A Nonnegotiable For Great Relationships: What It Takes to Work Really Well Together

I'm currently reading a book titled 12:  The Elements of Great Managing.  It's based on Gallup's ten million workplace interviews - the largest worldwide study of employee engagement.  It has some really profound perspectives on what it takes for people to feel deeply and effectively a meaningfully contributing part of organizations and teams.  I'm realizing as I read that these principles apply to every social system like families, marriages, significant relationships, faith communities. The very first element that produces radically increased engagement among people is "knowing what's expected."  Reality-based, clearly stated, shared expectations.

Now this may not seem like rocket-science to you (and it's not), but you would be surprised how often our relational challenges stem from unclear, unshared, and unreal expectations of each other.

Reality-based Expectations

I had two 2-hour sessions with a couple of faith community leaders who work together as a staff.  Their relationship for the last few years has deteriorated to the point of both people considering leaving and finding separate ministry opportunities.  Trust is at an all time low.

It turned out that both leaders had a certain expectation about each other's leadership style that wasn't getting met.  And over time, these unmet expectations created serious tension, frustration, and what appeared to them as lack of respect for each other, and ultimately the disintegrating ability to trust the other.

Once I helped them see that each of their leadership styles were different from the other's because leadership style is based upon each person's top five strengths profile not some predetermined template for how leadership is suppose to look, this was able to shift their expectations of each other to a more realistic place.  That new shared view of each other could be validated, honored, and respected - because both styles are good ... just different.  It was heart-warming to hear both of them starting to complement and affirm each other for what they now saw as each other's unique strengths and style.

Expectations of the people in our lives has to be based upon reality - a clear understanding of who each other is and how we're each wired to be our best.

Clearly Stated Expectations

And we can't know what's expected of us unless the other is willing to clearly state their expectations.

As I work with couples and teams, I realize how often so many of us expect others to be "mind readers."  We simply expect people to know what we're thinking and what we're needing without us having to tell them.

Now, most of us wouldn't admit that's what we're doing.  But our behavior would sure indicate it.

Analyze a few of your last relationship arguments.  Chances are you'll discover that at the heart of the misunderstanding or hurt feelings was your expectation (or desire) for the other person to simply know what you want.  Some how, we give more points if they guess correctly - their attempts to relate have more value if they come unprompted.  Right?

I want my wife to be so intuitive, to read my every micro-expression, to know me so well, so as to just "know" what I'm needing or wanting or expecting.  And if she can't guess, then at least she should "pull it out of me" by means of her great relational skills of wise questions and sensitive, caring prompts.

But as you and I both know (in our saner moments), this is ridiculous!  Unfair!  And unrealistic!

Most of us simply aren't clairvoyant.  We don't have a crystal ball with our partner's name on it.  We're not mind readers with extra-sensory perception.  Neither are the other people in our lives.

If we want others to know what we expect, what we need, what we want, we need to know ourselves and then be willing to state it.  Clearly.  So as to be completely understood.  Otherwise, the onus is on us.  Clearly stated expectations.

Shared Expectations

Only then can expectations be shared - that wonderful place where both sides not only clearly see and understand the other, but also where they agree to co-inhabit the expectation.

This third level is a bit more tricky and difficult.  It takes more compromise and commitment to each other; more trust; more desire; more willingness to find and achieve consensus; more persistence; more patience; more grace.  More work.

But when something is mutually shared, it's worth a lot.  Right?  There's deep strength to it.  Solid commitment.  A sense of committed partnership and collaboration.  Mutual honor and respect.  A lessening of resentment, anger, and frustration.

This kind of shared experience (which includes clear and shared expectations) is what leads experts to call basketball "a chemistry sport."  As a team practices and plays together, the players develop a "tacit knowledge" about each other--they have clear understanding about each other's roles, strengths, weaknesses, styles, quirks, typical patterns--and this knowledge ultimately enables the team to experience synchronicity.  To the onlooker, it appears almost magical the way players can anticipate and execute and adjust to each other in a unified and effective manner.

Our relationships - our social systems - are chemistry sports, too.  Which means we each take responsibility to develop clear, realistic, and shared expectations and understandings of each other if we want to live and work effectively together.

So how's your chemistry and synchronicity with the people in your life?

