I Thought I was Healthy...

Yep, I used to think that I was healthy.  Plenty of my friends and coworkers have told me that I am the healthiest person they know.  Well, the reality is that, that is just sad.  As I have been reading my newest favorite book on health, I am learning how I am not really THAT healthy. This was all confirmed a few months ago when I ended up in the doctors office with a struggling liver. I got a ultrasound and blood work done twice, and as usual, the doctor couldn't tell me what was wrong or what I could do about it.

The bottom line for me is that happiness plays a much bigger role for me than making my taste buds happy for a few minutes. I would much rather eat kale today than suffer in a hospital bed years later.  I guess it all depends on how you define quality of life. Many (No I am going to go with Most) people I know feel like their quality of life is severely diminished when they can't indulge in their favorite comfort foods. But for me, I feel like my quality of life is the lowest when I am sick in bed, void of energy, unable to get out and be active, tired all the time, dealing with body aches, indigestion, or an inability to focus. It is the age old dilemma, do you want to be happy now or later?

Then I think about that, and that really isn't the right question because, eating healthy doesn't have to be torture. Change is hard period. It is hard to try to eat new foods. You will suffer withdrawal and feel deprived. I am pretty sure I am going through that right now on this new diet. But the good news is that when you eat healthy, you start to enjoy it. You start to feel better and of course you start looking better, and who really doesn't want that? You are sick less. Who doesn't want that? You save money in the doctor's office.  Who doesn't want that?

Dr. Joel Fuhrman's whole premise is that if you give your body the nutrients it needs then it can heal itself. Sadly, few of us get the nutrients our bodies need, so our hunger gets out of control and we end up overweight, sick, depressed and miserable. Then we are all left wondering why God has cursed us and why we can never be happy? Sadly the answers are all out there we just haven't known where to look. If you suffer from or would like to prevent obesity, migraines, heart disease, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, auto immune disorders, osteoporosis, aging, depression, anxiety, arthritis, hypertension, hypoglycemia, constipation, cancer, kidney disease, liver disease or a host of other common ailments that have exploded in our modern times then you should do yourself a favor and read this book. I first came across his book when I watched this video.

It all just makes sense to me, and this guy is a real doctor. He isn't some quack trying to sell you something. I started to read his 400 page book and honestly, I couldn't put it down for long. I finished it in five days when I didn't think I was going to have anymore time to read books before I start back to school. I don't like to push good health on anyone BUT I will tell you that this book is the best one I have read so far and I have read my fare share of books on health. I haven't been on this diet for long but I can tell you that I am already seeing some benefits and perhaps I will have more good news to report later.

Happiness is a Serious Problem (part five)

Chapter 27 was the only chapter that really rubbed me the wrong way.  It is titled "Allow Innocuous Expression of Your Lower Parts".  Okay I agree with the title but I don't agree with his definition of "innocuous expression".  Innocuous means not harmful or offensive, and he goes on to say that a big part of men's lower parts is their sex drives and while I will not claim to be an authority on that topic (and some days I am so glad I am not a man), I do not see how he can try to claim that pornography in any way shape or form can be considered not harmful or offensive. It hurts everyone. My mind is incapable of seeing how this is not harmful to everyone involved with it in any way shape or form.  I also felt like he was contradicting himself by saying that happiness is overcoming our human nature and then he was saying we can still do things that not only feed our human nature but can be incredibly addicting and cause a lot of damage in the wake. The point is to transcend our human nature not to feed it and get sucked back into it on a regular basis. I just think that there has to be a better expression or substitute than porn.

He also says in that chapter that we should not feel guilty for dark thoughts which he separates from evil thoughts, but as long as we don't act on them those feeling should not impede a happy life. It is hard for me to fully separate dark, evil and unholy thoughts. They represent different degrees of a problem but none of them are helpful. Obviously with his Jewish beliefs he does not bind himself to Christ's higher law of Matthew 5:27-28. How much better is it for us to be free from all forms of bondage whether mental, spiritual, physical or emotional, than to believe that it is impossible to overcome these things. I can see that he doesn't understand the power that we can receive through the Atonement of Christ and that is very sad to me (honestly I don't think a lot of Christian's get this either). What a blessing it has been in my life over and over again. This all just makes me more grateful for it. Watching mindless TV for 8 hours a day may be better than hurting someone but neither option will really make you happy.

