How to Practice Happiness

Did you know that happiness takes practice?

My father wasn’t perfect. He has some serious short-comings, and he hurt me a lot over the years, but my father is responsible for teaching me how to be happy.

My father didn’t wait for happiness to find him. He was a happiness magician. He taught me happiness is something you create.

The first time I was actually aware my dad PRACTICED happiness I was nine years old when he put me on a 4-hour flight bound for Colorado. That summer he moved to Pennsylvania with his wife and her three kids—my new siblings. I wouldn’t see him again until Christmas.

A goodbye and a pocket full of cookie crumbs

In those days, parents could walk their children onto the plane. Does this still happen? We were in that squishy accordion hallway from airport to airplane. It smelled like rubber when there’s no air flow. Packed in with business travelers, I felt the sweat soak my little-girl hand. The hand my dad was holding and I was grateful he wasn’t using the sweat as a reason to let go.

I couldn’t speak or swallow so giant was the lump in my throat.

Now that I am a parent, I know that my father’s throat felt even worse, but he coughed a bit, then told me the following story while we inched forward in line:

“Do you know Pastor Allen?” he asked me. I looked up at him and nodded. “Well, I’ll tell you a funny story about him.

“One day we were at a lunch together and I was sitting next to him. There was a big stack of cookies on the table, and I snuck a cookie into his suit jacket pocket. His jacket was hanging on the back of his chair.

“When we got up to leave, and after he put his suitcoat on, I patted him a couple times on the side, so that cookie would crumble up.

“I always get a kick out of wondering what he thought when he put his hand into that pocket and came out with cookie crumbs.”

The relief of laughter in the midst of tremendous grief is powerful. Tears streamed down our two faces, as we doubled over with laughter.

The story itself isn’t even all that funny, right? But as with all comedy, timing is everything, and we were both desperate for some relief from our sadness.

My dad knew how to create a happiness handle even in the middle of the absolute worst moment of our shared lives. He taught me that you don’t wait for happiness to land in your lap. Happiness is something you practice.

 

Why is happiness something we need to practice?

Is there a place in your life where you are regularly afraid, sad, or lonely? Today, I want to show you how to invite happiness into that place. I’m sharing my father’s lessons so you can find your own happiness handles as you swing on the jungle gym of life.

Did you play on the playground as a child? On our playground those high metal bars where about seven feet off the ground and the only way across the hot lava we imagined below was to swing from bar to bar, then hoist your feet up onto the platform on the other side.

My father gave me a story about cookie crumbs that helped me believe I could hold myself up.

Although I spent the bulk of those 4 hours in flight crying, there were several times—as that plane rocketed into the air and when I marveled at the puffy clouds while the sun began to set—that I giggled again about that cookie.

My dad slipped the secret code for creating happiness into my pocket that day on the plane. Then he repeated the lesson over and over in my life.

 

Is there a person in your life who taught you to practice happiness?

What did that look like specifically? What do you remember about the first time you sensed that person was not FEELING as happy as they were ACTING?

If there’s not a person you can think of who taught you to practice being happy, then who is the person who needs YOU to practice happiness so they can find the handles? Who needs you to be the one swinging on those monkey bars over the hot lava so they will be brave because you showed them how?

I remember feeling sad much of the time I saw my father during the first year after his divorce from my mother.

I was itty bitty and all my routines were gone. Everything in my life felt turned on its head. I was upside down. But my dad knew how to turn everything into a game.

As we drove up the mountain to the house he was renting, there were yellow signs with big black arrows painted on them. These signs help drivers know what to expect in the dark. The black line shows the shape of the road ahead.

Sometimes it was a simple “C” curve. But other times it was a big “S.” Who knows what made him do it the first time, but we passed one of those signs and he made a noise, “whooup!” Then he pretended to hear the noise he just made. “What was that?” he asked me.

Five-year-olds are ready to play any game offered. And I was quick to become the voice of the signs. “Waaamp,” I’d say as we approached a new yellow sign. “Did you hear that?” my dad was quick to take the cue.

It’s silly, right? And so simple.

But it was a balm for my father who felt like he’d failed me because he could no longer be married to my mother. And it was a lesson for me when my life was just beginning, If your heart hurts, practice the happiness you need.

 

Happiness is a muscle. You need to practice to make your happiness ability stronger.

I know where my father learned to practice happiness. It was on the streets of Chicago in the middle of The Great Depression. My grandfather abandoned my father, his two siblings, and his mother, leaving them all alone to face that era of history that was so desperate that people were flinging themselves out of 30-story buildings.

My father was a hungry kid on the streets of Chicago.

But what he couldn’t put into his belly, he put into his heart. He picked up a stick and tossed his friend a ball and said, “Pitch it to me.” He played. He purposefully played his way through his pain.

When he told me stories of his childhood, it was the games he recounted. Never the rumbling stomach of a hungry kiddo. But he left clues: every single time we went to the grocery store he’d buy a jar of mayonnaise. A food full of calories, and something he never had as a child.

People leave clues where they need happiness help

In addition to pointing out all kinds of happiness handles, my father hurt me. Even though he didn’t talk about his father abandoning him, he bore the scars. Occasionally, if he sensed any tension in our relationship after I’d grown into a young woman, he would disappear. Or he’d push me away.

I learned he was pushing me away so that I couldn’t abandon him, but it didn’t hurt any less.