Betty White, Snickers Bars, and Your Personal Identity

The Commercial Have you seen the 30 second TV commercial with actress Betty White and Snickers candy bars?  It was introduced during the 2010 Super Bowl.  It's an interesting portrayal of personal identity.  Watch it:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA7-31Cxc2I&w=560&h=349]

The Snickers Identity Paradigm

The ad's a great example of how so often we see others by what they're doing on the outside.  Their identity is their performance.  If you're not playing football very well we see you as a Betty White (although I would have had second thoughts about playing ball against a younger Betty White--she's got the spirit!).  "Come on, man, don't be such a wuss!  Get it together and start playing like a man!"  If you're really good (which is to say, proficient, skillful, aggressive), then we see you as your "real" self.  Our culture bases everything about identity on externals.  Get that real job!  Drive that real car!  Make a real salary!  Date that real woman or man!  Buy a real house!  Wear that power suit!  Carry that real purse or wear those real shoes!  Show your stuff (whatever "stuff" is) and stop wimping around!

And if you're just not "manifesting" it rightly, then eat a Snickers bar and turn yourself back into a real man or woman!  Notice the interesting solution to being your "true self":  a candy bar (or whatever external things the advertisers are offering).

You and I are tempted every day to buy into this perspective on identity and reality.  If we can just manifest the right outside and external world, we can be satisfied that all is right with the world, we are who we're suppose to be.  So our identity is held captive to what we can or cannot manifest on the outside.

Some Drawbacks

But here are a couple of big dangers with this paradigm.  One, if you base your identity on what you can manifest in your life (the externals like people, things, circumstances), then you never have a solid foundation for your self esteem.  Your identity is dependent upon what happens on the outside.  And so your self esteem fluctuates based upon circumstances created by either you or others.  Your self esteem and personal identity are victimized by the fluctuations of whatever's happening to you or by you.  Definitely not a very secure way to live.

And two, it becomes easy to put yourself down or to put others down who aren't manifesting everything you think you or they should.  You can guilt people by saying, "If you just would get your thoughts right, you should be able to do it.  So if you're not doing it, there's something wrong with you!"

It's so subtle how our attitudes impact our sense of self and our expectations of others.

An Alternative Paradigm:  Secure Identity and Inner Peace

There's an alternative way to live that produces far more confidence, assurance, and solid peace.  Notice this statement from scripture:

"Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace."  (2 Corinthians 4:16)

Now considering the context of this statement, the significance of it increases dramatically.  The author is writing to people who have developed the insidious belief that your external world validates who you are.  The worldview was that if you were experiencing a life of success, ease, and prosperity that was a sign that you were being blessed by the divine universe.  And being blessed by God was always manifested by a life of prosperity.  They claimed that the condition of your external world indicated your personal identity and your status with the gods.

But author Paul is trying to counter that popular paradigm by describing his own life.  When he talks about looking like things are falling apart, he's painting a pretty graphic picture of his life experience:

"You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. We've been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we're not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we've been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn't left our side; we've been thrown down, but we haven't broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus' sake, which makes Jesus' life all the more evident in us. While we're going through the worst, you're getting in on the best!"  (2 Corinthians 4:8-12)

Notice his juxtaposition of external circumstances and internal attitude and identity.  Even though his external life would appear to be a complete failure, falling apart at the seams, his sense of identity and security with himself and with God are completely secure.  There's an internal sense of peace and certainty that pervades his mind and heart.  He is describing himself as possessing true life in its deepest and most meaningful sense, a life that God is continually creating and recreating in him.  And the more centered he finds himself in this internal life, the more grounded he finds himself in how he faces his external world.

And he ends that paragraph with a sentence describing another truism (did you notice it?):  our internal attitude does impact our external environment with others.  As Paul centered himself on inner peace that he allows God to create within him in the midst of external chaos, he blesses others with that environment of peace, too, giving them opportunity to experience inner peace for themselves.  It may not still the storms swirling all around, but it does provide inner calm and centeredness which is contagious.

Our True Miracle

That's the true miracle we all are needing.  Being able to live life with the continual unfolding of divine grace within us, where God is making a new life every day--not based upon what people think about us or even what we're tempted to think about ourselves based upon what we have or don't have, do or don't do, but based upon what God gives us inside--an nonfluctuating identity as a child of God embued with eternal value because of that stamp of love on our souls.  The ability to live in love rather than fear is the greatest miracle of all.  That should be our highest manifestation in life.  And it certainly has the power to impact others with a spirit of peace and love, too.

By today's standards based upon the Law of Attraction, Paul would be considered a real failure.  And yet Paul is completely confident in who he is, what God is doing in his life, and his courageous living of his purpose.