Chapter 28- Seek to do Good- People who do good have inner peace. If you go through life cheating people then you will expect others to cheat you. If you lie you will expect others to lie to you. This is why some of the worst people in the world (like Stalin) are paranoid. Leading a bad life brings loneliness and lack of love. Hitler had no friends and showed no emotion except to his pet bird. Knowing this has helped me let go of revenge and anger because the people who hurt you are usually hurt and definitely unhappy. Love is the only thing that makes a difference. Well I suppose that understanding and forgiveness help too.

Being surrounded by finer people and having friends who show love is a significant contribution to happiness. One cannot be a good person without gratitude and gratitude brings happiness. Gratitude make us better people.  Goodness is the "secret" of every great religion and philosophical system. The more you reach outside of yourself and your ego and do good the more peace you will attain. If you ask an older person about their regrets in life, it will likely have more to do with bad deeds they have done than anything good they've done.

Chapter 29-Develop Self-Control- When others write about happiness they rarely write about self control even though human nature is the greatest obstacle to happiness. He lists several reasons for this...

1. Self-control is difficult and most people want easy roads to happiness.
2. Self-control sounds like a downer and a downer doesn't sound like happiness.
3. Self-control doesn't sell. No one wants to buy a book called "Happiness-Keep Saying no to Yourself"
4. Self-control goes against the spirit of our times which glorifies getting all we want and makes us feel deprived or like a failure if we do not.

Despite all of this, happiness is impossible without self-control. Self-control gives you freedom. Unfortunately many people define the great value of freedom incorrectly. They define freedom as doing whatever they want. Addicts do what they want and they are among the least free people on earth. Freedom means being able to do the things that will bring happiness and that takes self control.

How do we develop self-control? He has a few ideas for that too...

1. If you habituate yourself to exercise self-control you will find it hard to stop.  The opposite is also true, if you habituate yourself to lazy habits you will find it equally difficult to stop.
2. Never lose sight of your goal. It is very difficult to exercise self-control when there is no goal in sight.

Chapter 30-Find and make friends- In the modern world, people are more lonely than ever before. Crime and other factors keep people inside. We need friends to survive. He gives some tips on how to make good friends.

Chapter 31- Psychotherapy and Religion- He believes that we are all wounded and that we all need both of these things. Psychotherapy can not fix our problems but it can give us the tools we need to fix our own problems. He believes that most therapists aren't very good so you have to be careful when you select one. Psychotherapy alone can not make us happy because it teaches us nothing about the meaning of life. Religion alone is not enough because it can be used to mask or cover up our problems. Conversely the finest religious people are also the psychologically healthiest.

Epilogue-The theme that constantly repeats itself in this book is that happiness is attained through moderation. The pursuit of happiness is a noble human endeavor, no less than any other. It is an art that demands no less proficiency than playing a Bach sonata. It requires constant use of the mind and constant self discipline. The route to its attainment confers wisdom and instills gratitude and given it's moral ramifications, he believes that happiness is no less moral an imperative than democracy.

There are a few other things that I wish he would have touched on like the importance of good health including good food and exercise. I believe that we can become very irritable and depressed when our bodies don't have the nutrients they need. Happiness truly is a gigantic puzzle and we have to make sure that we have all the right pieces and that they are all in place, to have things run as well as they can in this fallen world. 

Despite my hiccup with chapter 27 I truly believe that we have to understand the principals in this book as our foundation to seeking happiness. Unfortunately the world is sending us a long list of bad mixed messages about happiness. I am glad that I have been able to see how living by the principals taught here have brought me greater happiness in my life. I wish I had this book years ago when I was trying to figure things out, so I didn't have to learn by trial and error. I am at least grateful for the gospel that has taught me a lot of this stuff.

