loving what's there. If you're wishing to be different, make some goals and take steps towards the better you. Many people want others to change but that's truly unrealistic. It's better to focus on improving yourself and you may, or may not, see a change in their behaviour. 

The path to happiness most certainly does not include social comparison. Indeed it is the opposite. Rather, switch your thoughts to gratitude and savouring, two proven strategies in enhancing our happiness. As the Goat Girl says, “I do my brutish best” and my husband loves me anyway. 

Self-Care Roster

In my last post I was a misery and I won’t apologise for it because that’s reality. I’m done trying to please everyone and be something everyone expects me to be. Yes, I get down, and it will happen again. 

The way I usually approach something that needs to be fixed, like my health, is to have a plan. I feel empowered when I take action so I've come up with a Self-Care Roster. Starting yesterday, I decided to do a few things daily and some things weekly or monthly etc. I know it doesn't sound earth shattering but I have to DO something.

I've set myself a limit of five outings a week, excluding the school run. This ensures that I don’t overdo things and is worked into the roster. My self-care roster has four categories:

• Grooming:  Haircuts, manicures etc. This helps reinforce in my mind the importance of looking after myself.
• Responsibility: Medical check-ups for myself and my kids such as dentist, mammogram etc.
• Healing: Much needed care in my current state, including things like reflexology, Body Stress Release etc.
• Growth & Fun: Reading, writing, savouring, gratitude and knitting.

Reading is a way for me to grow myself and also helps me feel that I’m moving forward. I need to consume a lot of books as my list is really long. The more I read, the more material I have for a future book and my blog. I see it as research and it is not taxing.

Writing my blog helps me express myself. As an introvert and a people-pleaser I often bite my tongue on things I’m thinking. I don’t freely express my opinion for fear of retribution, appearing foolish or stimulating a debate I don’t want to have. So this is a way for me to express myself regularly and practise writing, thereby improving myself.  

Some happiness experts recommend thinking about our happiest moments and days, be it remembering the day our child was born, our wedding day, being accepted into university or just a great day with family. This is the savouring activity which I plan to do daily for a week. I’m planning to look through my wedding album and the many photos we took of our children as babies.

Gratitude is a well-known happiness-enhancer. David Steindl-Rast, in his wonderful TED talk, talks about how gratitude can change the way we behave. If we are grateful, we don’t hate or envy others, we don’t abuse or hurt people.  In order to make the most of opportunities that come our way, we need to stop and listen and then grab them when they come along. 

I think I’m naturally a grateful person and I often count my blessings. Something we do each night is to look at our sleeping girls and marvel at the miracle of them. No matter what kind of crazy they unleash in the day, they look so peaceful and angelic while sleeping. This is probably also savouring but also includes a degree of gratitude.

The knitting is a way for me to create something and I’m helping people at the same time. Our school has a project where the teddy bears are given to children on the night they are removed from their abusive families. It is the first thing of their new life. I’m knitting because I find it relaxing and I’m helping someone, which is aligned to my personal values.  Tony Robbins and many other influencers of personal growth, cite Contribution as a meaningful endeavour to enrich your life.

I have quite a few ideas around the healing activities that I’d like to explore but that’s perhaps for another blog post. Included in this is Nia as a contributor to wellness but I’m not up to it physically right now. The weekend illness taught me that. So I do what I can and I battle the despair with goal-setting.

Gratitude, Meditation and Mindfulness

On my journey of ensuring my future job is filled with meaning, I’m going to give myself some homework. I’d like to research what other people have done and to investigate things that interest me. It’s hard to learn if you’re not open to discover things you know very little about. It may mean taking some risks and opening myself up to things that have previously been a bit scary.

I think some of the things people have done to be happier and less stressed in their lives, not necessarily in their work, are things like focusing on gratitude, meditation and mindfulness.

Gratitude is a really obvious one to me. I've noticed that grateful people are happy people. I know people who have so very much and have had all the opportunities in the world to be happy, yet their focus is on what they don’t have and what others have instead. I also know people who have very little and are leading lives of contentment. They make do with what they have, and their focus is family and love.

Those of you with small children will know that they are comforted with routine. They feel safe knowing that we do the same steps each night before bedtime. We have started a habit with our three-year-old to say what she calls ‘Thank You For’ every night. Thank You for our family, thank You for our home, thank You for all the fun today. I’m building a culture of gratitude in our home such that they focus on what they have and be glad for it.

Many of you may have seen the 100 Days of Happiness project last year. To focus on even the small things that make us happy, is a commendable initiative and the fact that it was on social media made it spread. I read some scathing article urging people to keep their happiness to themselves. If ever I saw someone who needed to actively focus on happiness!

Meditation has been a tricky one for me. I’m a bit of a fidget and although I love the peace of silence, I do battle to sit or lie for a long time doing ‘nothing’. I may have gotten into bad habits being a mother of small children in that there is always something to do, tidy up or prepare for tomorrow.  I Googled how to meditate and was relieved to hear that I only need to start with two to three minutes each time. So I’m doing that for now and hopefully I’ll get better at it. My condition leads to sleep disturbances, aggravated by the odd nightmare or blankie being lost in the night. Rest is of primary importance at the moment so disturbed sleep is a real issue for me. I have noticed though, on the days I do some solid meditation (albeit for a few minutes), I do tend to sleep better.

What does it mean to be mindful? Wikipedia defines it as “the intentional, accepting and non-judgemental focus of one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment", which can be trained by meditational practices derived from Buddhist anapanasati”. Being mindful is so tightly linked with happiness. Let’s stop chasing the next thing, hoping it will lead to happiness. Happiness is enjoying the moment and being grateful for it. Matt Killingsworth investigated how staying in the moment enhances happiness by his interesting research.

Our lives have become so hurried that it is very hard to enjoy the moment. It’s something I’m going to be focussing on in the coming months. Hopefully the meditation and mindfulness go hand in hand. I’m enjoying these amazing years of parenting small children, watching the joy they experience in the small things.My gratitude is mostly around my immediate family 

and the great blessing of being a parent.