Marianne Williamson, author and spiritual teacher, puts it this way:  "We're not asking for something outside us to change, but for something inside us to change.  We're looking for a softer orientation to life...Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it.  If we're frantic, life will be frantic.  If we're peaceful, life will be peaceful.  And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace.  Our internal state determines our experience of our lives; our experiences do not determine our internal state."  (Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love, p. 66)

So build your identity, your sense of self and esteem and worth, on a foundation that remains secure, that outside circumstances and people cannot destroy.  So whether you have much in life that you truly want or have very little, you still are rich--you are grounded on the eternal truth of your being as a child of the God of the universe and nothing can take that away.

What are the internal changes and transformations you're experiencing in your life these days?  Are you clear of your identity and what it's based upon?  Do you possess a centered and grounded sense of who you are and where your value comes from?  Do you have that "softer orientation to life" that comes from living with love instead of fear?  Do you have a peace and security regardless of what's happening in your external world?

Next time I find myself face down on the muddy football field, and others think I'm playing ball like Betty White, I think I need to stick something more substantial into my soul than a Snickers bar.

How Hope Can Trump Fear

This last Saturday at Second Wind we began a new series ("Applying Your  Spirituality To This Week's Glocal Hot Spot") in which we're taking a very current event happening in the world and asking what the story tells us about the journey of spirituality.  How does this event inform and shape our spirituality so that we develop a real-world kind of spirituality, a perspective on faith and the spiritual life that works in real life, that embraces contemporary life in a relevant way.  Saturday we focused on the story unfolding in Chile with the 33 trapped miners which has already broken the record for the number of days miners have been imprisoned underground.   Experts are predicting that it will be at least another 3 months before the men are able to be rescued, provided more collapses don't take place.  A heartbreaking story, to say the least. Imagine if you were a family member or one of the miners.  How would you be feeling?  What would keep you alive and hanging on?  Would you hope for a good ending, even if the possibility existed that it might not happen?  Would you allow hope to set you up for a potential catastrophic disappointment?  Does hope work?

The Washington Post last week reported about Jerry Linenger  who was the only American on the Mir space station in 1997 when a small fire caused a crisis that left him isolated in space for four months with two Russian astronauts. Cut off from his family and facing a lot of stress, Linenger endured a period of uncertainty that provides a good parallel to what the 33 Chilean miners are facing.

The initial explosion terrified and galvanized the crew of six. After the fire, the connection between the two modules that made up the space station was cut, leaving Linenger alone with the Russians. Over the next months, the Mir lost its oxygen generator and had serious trouble with the carbon dioxide scrubber. The toilets malfunctioned, and communications broke down. But the worst aspect, Linenger said, was being led to expect something that failed to materialize.

"Expectations unmet are a horrible thing," Linenger recalled, "especially when you're already psychologically stressed. The biggest dips for me and the others is when we were told something would happen and it didn't."

Among the many examples he could point to, the one that remains raw after 13 years is when he was told he would be able to speak with his pregnant wife at a time when potentially life-threatening problems had begun to mount.  "They said I could talk to her for a short time as we passed over a ground antenna near Moscow," he remembered, "and I prepared for a week. I wrote down what I would say and then crossed things off and added new ones. I was so excited. But the time came, they said she was on the line, and all I got was static. And then another emergency started and we were cut off entirely. After that, I expected nothing and was psychologically more healthy."

What do you make of Linenger's conclusion?  Is it healthier to simply not hope, to not have expectations, in order to prevent disappointment?

Though I can appreciate the need to try to minimize emotional pain from loss and grief (I've gone through this many times myself), the truth is that according to recent neuroscience about brain formation and function, hope is one of the most significant brain functions to not only taking away fear but also to producing profound life transformation.

As we know, our brains were originally wired for fear responses - it was to protect humans from being gobbled up by predators - it's the basis for the fight or flight response.  And according to recent research, fear is so wired into our brains that the brain actually "senses" fear-producing stimuli even at an unconscious level (before we recognize it).  When something dangerous occurs outside of awareness, the conscious brain reacts to it.  In other words, as experts are telling us, your brain prepares you to respond to danger faster than it does to other tasks, and it starts to respond to frightening things before you even realize they are frightening.

And unless this wiring tendency is proactively dealt with, fear always trumps everything.  And when we live in fear, our stress levels stay heightened, causing us to live on increased cortisol which keeps our physical and emotional systems over-stimulated and thereby more susceptible to disease and deterioration.