When I think about the things that have helped me to be the happiest and have the most peace in my life despite the sometimes raging storms, it has to do with feeling the Holy Ghost. Feeling that my life is in accordance with God's plan for me and that I am doing his will is huge. If I know that, then I cannot only be happy but have peace and joy too. These have not come to me easily. They have taken a lot of work and struggle but they have always been worth it.

Happiness is a Serious Problem (part four)

Okay I am just going to jump right in here because there is a lot of information. Chapter 21 says that happiness is a by product, meaning that we can't just focus on happiness to achieve it.  We have to focus on the things that bring it.  He believes that there are many other important values we should seek to acquire and they are the things that will bring happiness to us.  They are pursuing passionate meaningful pursuits, depth, wisdom, clarity, goodness and pursuing the transcendent. Then he goes into each of these virtues in greater depth.

Pursuing passionate meaningful pursuits- Whether work or hobbies we need to pursue things that have intrinsic value and meaning.  You can not be passionate about watching TV because it has no intrinsic value or meaning.

Depth- We become deeper as we struggle to grow emotionally, morally, psychologically, intellectually and in wisdom. Very little that is acquired easily is deep. Human nature teaches us to seek immediate pleasure not depth. Yet those who transcend their nature and seek depth will derive great happiness from the struggle. Even fun can be deepened. He gives examples of taking adult education classes, listening to classical music, watching movies that provoke thoughts and entertain, reading books that have intellectual and emotional demands as well as entertaining us. Once you experience deeper fun it is hard to go back to the superficial variety because the rewards of depth are great. It is one of the noblest goals of human life that brings ongoing happiness. Indeed the journey to depth brings as much happiness as its attainment.  Since depth has no limit the journey never ends.

Wisdom- This is understanding on top of just knowing something. Knowledge is good but it does not bring the happiness that wisdom brings. There is no known path to wisdom. Some are born with it and others gain it through great emotional and intellectual struggle.

Clarity- Ignorance is not bliss, clarity is. It means understanding yourself and your life. It involves finding explanations as to why things happen in life. It is the opposite of chaos. It transforms us from bystanders in our life to actors.

Goodness- Choosing good over happiness can make us happier.  It gives us a peace of mind and a sense of self worth that cannot be attained elsewhere.

Pursuing the transcendent- Finding meaning in life can only come from believing that something permanent transcends us. Few can argue against the proposition that religion is capable of bringing more inner peace than anything else.

Chapter 22 is about developing perspective and a philosophy of life. This can determine how happy or unhappy you will let an event make you. If two people lost their wallets, one may be unhappy for a day and the other may be unhappy for a week even if the lost wallet was equally important to both people. We set limits as to how long we will let something bother us. In all of the studying Prager has done on happiness he finds little correlation between what happens to us and how unhappy we are. There are plenty of examples of people who have hard lives and are happy and people who have easy lives who are very unhappy.   Therefore a persons attitude and philosophy of life play a very large role in our happiness and our reactions to situations. Without a philosophy of life we do not know how to react to what life deals us.

He gives an example of a friend who got a flat tire and ended up missing a speech he was supposed to give and lost a lot of money in the process.  In the end he wasn't too upset. He said that his philosophy was that everyone has a flat tire quota and this was his first, so he didn't let it bother him too much. Our happiness bounces up and down determined by the days events, and the immediate emotions they elicit, rather than sober reflection of we have no philosophy for life. Without being able to place events into proper perspective we are at the mercy of events. Our ship has no destiny or compass. Most people wait until tragedy strikes before thinking about how to incorporate tragedy into their lives and then the shock is often too great to absorb into their emotional and psychological system. Although it may not always work a philosophy of life ought to be regarded as an inoculation against despair.

