Cheerfulness
Learning the Secrets of Happiness

Listen carefully to this passage, written by someone who seemed to have all he needed for a happy life.

I have now reigned about 50 years in victory or peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot. They amount to fourteen. (Abd Er-Rahman III of Spain, 960 C.E.)

Discussion: What all did this Spanish leader have going for him? (All of the riches, honor, power, and pleasure that he could want.) What's shocking about his statement? (Having all the things people think will make them happy, but he wasn't happy.)

Most of us think that more money or more things or more power or more respect will automatically bring us more happiness. Yet, many who achieve these things tell us that they failed to bring happiness. This insight leads us to the question, "What DOES bring happiness?" None of us want to live miserable, unhappy lives. Today, let's try to discover what has brought happiness to some people's lives, to give us some insight on how to become happier ourselves.

Defining Cheerfulness

How would you define cheerfulness? (Get some responses.) For the sake of this lesson, let's define it as:

"Good-humored, bright and pleasant. "

Why Be Cheerful?

Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survived our captivity. (Philip Butler, Vietnam POW)

Metropolitan Life used the Seligman Attributional Style Questionnaire to identify the optimists and pessimists that they hired. They then tracked them and found that the optimists outsold the pessimists. The margin of difference was remarkable - 20 percent difference in sales the first year, 50 percent the second year. (Written by Steve Miller. Source: Speaker's Library of Business Stories, Griffith, Joe, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Copyright 1990.)

So, cheerfulness is important for all of us. How can we grow in this quality?

Great ideas! Let's look at a few of these keys to happiness in more depth.

Keys to Happiness

Game: Balloon Grenades

So, he designed his own path to recovery, which involved watching comedies on TV and laughing. In order to not disturb other patients with his laughter, Cousins moved out of the hospital. According to Cousins, "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep." Eventually, he experienced a full recovery and wrote of it in his book, Anatomy of an Illness.

Later, he researched and wrote another book on the power of positive emotions. In Head First, The Biology of Hope, he talks of the proven power of laughter to reduce pain, enhance respiration, reduce stress, improve circulation and strengthen our immune system.

Regular laughter can be a key to cheerfulness. What makes you laugh? (Watching bloopers on TV, watching comedians, playing a game with a friend, reading funny jokes). How could you add more laughter to each day? (Read a joke each day. Watch something funny.)

Transition: Problem is, we can't play games all day get our laughs. Our challenge is how to keep cheerful during the everyday stuff, even in the midst of hard times.

Let's face it. Sometimes we have a hard time being cheerful because so many things are going wrong in our lives. How can we be cheerful even during the hard times? Have you found some tricks that work for you? (Get some input.)

Illustration: There are two ways to view a huge wave. The sand castle builder looks upon it with anguish, realizing that his beautiful creation may be destroyed in a brief moment. But a talented surfer frantically paddles toward that same wave, hoping to catch it for the ride of a lifetime. Think about this: it’s exactly the same wave, viewed from two different perspectives.

Debriefing: How can we keep a cheerful outlook through difficult times, rather than merely grit our teeth and endure them? How can we view big waves through the eyes of a surfer, rather than through the eyes of a sandcastle builder? (Get input.) Perhaps we could look at life's waves, not as tragedies out to destroy us, but as challenges that, once overcome, can propel us into a brighter future.

Discussion: What are some ways that our hard times or what we see as liabilities can become assets over time? (Facilitator: consider giving an illustration from your own life.)

Story: Steven Spielberg is one of the most successful filmmakers ever. Do you know any of the movies he's produced? (Get input.) Examples include Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, and E.T. What you may not know is how some of his early heartaches taught him to make his audiences feel emotion. Once, when 24 year old Spielberg was directing a TV episode at Universal, the head of the camera department stopped an associate and said, "You’ve got to go down to the soundstage. It’s something you’ll never see again. Your friend Spielberg is directing." (He was directing an emotional scene where a character dies.) The associate responded, "I’ve seen people directing before." The cameraman explained, "You’ve never seen a crew stand there and cry."