I'm reading a book right now written by Dr. Srinivasan Pillay, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the former director of the Outpatient Anxiety Disorders Program and the Panic Disorders Research Program in the Brain Imaging Center at McLean Hospital.  Dr. Pillay is writing about the recent neuroscience findings about the brain and fear and how to overcome the tendency to be paralyzed from from fear:  Life Unlocked:  7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear.

He says that hope is the choice to make the assumption that something is possible.  Instead of allowing the facts to justify fear, we use hope to reveal new facts and remove the fears.  This is precisely what people like former South African president Nelson Mandella, world-class athlete and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, and countless others have done every day.  Rather than wait for their fears to disappear or for facts to back up their hope, they used hope to create new facts and reach their goals.

According to brain science discoveries, hope and fear both wander around in the unconscious parts of our brains.  They both require amygdala activation, and whichever one is stronger will win the amygdala for its own use (the amgydala is the almond-shaped part of the brain, a mass of nerve cell bodies, designed to be the danger alert system, "the guard dog of the human brain."  "It's so powerful and efficient that it alerts us to danger in our environment within tens of milliseconds of detecting it.").

Dr. Pillay's point is this:  "To be processed by the amygdala, emotions have to stand in a queue, with their order determined by their strength - the strongest soldier gets to the front of the line.  If fear is strongest, then it will grab the amygdala's power and dominate all the other soldiers in the line.  If hope is stronger, then it will be preferentially processed over fear ... So we have to develop a strategy to help hope 'bulk up' and have an intelligence that supersedes the intelligence of fear.  This isn't easy because, as we've learned, our brains are structured so that the amygdala processes fear first in order to protect us from danger."  (p. 52-3)

This certainly explains why it's easier for us to give in to the impulse of fear instead of building hope.  But it also explains why it's so important for us to choose hope, to give intentional attention to hope and what it is we're hoping for.  Regularly imagining the state of life that hope is directed to.  Those specific activities build up our hope response.  And when we hope, says Dr. Pillay, we stimulate out brain center (amygdala) to use its mass of nerve pathways to empower our bodies to act in harmony with that hope instead of short-circuiting it with fear.

Hope isn't a naive, feel-good fantasy approach to life.  It's central to using our brain structure to facilitate positive, profound life transformation.  We do need fear, too.  We need to feel fear to keep us from dangerous situations - we need the fight or flight response for survival.  But we can't live there - we end up destroying our systems if we do.  So we must "bulk up" hope.  We must choose to imagine what we truly want our lives to become.  We must spend time directing our attention to that picture.  We must allow our emotional, rational, physiological systems to mobilize us toward that preferred future.

No wonder many of the sacred scriptures of the great faith traditions talk about hope and setting our minds and hearts on the object of our hope.  "Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see."  (Hebrews 11:1)  Confidence.  Assurance.  And the rest of that chapter describes how those qualities lead to dramatic and transforming action.  Maintaining that kind of hope is what empowers us to take necessary steps to bring it into reality.

It's significant that all the families of the 33 trapped Chilean miners are staying on the mining site in a tent village that they're calling Camp Hope.  They are choosing to stay focused and to embrace hope.  Like Elizabeth Segovia, the wife of one of the trapped miners (reported by CNN).  The day before the tragic mine collapse, she received a piece of great news - she was pregnant with a girl - an ultrasound had confirmed it.  The next day, her world collapsed.  She cried and cried.  As the weeks went by, she found herself talking to her baby girl inside her, "Daddy's okay?  Daddy's okay!  It's going to be alright!"

Last Thursday, Segovia got a handwritten letter from her husband Ticona proposing they name their daughter Esperanza Elizabeth -- esperanza is Spanish for hope.  "First, because we never lost hope," she said, and "second, because it's the name of the camp where the families are living; and third, because the 33 miners never lost hope either."

With her daughter due to arrive in less than two weeks, and her husband due to arrive in perhaps four months, Segovia plans to make a video of the birth to ensure he doesn't miss it altogether.  "We have to record the birth in great detail, as well as everything that happens to my baby day by day so we can show him," she said.

What do you need to hope for in your life?  What is your preferred future?  What do you need to hang on to in order to stimulate your brain center into powerful action?  Where are you most fearful?  Is your fear paralyzing you?  Can renewed hope in you create new facts to bolster that hope and bring transformation?  Esperanza.  Hope. Best to hang on to it!