Chapter 23 is about finding the positive in every situation.  There is almost always a positive to every negative situation, and there is almost always a negative to every positive situation. It depends on what we want to focus on. Choosing to find and accentuate the positive is not always a form of self-delusion. Prager spoke about bad and boring dates he went on.  When he was out with a boring date he worked really hard to see why that person was boring by asking them a lot of questions. This helped those dates seem less boring and it helped him grow. He later used this information when he spoke to youth to help them understand how to become more interesting people. There is value in bad things if we look for it. We usually only spend time with people we have a lot in common with and boring and bad meetings allow us opportunities to grow. Those who choose to find the good will be blessed and those that only see the awful will be cursed. It is our decision to make.

24-Accept the inevitability of tension in your life because a life without it is very shallow. If you have tension in your life it means that you face competing demands. It is a characteristic of a full life not an unhappy one. The only way to avoid tension is to numb it (drugs or alcohol) or lead a very dull life where there are no competing demands. What we don't want is unnecessary tension, stress or aggravation. Is the tension we are experiencing helping us grow? Will it eventually lead us to happiness?

25-Everything has a price.  You need to accept it. He believes in most situations we have to ask ourselves to do the following things...

1. Make peace with the fact that everything has a price.
2. Determine what the price is for the thing you desire.
3. Choose whether to pay the price or forgo the desire (because you can't expect to get all the rewards or benefits without paying the price).

 This formula works for most things in life including deciding to marry or have children.  He goes more into details about the pros and cons of these decisions.  We need to make our decision and then remember when things get hard, why we made that decision, and remember the positive things we are working towards. The more we ask ourselves the above questions the more we are able to weigh the consequences of our decisions and handle life's problems.

26-Accept the lower parts of your nature. Everyone has miserable parts of their nature. The very best people have many negative tendencies, because great character is defined by our struggle with the worst parts of our nature rather than not having negative parts. Deeds not thoughts determine a person's tendencies. Prager learned to make peace with and control his darker parts. The only people who don't have bad tendencies are dead, literally or figuratively. To be fully alive is to have dark tendencies. These things make us human and give us our character and our passions. The extreme individuals are those who are either always suppressing or always acting on them. It is best if people find a balance so we don't explode in the pressure cooker or become depressed.

That is all for today folks. I still love this book by the way. I can't say I am on board with everything or see everything the exact same way that he does but I feel like I understand what he is saying because I have seen it in my own life and it helps me to feel that someone else understands what I think and feel.  I have five chapters left so I will save them for next time and maybe have some brilliant conclusion to all of this.  Probably not!  ;)

Happiness is a Serious Problem (part three)

I am pretty sure I have never taken so many notes on a book of this size.  There is so much good stuff packed in it.  I even went out and purchased this book because I have told so many of my friends that they need to read it.  I paid a whopping $4 on ebay for a used version.  It will be so worth having it.  I just wish that everyone knew about this book.  If people really lived by it this world would be such an amazing place to be.  I am doing my small part to spread his message anyway.  ;)

In Chapter 14 he talked about the family as the building block of civilizations.  He said that little can bring us the amount of joy we can receive from family life. It is the most powerful positive force in human life. It is our refuge from a hostile world but sometimes families are the place of the greatest pain.  The number of ways the family can harm us are limitless.  He mentions when children are physically, emotionally or sexually assaulted. Parents don't have a guide book or even have to take a class to be a parent.  They just do the best job they know how.  This usually means that they can pass many problems on for generations.  Parents are almost like Gods over their children.  They have a lot of power over their children.  He stresses that most of all children need love and if they don't get it, it can affect them for the rest of their lives. 

Chapter 15 is about human suffering and how there is too much of it in this world.  He said seeing human suffering must affect the happiness of any sensitive and decent person.  Many ask, "Is it okay to be happy when so many suffer?" Regardless happiness is a choice and happy people have a greater ability to do good. If we believe in a afterlife that is better than this one, that can help us cope with the sufferings of this life.

Chapter 16 is about unconditional love.  He said that 57% of pet owners would pick a pet over a human to be stranded on an island with.  He said that this didn't surprise him, because of the unconditional love pets can give.  He said that adults should not seek unconditional love because it gives them no reason to strive to be better human beings.  As adults we have to earn respect and love. He believes that God's love for us is also conditional. See LDS beliefs on that subject here.  He does believe that children should be given unconditional love and if they don't receive it when they are young they will seek for it into adulthood. 

