What's Making Me Happy This Week: Chocolate Meditation

Meditation is ridiculously good for you. On a quest for happiness, it should probably rank right up there behind getting enough sleep, exercise, and gratitude.

Meditation reduces anxiety, depression, tension, sadness, and reactivity to stress. It improves memory, self-awareness, goal-setting, and empathy. On a physical level, it increases immune response, and decreases blood pressure.

I could go on, or you could just watch this two and a half minute AsapSCIENCE video, "The scientific power of meditation."

(AsapSCIENCE videos also make me happy. I watch them with my 10-year-old and don't even feel guilty about the screen time. Just choose your videos carefully. We opted out of "Does penis size matter?" for example.)

And yet ... meditating is difficult. The basic premise is that you clear your mind, inducing an altered state of consciousness and deep physiological rest.

Ha. Just the thought of clearing my mind makes it race.

I've tried mindfulness meditation, concentrative meditation, body scanning meditation, and loving-kindness meditation, all with limited success. But this week, in a meditation workshop I started taking recently, I discovered chocolate meditation.

Take one piece of chocolate (we used Hershey's kisses), and focus on nothing but the chocolate for five minutes. Longer is probably better. Smell it, unwrap it, feel it against your teeth as you bite into it, taste the sweetness spreading through your mouth as the chocolate melts over your tongue.

Now this is meditation I can do. I think I'm supposed to progress to other, less interesting, food like peas and corn, but I'm a beginner. I'll stick with chocolate for awhile.

Actually ... I think I'll go meditate.

What's making you happy this week?

What's Making Me Happy This Week: Social Connection

I embraced the fact that I'm an introvert a long time ago. As a kid, whenever I took my head out of a book long enough to think about it, I puzzled over the gaggles of girls on the playground at recess. What were they accomplishing? How did they never run out of silly things to say to each other? I didn't need them because I had books to read, things to learn.

Maybe that's why I didn't have many friends.

I've come a long way since then. I no longer cross the street to avoid people I know, and I get that the point of small talk is to say to other people, in many more words, "We're in this together."

One of Ellen's great photos from the game on Saturday.

Even more recently and in typical fashion for me, I've realized that there are books and things to learn about gaggles of girls and how they help create happiness. I even finally understand that the whole point of life is to connect with other people. Wow.

People are social creatures with a biological need to belong. We organize ourselves in families, neighborhood watch groups, church congregations, barbershop quartets, soccer teams, book clubs, and drumming circles. People with more friends are healthier, happier, and live longer. They're more resilient, better at coping with stress. Even in the age of Facebook and Instagram, in-person social connection makes people happy. I know it makes me happy.

So I try to override my natural tendencies and put down my book once in awhile.

Take Saturday. My friend Zoe was in town from Baltimore and brought over bagels (with butter) for breakfast. Then I went to Ian's basketball game, where I chatted with my friend Ellen, who came to take photos of the game.

My social energy flagging, I almost forgot about the walk scheduled with another friend. Luckily I made it, because we had a great conversation about being single in a world full of married people, and men and how under-evolved they can be. (Sorry men, but it's true.)

Then at the boys' swim meet -- typically a tedious four-hour test of endurance in a hot, humid room to watch each kid swim for a total of about three minutes -- I got to sit with old friends that I see only rarely. It was completely unexpected. They were there with their daughter, who turns out swims on the other team.

Then a stop at Andrina's to get pizza, and then home to hang out with my favorite friends, my boys.

I felt happy. Really, really happy.

What's making you happy this week?

Happiness Epic Fail: Running

My kids like to watch "epic fail" videos. These are videos of amateurs doing stunts that go horribly wrong.  A man tries to jump off his roof into his backyard pool and misses, a teenager tries to grind

My sister (left) at a cross-country meet, shortly after throwing up.

her skateboard on a stairway handrail and misses, a woman runs into the middle of a frozen pond and falls through.

Think America's Funniest Home Videos with an edge and occasionally even an obviously broken bone.

I have tried a lot of different strategies for fixing my life since my husband died almost four years ago. I'm having some success -- see Serial and My Kids -- but there are some serious epic fails.

For example, there was my attempt to take up biking that ended with me being hit by a car. Epic fail #1.

But even before that, I tried running.

Why shouldn't running fix my life? I could get in shape, work up to 10k races, run a marathon or two and move to the Olympics from there. I would reduce my levels of stress hormones like cortisol, release dopamine into my system, and what about the runner's high?

I used to run all the time, in high school cross-country and track. The photo is of my sister after a cross-country race. Doesn't she look happy?

Well, no. I think she had just thrown up, to be perfectly frank.

Wasn't I happy when I ran? There was the excitement of competition, camaraderie among teammates, a sense of mastery and accomplishment, better sleep at night. Think of any physical, mental, or emotional ailment, and chances are that physical activity will help. Sometimes a lot. 

So I fired up my C25k (Couch to 5k) app, shuffled my jogging playlist on iTunes, and went running. Many times. In fact, I think I've worked through the entire C25k training program four or five times.

But I forgot that running hurts, and only sometimes in ways that are character-building. In high school I used to wish during cross-country races that I would twist my ankle so I wouldn't have to finish. So I could end the pain of running. I never dropped out of a race, and often won, and I have my high tolerance for pain today to thank for that.

But my knees are done. They have done quite enough running for one lifetime, thank you very much.

Turns out running will not fix my life. 

On the positive side, I've been watching Bob's Burgers for the last couple of weeks. It's not going to fix my life either, but it is very funny. (Watch the episode where Tina gets addicted to espresso, "The Unnatural.")

What's making you happy this week?