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Two Ways To Boosting Your Wellbeing

True happiness, said comedian Bob Monkhouse, is when you marry a person for love and later discover that they have money. We all appreciate the joke, of course, because though one side of us knows that a loving relationship provides a good chance of happiness the other thinks it would be guaranteed if that relationship made us rich as well.  Imagine it:  true love plus lots of money!  What more could you ask for!  Happiness guaranteed.  It's like my dad would say to me when I was in college (tongue in cheek, I'm sure):  "Remember, Greg, money isn't everything.  But if you happen to marry someone with money, it won't hurt. " And yet we all know - and study after study confirms it - money doesn't buy lasting happiness.  In fact, as it turns out, nothing produces lasting happiness in a one shot deal.  A sense of wellbeing, the ability to thrive with joy in life, is more complicated than that.  Behavioral economists and economic psychologists coined the contributing problem the "hedonic treadmill" - our expectations rise with our incomes, material possessions, or other positive experiences so that the happiness we seek remains just out of reach.  It's like we're caught on a treadmill, working hard, and getting nowhere.  We have to keep working just to stay in the same place.

James Montier (global equity strategist for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and author of the report entitled It Doesn’t Pay: Materialism and the Pursuit of Happiness) described it this way:  "In other words, we quickly get used to new things and they become part of our norm. We might get a new fast car and at first be out washing it every weekend but six months later we have become accustomed to it, the kids have scuffed up the seats in the back and the boot is full of dog hairs.  This is hedonic adaptation at work . . . material possessions are likely to be assimilated relatively fast.”  And like you and I have experienced, we're off to find the next new happiness-inducing experience.  The treadmill keeps going.

So can you do anything about this cycle?  Some experts say, "It's simple.  Just reduce your expectations so you don't experience the discrepancy between expectation and experience."  The theory is, if you have low expectations, you won't get disappointed.  Just be Zen about it all and live in the now.  Buddha's point was:  since desire is the root of all suffering, the solution is to simply get rid of desire.  Live without want and you'll never want of anything.

Certainly learning the art of managing our desires is important.  But it might not solve the whole problem.  Happiness, or a sense of thriving and being fulfilled, wellbeing, is impacted by both our expectations and experiences.  So rather than denying that reality, perhaps there is a way to shape them in ways that actually pay off.

A recent study reported in the Journal of Economic Psychology (2008) suggested two powerful ways that increase a person's wellbeing and happiness.  First, the principle authors acknowledged how many studies have shown that few events in life have a lasting impact on subjective well-being because of people’s tendency to adapt quickly; worse, those events that do have a lasting impact tend to be negative.  And second, their research showed "that while major events may not provide lasting increases in well-being, certain seemingly minor events – such as attending religious services or exercising – may do so by providing small but frequent boosts: if people engage in such behaviors with sufficient frequency, they may cumulatively experience enough boosts to attain higher well-being."

In this study they surveyed participants before they attended religious services or exercised and others as they left these activities.  Study 1 showed that people reported higher well-being after religious services, and Study 2 showed a similar effect for attending the gym or a yoga class. Equally important, frequency of engaging in these activities was a positive predictor of people’s baseline wellbeing, suggesting that these small boosts have a cumulative positive effect on well-being.

Imagine that.  You can boost your experience of wellbeing by going frequently to church (at least once a week) and to the gym or yoga class (at least several times a week).  The positive effect from frequency is cumulative - it increases your wellbeing more and more, as opposed to dropping off dramatically like after a major event or purchase is over.

"The key for long lasting changes to wellbeing is to engage in activities that provide small and frequent boosts, which in the long run will lead to improved well-being, one small step at a time."

It's interesting that oftentimes people will become involved in spiritual community on a "I'll go when I really feel like it" basis.  But if they're particularly tired one week, the motivation isn't there to get up and go, or it doesn't seem like it really matters much in the long run if they miss for awhile.  And yet, in the physical exercise and trying-to-get-in-shape arena, we all acknowledge the reality that you have to be regular and stay regular to reap the real cumulative benefits.  Which means going even when you might not feel like going.  And going regularly.

This happiness research is pretty significant - if you want your wellbeing to be boosted, you have to be frequent and regular.  Even engaging in what some might consider to be "small" activities (like church or exercise), when engaged in often, raise your wellbeing and experience of thriving.

