James Lee Stanley

How happy are you?   How does one be happy?   Is it possible to change and be happy?   Let’s talk about it today, because it impacts your music, your performance and, of course, your life.

A friend of mine was feeling really down a few days ago and I tried to help her.   She said that it was easy for me to handle stuff because I was happy all the time, while she had to deal with this chronic but not severe depression.

Her response made me laugh out loud.  (hmm, maybe  she's right?)

No one is happy all the time, least of all me.   We all have things coming into our lives that disrupt, challenge, disappoint and betray what we are hoping for.

I have recently experienced the loss of my father.   It is a profound loss and it effects you in ways you can’t imagine.    I find myself frequently blind-sided by bouts of weeping and grief and these bouts happen at the most inopportune times.   I deal with it as best I can.   But I do have a tool that I learned about in an acting class that I took years ago.

In this class, we were given a variety of exercises to free us up and to demonstrate to us what was emotionally available to us as actors; as access to one’s emotions is essentially the actors palette.

One exercise was to stand toe to toe with another actor and simply say yes to your partner’s no.  This was repeated for about three minutes.   What this particular exercise brought out was a thousand different ways to say “yes” or “no”.

Angry, sweet, disappointed, sad; the entire gamut of emotions would show up for both of us during the three minute exercise.   

The coach then explained to us that he wanted to demonstrate to us that in fact, all of our emotions are available to us at all times.   The exercise clearly corroborated that.

On the way home from class, I was thinking about the exercise and I realized that the coach was right!    We do have all these emotions available to us at all times.

Then the question presented itself to me:   If we have all these emotions available to us at all times, why are we choosing to be angry or petty or enraged.   Why not choose joy?

I mean if they are all there all the time, then we are clearly choosing which one we want to use at any particular time.   So why not choose joy?    Why not choose happy?  Why do we  choose to experience or to actually be any of these crappy emotions.   I mean, i know that they show up, but they don't need to stick around for weeks or months, do they?   Choose happy.

It’s not faking it.  It’s choosing it.  

Think about it.