Chapter 17 was on a subject that I have recently written about, being a victim.  He said that if your primary identity is that of a victim, you will never be happy for these reasons...

• Victims do not see themselves as being in control of their lives.
• Victims see themselves as being unfairly picked on by the world.
• Victims are angry and angry people can never be happy.
• Victims cannot allow themselves to enjoy life because that would challenge their perspective of how they see themselves.

Only on the day we begin to shed the victim identity can we begin to attain happiness.  Why then would people choose to be victims when it makes them unhappy?  He has some reasons for that...

• It keeps them from confronting life or their personal issues.
• They like getting sympathy.
• It is easier not to take control of your own life.
• Self pity can be addictive.
• It is hard to mature and it is not valued in our present culture.

Chapter 18 is about the opposite sex.  Just like families, the opposite sex can bring us incredible joy or misery.  Men have an insatiable desire for sex and women have an insatiable desire emotional intimacy.  Both partners have to fight their natures to have harmony in a relationship.  Men and women's desires are rarely satisfied. Both partners should do what they can to support each other's unmet desires.

Chapter 19 is titled "Genes or Biochemistry". He starts by saying that we are all born with a personality. Some are born moody and some are born cheerful. Most unhappiness is circumstance, attitude and psychology.  Some unhappiness has biochemical origins and needs to be treated as such.  He shares what he believes are common misconceptions about anti-depressants...

• Those who take drugs never confront the pain in their lives.
• These drugs make people happy and their happiness is artificial.
• There is shame in taking drugs and people should solve their problems with out drugs.

He says that no one should be shamed for taking psychiatric drugs, due to many misconceptions about them. He believes that they should be a last resort after therapy, religion and other efforts have failed. People with biological depression need to be careful not to blame themselves or loved ones for their unhappiness. If you or a loved one are continually depressed, the chances are that no loved one can make a difference and you must end the cycle of blame and get help. 

Chapter 20 is about the need we all have to find meaning and purpose in our lives. This is necessary for us to have a will to live. It is one of the primary distinguishing characteristics of the human being. Animals do not need purpose in their lives. Human's crave meaning. It is unlikely that anyone who lacked a sense of purpose ever lived a happy life. Having a sense of purpose is more powerful than the need to be with other people. Finding meaning in our lives takes two forms. The belief that our lives have meaning and that life itself has meaning, both are necessary to happiness.

Personal meaning comes from three sources, relationships, work and causes. Great happiness comes from family. Most men derive meaning and purpose from providing financial support for their families. Most women find happiness from providing emotional support to their families. Children find meaning as members of the family. The meaning that comes from work is unrelated to the money earned. Lawyers who work for people they do not respect find little meaning in their work, while volunteers and teachers can find immense meaning.

Attachment to a cause can bring the most meaning but it can also be the most perilous. This can be a substitute for other meaning givers like relationships. History is filled with people who have looked to causes for meaning and done a great deal of evil through them. The cause that gives the most meaning to men and women is religion. The decline of religion in the world has done a great deal of harm to the world. Causes are the best when they are built on strengthening human relationships. The dominant intellectual says that less thoughtful people need God. In fact it is the thinkers who most need religion.

And finally from that chapter I will end with this quote... "To be a good person it is always necessary to ask before doing something, 'Is it right?' to be physically fit, it is necessary to ask before eating something, 'Is it healthful?' to be a happy person, it is necessary to ask before acting, 'Is it meaningful?' the problem, of course, is that the good action, the healthful food, and the meaningful behavior are rarely the most enticing of our choices-which only proves, once again, that the greatest battle for happiness is with our own nature."

And I would say that is good enough for now. I am trying to both get through this book and start studying for my classes at school so I am going to have to make every minute count going forward but it feels good to have goals to work on and things to learn, and new ways to grow as a person.