So how did he learn the empathy that can’t be taught in film school? Spielberg says that as a young person he experienced his grandmother’s death with his family at her bedside. At other times, he felt anti-semitism through bullies, and learned what it’s like to be an outcast from the rejection he experienced in school. He learned the anguish of divorce by seeing his parents go through it his senior year in high school. No one wants to experience these tragedies, but I doubt Spielberg could have learned to produce heart-felt films without them.

Says Spielberg, "E.T. was about the divorce of my parents, how I felt when my parents broke up…. My wish list included having a friend who could be both the brother I never had and a father that I didn’t feel I had anymore. And that’s how E.T. was born." (Steven Spielberg, by Joseph McBride, Simon and Schuster, 1997, p. 72.)

Probably, when Spielberg was enduring his parents' divorce, he could only see the bad in it. But as bad as that experience was, it ultimately did him some good. He used that "wave" in his life to become a better person.

Discussion: Besides making him a better film-maker, what other benefits might come out of his experience? (He might be more compassionate toward others who experience family problems. He might try to avoid mistakes that his parents made.)

So, although our family problems hurt like crazy, if we can see that good might come from them, we can learn to surf that wave rather than let it crush us. A secret to maintaining joy in hard times is to trust that good can and will come out of even the worst circumstances.

Debriefing: What can we learn from "The Grinch"? (The selfish are miserable. Those more concerned with others find happiness.)

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

The essential difference between the unhappy, neurotic type person and him of great joy is the difference between get and give. (Erich Fromm, one of the most influential psychoanalysts in America)

There's a funny thing about searching for happiness. People who spend all day trying to entertain themselves tend to find that happiness eludes them. Those who try to make others happy, find happiness. Why do you think that is?

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes real happiness. It is not obtained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. (Helen Keller)

''No one, I am convinced, can be happy who lives only for himself. The joy of living comes from immersion in something that we know to be bigger, better, more enduring and worthier than we are.'' (John Mason Brown)

Somebody said,

"I complained about having no shoes until I met someone who had no feet."

Interesting thought. Whether we think of ourselves as rich or poor depends on who we are comparing ourselves to. If you're the poorest person in this school, but moved your house next to a slum of Calcutta, India, you'd be considered extremely wealthy by your neighbors. If you're an upper-middle-class American who lives in an upper class neighborhood, you may compare Christmas toys and think of yourself as poor.

If we think about this for a moment, we'll discover a powerful mental trick to experiencing contentment: stop comparing ourselves with those we think of as "above" us. Instead, we should compare ourselves with those who have far less and be thankful for what we've got.

As Robert Orben said,

Next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal probably eats better than 30 percent of the people in the world. (Robert Orben)

And besides, if we really knew the lives of those we envy, we might choose our problems over theirs in a heartbeat.

This week, let's catch ourselves when we're envying others and say to ourselves, "It's so great to have food. It's so great to have feet." It can be the first step to a more contented life.

1) What do you think the person meant when he said, "I complained about having no shoes until I met someone who had no feet."?
2) Why do you think we tend to compare ourselves with those who have more than us?
3) What are some things we have that we forget to be thankful for?
4) How might our lives be different if we trained ourselves to be thankful for all the good things we have?

The big point of this story? Our attitude toward life is more determined by the context in which we see the trials rather than by the trials themselves. Many people get bumped around and bruised every Friday night in football games, but come out elated because they love the competition.

So, a big trick to staying cheerful is to keep in the foremost of your mind all the good things that are happening. Helen Keller knew hard circumstances, seeing that she was left blind, deaf and mute as a young child. Yet, she found a way to be cheerful. She once said,

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.

What do you think she meant by this? (Look on the bright side of things. Count your blessings instead of your hardships.)

An expert on the economy was asked to talk to a group of business people about the recession they were currently suffering under. She tacked up a big sheet of white paper. Then she made a black spot on the paper with her pencil and asked a man in the front row what he saw.

(Put a dirty-looking spot on the overhead or on a white board. Ask the students what they see.)

The man replied promptly, ''A black spot.''

The speaker asked every person the same question, and each replied, ''A black spot.''