This study certainly corresponds to numerous research done in the last 10 years about the positive overall health impact of spiritual community and regular attendance.  UC Berkeley's School of Public Health reported on a major study several years ago about the connection between faith and health.

Using data collected over a period of 31 years and involving 6,545 adults in Alameda County, non-churchgoers were found to have a 21 percent greater overall risk of dying sooner compared to those who attend religious services at least once a week.  Even after controlling for potentially confounding variables (like gender, current health, income, education, etc.), additional trends were noted, including a 66 percent greater risk of dying from respiratory diseases and a 99 percent greater risk with digestive diseases among those not attending religious services.  Regular involvement in supportive and meaningful spiritual community was linked with lower blood pressure, fewer deaths from cardiovascular disease, less depression, and a decrease in earlier death from all causes.

Study coauthor William Strawbridge of the Public Health Institute attributes the health benefits highlighted in the study to the networks within religious congregations.  "The church attendance aspect involves the interaction between people," he said. "Basically it's these relationships that are good for health," coupled with the accompanying attention to life issues and spiritual growth and development in the context of supportive community.

So, want to give a boost to your wellbeing?  It apparently won't be coming from that "retail therapy" we often feel tempted by.  It won't even be come from winning the lottery we all dream of.  But apparently it will involve not hitting the snooze button this weekend and instead making your way to a spiritual community of people who will support you on your journey.  And then hitting the gym afterward will be the icing on the cake! :)  Go figure!

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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness ... 2 out of 3 Ain't Bad!

How happy would you say you are right now or recently?  Is it possible to really tell whether or not you're happy at the moment?  Is it a quantifiable experience or feeling?  Have you discovered what it is that truly makes you happy?  Are you pursuing that? Happiness is one of those intriguing things, isn't it.  We all seem to identity different things that we feel are sources of happiness for us - loving family, nice home, good job, healthy income, meaningful relationships, the latest electronic gadgets or technology, going out to eat at a great restaurant, good health, a spa day.  The list is endless.  Does this mean it takes different things to make different people happy?

And have you noticed that often when you possess the very things you feel would make you happy the happiness tends to wear off a bit in time?  What's that all about?  Is that normal?  Does it mean that you simply misidentified what it is that genuinely contributes to your happiness?  So if you could just land on the right thing, you'd finally be happy?

We live in a culture that is almost obsessed with happiness.  In fact, it's wired into the very fabric of our Constitution as Americans - sentence two in the Declaration of Independence - our unalienable right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  And boy have we Americans taken seriously our pursuit of happiness!  So you'd think that the earnestness of our pursuit would result in a truly happy existence.

And yet every poll and survey taken in recent years about American's happiness indicates the exact opposite.  Americans are less happy now that they've ever been.  Our standard of living is higher than ever.  Our income is higher.  The amount of possessions we own (including the proverbial right to own our own house) is greater. We have more opportunities accessible to us than ever.  And yet our happiness is at an all time low.  What's up?

The New Yorker printed a book review by John Lanchester in which he said, "The simplest kind of unhappiness is that caused by poverty. People living in poverty become happier if they become richer—but the effect of increased wealth cuts off at a surprisingly low figure. The British economist Richard Layard, in his stimulating book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, puts that figure at fifteen thousand dollars, and leaves little doubt that being richer does not make people happier. Americans are about twice as rich as they were in the nineteen-seventies but report not being any happier; the Japanese are six times as rich as they were in 1950 and aren’t any happier, either. Looking at the data from all over the world, it is clear that, instead of getting happier as they become better off, people get stuck on a 'hedonic treadmill': their expectations rise at the same pace as their incomes, and the happiness they seek remains constantly just out of reach."

This notion of a "hedonic treadmill" is quite helpful.  When I work out at the gym and run on the treadmill, it doesn't matter how fast a speed I set it at, how hard and fast my legs are going, whether I set it on an incline or decline, how hard my lungs are working to breathe and get sufficient oxygen to my muscles - no matter how good my health and conditioning are, I remain in the same spot - everything else in my body is working harder but I'm not getting anywhere.  The proverbial rat race.

I've experienced the hedonic treadmill numberous times in my life.  I remember some years ago living up in the Puget Sound and standing on the shore looking longingly out at the sailboats.  How I wished I could be out there!  If I could just have a boat to sail on, I'd be happy!  And then I got one.  Fun and happiness had at last arrived.