That pain, however, gave me bionic vision. I can see the equivalent of mayonnaise jars in people’s lives and know they are simply crossing those monkey bars. They’re hanging on by a thread and the hot lava below is terrifying.

Then they do that thing that terrified people do: they’re mean. Or scary. Or somehow awful.

And I remember the cookie story my dad told me.

I think about what it cost him to be able to tell me that story in that particular moment when he was putting his 9-year-old daughter onto the plane and he wouldn’t see me again for 4 long months.

Was he blaming himself? Was he saying, “Why did I get this divorce?” Was he listing all the ways he’d failed to keep his childhood promises to himself?

But however he was hurting…what he offered me was a handle to hold. To hold while I was facing the worst hot lava of my life.

 

A recipe to help you practice happiness

True happiness lives in the tension between the soft and the strong—the things that make us feel held and the things that prove we can hold ourselves up.

The recipe for abiding joy is one part comfort. One part courage.

You feel joy when you put on a cozy sweater. It’s so soft! You also feel joy when you cross the finish line of a long, hard race. Your confidence soars!

Now I want to ask you a question: when does the sweater feel the softest—when you’ve just gotten out of a warm bed after a good night sleep? Or does that sweater feel softer when you put it on after a long, hard day?

It’s worth it to create and to reach for your happiness handles. Building those muscles every day that keep you strong enough to swing from bar to bar above the hot lava pit below.

Life can feel scary. And many times you have reason to be afraid. You’re stretching: whether you’re taking your first plane ride alone and lonely, or because you’re navigating a brand new role of manager or mother.

 

The recipe for happiness is rest + stretch.

When you stretch you build your confidence.

Think of a time you took a job that was beyond your ability. You were nervous, right? Or maybe stretching for you involves a physical challenge going camping with a friend even though your idea of “outdoorsy” is eating dinner on a park bench.

When you do something beyond your capacity, you discover one of two things: either you realize you’re capable of more than you expected, or you realize that, even though you hate camping for example, you survived.

Ultimately, we are afraid we won’t survive. And the hot lava of that terror inspires many of our most unkind moments. But when you stretch and you survive, there is this palable relief: I didn’t die.

I’ve heard this from countless clients who stretched. They don’t tell me they enjoyed the stretch. They don’t tell me how there was a surprising joy hiding in their terror (though occasionally there is!). They all say the same thing: I didn’t die.

Stretching a surviving? Well that builds your muscles for the monkey bars of life. And you know what happens after you build those muscles?

Comfort and safety feel real again. Imagine how soft that cashmere sweater is after you got rained on all night and shivered in the tent your friend swore was bomb-proof.

 

What about when it’s hard to practice happiness?

My dad was a child of The Great Depression. My father lived in Chicago as a child and he was hungry. He was wounded.

We all have moments we can’t find the handles of happiness. Wouldn’t it be tragic to be judged by these moments alone?

My father’s cookie story became a secret language between the two of us: a promise to look for and share the happiness handles no matter how hard it is to find them. Many times, when either of us was facing a struggle, one of us would tell the other, “I wonder what Pastor Allen did when he put his hand into his pocket and found all those crumbs?”

It was our code: I believe in you. I’ve shared hard moments with you before. I am here. I won’t abandon you.

It was Father’s Day when my dad called me to say goodbye. He was ready to stop trying. Ready to give up and let himself die.

I thanked him for the cookie story that day. I told him he’d been a good father to me, and I was glad to be his daughter.

I thought about the struggles he’d faced in his life long before I knew him. The hot lava he had to negotiate to grow up and become the person who would choose to be my father. My father who knew how to turn road signs—and tons of other things—into a game.

I thanked him for showing me how to find the happiness handles.

Here’s an example:

That might be when you come home tired and grumpy because it was a hard day, but you choose to greet your partner with tenderness and a smile.

Or you might choose to practice happiness when you’re in line at the grocery store and the clerk is being rude. It’s amazing how many smiles I’ve gotten because I simply say, “Looks like you are having a tough day.” Sometimes happiness is staying in a moment with someone you barely know. A moment that says, I won’t abandon you to your loneliness. I see you.

Or you might choose to go out of your way for some co-workers, picking up an extra coffee or two on your way to work.

There’s a selfish reason to practice happiness: not only does it make you feel happier, you’re also stronger as you reach across that pit of hot lava that life can serve up.

Here’s an example:

I remember, early in our marriage, when I was still afraid to fall asleep at night, I’d ask David to tell me a story. My husband grew up reading books about Mountain Men, and so I’d hear stories about Jim Bridger or John Johnson.

At first, I didn’t know the stories, so I listened with curiosity and attention. But later, I would ask for a particular story and I’d drift off to sleep while my husband narrated familiar details. The safety of his voice let me know I wasn’t alone. It was a delicious happiness handle I used to muscle my way over the hot lava terror I had of the darkness and my dreams.

We were lucky enough that our children’s friends were in our home a lot when they were growing up. I knew that not every one of those friends had parents who loved each other. So one of the ways I shared happiness with those kids was to invite them to see what love looked like.

David and I are affectionate. And we speak kindly to each other. I was glad to have young people in our home glimpse that love and happiness we built.

How do you practice happiness? What is your story?

When you revisit a story where you are the hero or heroine of your own life, you not only build your confidence, but you also reawaken your awareness of comfort. That soft thing in your life becomes softer when you remember the times of struggle.