The speaker calmly and deliberately said, "Yes, there is a little black spot, but none of you mentioned the big sheet of white paper. And that's my speech.'' (Speaker's Library of Business Stories, Anecdotes and Humor, by Joe Griffith)

There was a huge sheet of white paper, but all the business people failed to see it because their attention was on the small spot. What do you think was the speakers' point? (Get a response.) He wanted them to see that they were so focused on the bad things about the business climate and the economy that they couldn't see all the opportunities and good things.

Don't we tend to do that with our lives? Sure, you've got a problem at home (put a dot on the board) and a major problem with a couple of your classes (put up some more dots). All I want to say is, don't forget about that one class you're doing well in (point to the light part of the board. And while your relationship with your dad may be bad (put another dot on the board), at least you've got a roof over your head and a dry bed to sleep in at night.

I don't want to minimize those spots on the big sheet of paper that represents our lives. Some of them really hurt. I just want to say that there's still a big white sheet there, if we can only focus on it. Often we get so wrapped up with the bad things that are happening that we forget about the good.

This week, every time we start getting depressed about those things that are going wrong, let's think about several things that are going right. If you broke your big toe this week, be thankful that nine of your toes don't hurt at all. If you see me looking grouchy this week, remind me to think of the rest of the sheet of paper. I may need a reminder.

Debriefing

1) What did the business people miss when they saw only the spot on the paper?
2) Who would you rather spend time with, those who constantly complain about the bad things in life, or those who mainly talk about the good things that happen?
3) What is one of the "spots" in your life today?
4) What things can you name that are going right?
5) This week, let's try to think more of the good things that are happening than the bad things.

Activity: Thankfulness Brainstorm

Divide into two teams. Appoint a secretary for each team with a sheet of paper and a pen. As we've said, one of the most important keys to our present and future happiness is developing a positive attitude. One way to do this is to be more aware of our blessings than our trials.

In order to move us that direction, I'll give you a letter of the alphabet and a few seconds to come up with as many things as possible that you're thankful for that begin with that letter. For example, if I give you the letter "A," you could say 1 - "Air to breathe that's clean." 2 - "Adderal for my ADD" 3 - "Apples" 4 - "Apes that I enjoy watching at the Zoo." Then, I'll throw out the letter "B." (Don't go through the entire alphabet. After a few minutes, have the secretaries turn in the lists and determine a winner. The losing team serves donuts to the entire class.)

How can an awareness of life's everyday blessings change our attitudes? How can it make our lives happier?

#1 - Twenty-Four Hour Moratorium on Complaining

Hal Urban was in his late 30's when he figured out life principles like Thankfulness. He began to teach these principles in a high school and college and eventually wrote a great book called Life's Greatest Lessons Or 20 Things I Want My Kids to Know. Read it. It could change your life.

For years Urban challenged his students to go twenty-four hours without complaining. According to Urban, "The first response is usually a complaint about the assignment." I'd like to challenge you to do the same. Over the next 24 hours, try to not complain. If you blow it once, don't give up; just see how few complaints you can give. Carry a sheet of paper with you and mark how many times you either complain or catch yourself about to complain. In eighteen years of giving this assignment, Urban has yet to find a student who could make it through the entire 24 hours without complaining. How many of you will take the challenge?

(Leader, make sure to follow up on this or have the home room teacher follow up on it the next day. Debrief by letting them talk about their experiences and realize just how much we complain versus give thanks.)

#2 - Think on positive things.

Urban says that this assignment is one of the two best assignments he's given in his entire teaching career. Ask your students to pull out pen and paper and write at the top: "What I'm Thankful For." Now put three columns down the paper, with the first column titled "People," the next "Things," and the next "Other."

Under "People," write the names of friends, family, coaches, teachers and role models you're thankful for.

Under "Things," write stuff like your house, shelter from cold, food, clothes, your right arm, etc.

Under "Other," write stuff like freedom, music, laughter, etc.

(After they're finished) - Now, for the next few days, I challenge you to carry this list in your pocket and reflect on it three times per day - morning, lunch, and evening before bed. We'll discuss if anyone noticed any changes in attitude.