And then I was sailing up one of the channels in the Sound on a beautiful day.  And suddenly, as I looked at the beautiful houses nestled up to the shore, I caught myself thinking, "Wouldn't it be amazing to live in a house right on the edge of the water and have such beautiful, inspirational views every day!"  If I could just be in one of those homes on the Sound I would be happy!

And it hit me - the hedonic treadmill - I had achieved one of my happiness goals and was still wanting more.  My expectations had risen at the same pace as my increased possessions.  When would there ever be enough?  Could I ever outpace my happiness treadmill?  Could I ever come to the point where I actually said, "Okay, now I have everything I need to be completely and absolutely happy.  From here on out, my life will always have happiness."

The experts in the field of positive psychology (who have led the movement of the study of human happiness) talk about a "set point" that every person has when it comes to happiness.  In other words, no matter what additional input we receive or achieve that drives up our feeling of happiness, we will always return to a natural level of happiness.  And since people have different set points from each other, we can never use "the Joneses" as an accurate standard of measurement for our own experience of happiness.  The idea of having to keep up with the Joneses is a faulty paradigm (even though so many people operate their lives with this kind of comparison).

Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, in his book The Happiness Hypothesis, described a comparison study done with lottery winners and paraplegics.  Contrary to everything you might think, “in the long run, it doesn’t much matter what happens to you,” Haidt concluded. "Though it’s better to win the lottery than to break your neck, it's not by as much as you’d think. . . . Within a year, lottery winners and paraplegics had both (on average) returned most of the way to their baseline levels of happiness.”

As the hedonic treadmill principle indicates, our internal expectations and desires tend to increase or decrease with our external circumstances so that in the end no net gain or loss is experienced.  And we end up returning to our natural set point of happiness.

So why do we spend so much time and energy trying to pursue all of the things we're being told make us happy when a true net gain of happiness never happens in the long run?  Why do we spend so much time complaining that we don't have this or that when none of those things will genuinely increase our level of happiness?

One historian, commenting on The Declaration of Independence's emphasis on the unalienable right to the "pursuit of happiness" makes a powerful observation.  The eighteenth-century understanding of the word “pursuit” was rather darker than it might seem now.  Dr. Johnson’s dictionary defined it as “the act of following with hostile intention.”  Maybe the writers of the Declaration were trying to tell us something important?  "Go ahead, pursue happiness if you want.  You are guaranteed the freedom to that pursuit.  But if you make that choice, engage with and follow happiness as a hostile foe - something you can try to conquer but very possibly might never possess.  It might conquer you.  So perhaps it be a wiser tack to declare your independence from that hostile pursuit?"

So are you and I stuck on the hedonic treadmill of happiness?  Is it possible to get off it?  Is there any hope for a life of genuine happiness?  What would that life look like if it were possible?  Stay tuned.

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Where Do You Want To Be When The Earthquake Hits?

''I think the safest place in San Francisco in a major earthquake is the Bank of America.'' That statement is amazing, considering that the Bank of America building in San Francisco's financial district is the second tallest skyscraper in the city.  For most of us, the thought of being in such a tall building during a big earthquake is enough to force us into an emergency potty break!

But those words were spoken by Dr. Mario Salvadori, a New York engineer who has written several standard texts on structural engineering, immediately following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco which ended up causing the collapse of some major highways, sections of bridges, and some buildings, killing several hundred people.  He's an expert.  But his statement feels so counter-intuitive, doesn't it?

Then he explained himself:  ''We design high-rises so that their structures will stand up.  They are flexible enough to vibrate and sway, but not break up. If there are cracks, they are in things like partitions and windowpanes, not the basic frame. ''

Apparently, in planning for earthquakes, engineers today have come to value flexibility more than strength. For example, small elements of the infrastructure like gas lines and water mains are often designed with elastic loops so they bend rather than break.

Buildings are more flexible too. Dr. Salvadori compares a faulty building to a dry old tree, strong but liable to break under heavy winds, and a well-engineered one to a reed, lighter, more resilient and less likely to snap.

''A building's ability to absorb motion is as important as its ability to withstand collapse,'' said Robert Silman, a New York structural engineer.

The need for flexibility was well understood by one architect who lacked the benefits of today's advanced engineering. In his design for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, completed in 1923, Frank Lloyd Wright placed the building on a foundation that resembled floating pads. The hotel was virtually the only major downtown building to survive the earthquake that devastated Tokyo that year.

Flexibility.  Ability to absorb motion.  Pliable.  Resilient.  Bendable.  Nonrigid.  Hard to imagine words like these being used to describe stable skyscrapers.  And yet it's true.  And as counter-intuitive as it might seem, the same words apply to effective life and spirituality.

Learning how to hold life with an open hand, learning how to be flexible and nonrigid, learning how to adapt and change when necessary, learning when it's important to compromise and share, are not easy things to do.  What is often too easy to do is putting people (including ourselves) and life experiences and even God into boxes of simplistic expectations and definitions.  We think that by being able to define someone or something clearly enough we can be more secure in our experiences.  Our expectations can be fulfilled.  Everything will work out just the way we hoped and expected and carefully planned.

But people, life, and especially God are not that predictable.  Isn't that what quantum mechanics is teaching us - the universe is not as orderly and simplistic as Isaac Newton once thought.  Sub-atomic particles act in often random and unexpected ways.  Things can't always be reduced to cause and effect.

A man in one of my congregations years ago was the epitome of physical health, radically advocating a vegan diet as the only remedy for illness and a medically sound life including salvific spirituality.  He ended up dying of cancer.  Not exactly his predicted and proclaimed outcome.

Some parents I knew years ago did everything "right" (according to the parenting books and their view of Scripture).  One of their daughters ended up getting pregnant during her teen-aged years and running away from home.  Not exactly according to hoped for or predicted outcomes.

I knew a husband whose paradigm of marriage was that as long as he provided the necessary comforts of living for his wife she would be happy and fulfilled in their marriage.  "I bring home 'the bacon' and she'll be happy."  He couldn't figure out why she was expressing such high dissatisfaction.

Let's face it.  Sometimes our expectations and perspectives are simply misguided.  But even when we're right, the outcomes aren't guaranteed.  Life is messier and more unpredictable than that.  And all the experts remind us that unless we are willing to live with a degree of flexibility and nonrigidity, unless we learn how to live with an open hand and develop an ability to be pliable and absorb change, we'll live with disappointment, disillusionment, and resentment.  We can't put people much less God in boxes of our own construction and think we've figured them all out and can therefore know exactly what to expect.

One of the radically transforming views of God in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is the reality that God often acts in unpredictable ways.  Who would've thought God would show up in a burning bush (like God did with Moses)?  Who would've thought God would bring water out of rocks to quench the Israelites' thirst in the desert on their way to the Promised Land?  Who would've expected the incarnated God to show up as a tiny baby in a feeding trough in a cave in Palestine?

Don't put God in a predictable box, says scripture.  God is beyond our limited imagination and expectations.  Be open.  Be pliable.

And then Jesus ends up by shaping the same paradigm for fellow humans.  "When you feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and honor the enslaved, you are doing those things to me." It was this radical, unexpected spiritual paradigm that motivated Mother Teresa to spend her life caring for poor, dying children on the streets of Calcutta.  "Every child I hold in my arms is in fact Jesus," she said.  Who would've thought that the homeless person on the street corner, or the unreasonable boss down the hall, or the obtuse spouse in your bed, was in fact Jesus?  And the truth is that even Jesus defied popular expectations and predictions with his nonconformist behavior.

We can't put each other in predictable, self-limiting boxes, either, without doing disservice to each other and minimizing our ability to love and serve in meaningful ways.  We can't put each other in strait jackets and hope to have deep and fulfilling relationships.  We have to hold each other with open hands, leaving room for the unexpected and unknown about each other, being willing to change and move with the shifting motion of life.  It's an art form that takes lots of practice and patience!  I'm still working on my 10,000 hours on this one (see my last blog post).

And life continues to show that the unmovable, the rigid, the unbendable end up breaking.

Here's the way the Tao Te Ching (authored by the 6th century B.C. Chinese spiritual philosopher Laozi) puts it:

"A man is born gentle and weak. At his death he is hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At their death they are withered and dry. Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life. Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken. The hard and strong will fall. The soft and weak will overcome." (Tao Te Ching, LXXVI)

I'll never forget being on the 23rd floor of our apartment building during the big earthquake in Seattle 8 years ago.  I was astounded at how much the building swayed - so much so that I thought for a moment we were going over!  But then I was told that we were experiencing exactly what the building had been designed to do in an earthquake.  Phew!  Definitely counter-intuitive!

Structural engineers are obviously on to something when it comes to quake-proofing buildings - develop strong structures but keep them flexible and pliable and bendable.  So when the Big One hits San Francisco, I hope I'm in the Bank of America building!