happiness

How To Stand Out At Kirtan

I went along to my local Kirtan the other night. Just in case you don’t know what Kirtan is, it’s kind of like an uber-relaxed Hindu version of church: Everyone sits around on the floor while a guy with a guitar leads us in a series of chants sung in a call-and-response style. I’ve been to a couple of different Kirtans before, associated with the various different [intlink id=”563″ type=”post”]cults I’ve been involved in[/intlink]; but this was my first time at this particular group.

Kirtan is a lot more fun than this.

Kirtan is a lot more fun than this.

Now before my family read this and conclude that I’m going to hell for becoming a Hindu, I should point out that the reason I go to Kirtan is because chanting in a group makes me feel good. That’s pretty much the idea behind the whole thing.

Most of the chants are sung in Sanskrit, which means I have absolutely no idea what I am singing about. The leader explains the meaning of one of them, which is basically singing praise to Krishna. And in case you don’t know who Krishna is, it’s kind of like the Hindu name for God, Yahweh, Jehova, Allah, Darwin, Dawkins… or whatever you choose to call your chosen supreme being.

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By Graham Stoney, ago
Frowny

How To Be Unhappy

There are a lot of happy people in the world today. Sure, we all have difficulties now and then, but for the most part we live at a time when we have more opportunity, greater personal safety and a longer life expectancy than any time in history. So many of us have the potential to be quite happy.

Smiley

Learn To Turn This…

This is a big problem for advertisers and companies marketing products at us that we don’t really need. Most advertising targets areas of dissatisfaction in our lives, suggesting that we fill the void or distract ourselves from our pain by purchasing products of little intrinsic value. The happier we are, the harder advertisers have to work to convince us that we need that new car, can of cola, or aftershave in order to attract the people we want into our lives. And major pharmaceutical manufacturers would go out of business if we all felt happy and didn’t need to rely on the latest round of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications. Wealthy shareholders are suffering as a result.

To help address these problems, here are my tips on How to be Unhappy:

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Into The Wild

Spoiler Warning: This review gives away the ending. If you don’t want to know what happens, stop reading now!

Listen to Eddie Vedder’s cover of Hard Sun written by Gordon Peterson from the Into The Wild Soundtrack as you read along:

I was profoundly moved by this film telling the true story of Christopher McCandless’s journey of self-discovery into the Alaskan wilderness. Directed by Sean Penn and starring Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless, this film hit me hard and I found it hugely cathartic. Despite a packed cinema, it was as though there was just me and this film connected to each other; I cried almost the whole way through.

Part of the reason I connected with it so strongly was that I first saw it while on a journey into the wild of my own: a solo 2,500km motorcycle road-trip of self-discovery from my home town of Sydney to … Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Happiness by Matthieu Ricard

A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill

I was put onto the audio edition of this book by a colleague from my Toastmasters club during a conversation about what makes us happy. The book is a fusion of eastern Buddhist philosophy and western scientific thinking on what it means to adopt happiness as a lasting state of mind. A key point reiterated here which I hear a lot these days is that true happiness is an internal state; it is not dependent on external factors. If we are relying on other people or external circumstances for our happiness, then we are always at the whims and mercies of things that are beyond our control. When we are at peace with who we are inside, our happiness can be based on internal factors over which we have much greater control.

I can relate to a lot of what the author … Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

What is a Life Coach?

The goal of a life coach is to help you to have a great life. This involves a sense of meaning, purpose and fulfilment, along with liberal doses of happiness and the ability to deal powerfully with things when they go wrong. As humans we get bored if we feel like we’re not moving forward, but the big question often is which direction to move in. To establish this we need to understand our core values, and set a continual stream of achievable goals based on those values. Setting goals gives us something to focus our efforts on, and achieving goals builds our sense of life satisfaction and self-esteem, and inspires us and the people around us on to further goals. It’s important that the goals we set are achievable, consistent with our values, and allow us to use and develop our personal strengths.

The coaches I know use a … Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago