Category: Happiness and Joy

Laughing At Fart Noises

Published on July 8, 2024

Sitting at dinner the other night with some associates, we overheard a group of young teenagers making fart noises and laughing.

Most of the people around (myself included) rolled their eyes and gave that “grow up” kind of look.

One, however, looked at them, slowly took on a face of awe and said, “Man, I miss the days when I could just laugh at fart noises.”

And it was amazing to see how quickly those faces of disapproval melted away.

What a beautiful thing it is, indeed, to be so free of intruding thoughts, overbearing feelings of stress, and learned “adult” behaviors that you’re able to laugh at something so pure and rudimentary.

Maybe the eyes rolled should be turned the other way around.

Maybe instead of growing up, we should be looking for ways we can grow “down.”

Maybe being able to laugh at fart noises is illustrative of an understanding much deeper that many of us modernized, indoctrinated type folks are willing to admit or explore…

P.s. For those who look for it every Sunday, I wasn’t able to get the MoveMe Weekly email done for today. I’ll finish it and get it sent out tomorrow.

An Ounce Of Patience Is Worth A Ton Of (Inner) Peace

Published on June 10, 2024

On my drive to work this morning, I pissed a guy off very much.

While crossing the street in the middle of traffic, he started yelling and swearing at me for driving too… slow… because I didn’t drive past him fast enough which made him slow down his stride and (god forbid) wait an extra few moments before he could finish his jaywalk.

Looking in my rear view mirror, he didn’t continue in any kind of hurry either… just continued walking across the street, mumbling to himself, with anger oozing from his mannerisms.

The experience as a whole couldn’t have cost the guy anything more than 10 seconds. And yet, probably cost him upwards of at least 10 minutes from his exacerbated response… maybe even hours—who knows. And here I am, furthermore, thinking about it and writing about it hours and hours later.

Coincidentally, as the universe would have it, I discovered and uploaded a quote to MoveMe Quotes today that said, “Patience is not passive, it is concentrated strength.” And this little experience does a great job exemplifying why.

Ten seconds of patience—concentrated strength—could have given him and me (and anyone else involved) an exponential return in time saved from anger/ frustration/ and irritation… time that could be used instead for joy/ presence/ creative thinking/ etc.

And to those who take the time to develop that concentrated strength and actively flex those patience muscles in their every day lives—thank you. Not only is the ROI phenomenal for you, but it is for all of us. Your strength gives us more time and space to develop ours—and for that I am (we are) grateful.

Remembering What You (Really) Want

Published on April 8, 2024

A person with a lot of money, a person with a medium amount of money, and a person with a little money all laugh hysterically at a joke that’s told… is one person’s laughter more real than the others?

…I’d argue no. Laughter is laughter is laughter.

An extremely attractive person, a medium attractive person, and a not-so-attractive person all dance joyfully and uncaringly on a dance floor… is one person’s joy more real than the others?

…I’d argue no. Joy is joy is joy.

A person with a million followers, a person with 10K followers, and a person with 1 follower all feel butterflies when they see the one they love… is one person’s love more real than the others?

…I’d argue no. Love is love is love.

Once you realize what you’re really after are emotional experiences, and not so much material purchases or vanity metrics… suddenly the game you’ve been playing changes.

All of a sudden, you can change your strategy from adding zeros to your bank account to surrounding yourself with people who make you laugh hysterically; from making yourself look more attractive to making yourself look for more dancing opportunities; from getting more followers to like you to spending more time fully immersed with the one(s) you love.

Don’t get it twisted.

What you’ve been looking for has been available to you this whole time.

…We’ve simply been led to believe otherwise because it’s good for somebody else’s business.

Dude Smiling [Poem]

Published on March 12, 2024

I saw a stranger walking today
Happy as could be
No company
No AirPods
No screens
Just walking rocking that kind of smile
That makes you turn to philosophy

I stopped at a red light
And thought about what it could possibly be
I know I’m not supposed to
But you know what always helps me?
Writing thinking down
Seeing sparked synapsis—bodily electricity
Decoded into text—something black and white
Or 1’s and 0’s if typed into a machine

Could it be excitement?
Could it be love?
Could it be a happenstance memory?
…Now I’m wondering what that smile meant to me.
When’s the last time I rocked a smile like that?
When’s the last time I overflowed
With excitement, love, or a piece of happy history?

Dude’s got me firing, decoding, creating…
And he didn’t even see me
Don’t ever tell me
You don’t matter
You’re unworthy
That you don’t make a difference to us—to me
When a smile from a stranger
Seen for .5 seconds approximately
Can spark electricity into a poem

One that became a gift for you—from me

P.s. You can read my other poems here.

Questions To Snap You Back To Happiness

Published on November 6, 2023

The following was inspired by Claudia Dawson and a Duke University study on Happiness via Recommendo.

First, here’s the Duke University study findings:

(Click here if you can’t see the above infographic).

Next, here’s what Claudia Dawson so brilliantly recommended based on these findings…

“I’ve found the quickest way to dispel unhappiness is to ask myself introspective questions to find the source. Based on these 8 factors of happiness, I would ask myself:

Am I feeling suspicion and resentment?
Am I living in the past (or in the future)?
Am I wasting time and energy fighting conditions I can’t change?
Am I isolating myself or withdrawing from the world?
Am I indulging in self-pity?
Am I expecting too much of myself?

…I then continue the line of questioning to gain more self-awareness or I pivot to an easy gratitude practice, like listing 10 things that make me happy on my fingers. This usually gets me out of my head and back to the present moment, as well as in alignment with the values and experiences that make me happy.”

Finally, here’s my take:

The thing about thinking is that so much of it is done unconsciously (like 99%?). As in, we have no idea that we’re bathing in self-pity, replaying the past, cancelling plans so we can “introvert,” comparing ourselves to the greats, nurturing suspicion, etc…

Don’t take the above insights or questions lightly—this is life-changing stuff. Print / write it all down and display it in a place where you’ll see it regularly.

This way, it’ll snap you out of undesirable (unconscious) thought patterns and back to the place where happiness is much more likely to be found.

The Happiness In Between

Published on June 20, 2023

In a recent newsletter, Mark Manson offered a wonderful analogy for happiness. He said it was like, “Pleasant background music to everything else you do in life.” …He explained how it isn’t the highs; it isn’t the highlights; it isn’t the getting high—it’s the general feeling that arises in the background of it all.

And the more we mistake happiness for the highs in our lives, the more unhappy we’ll be. Because, by definition, the highs can only be few and far between.

The real test of happiness is when there is precisely nothing exciting happening. When there are no extraordinary moments unfolding, no phones out dealing dopamine, and no drugs or alcohol around. When it’s just you inside one of those vast majority moments that exist in-between the highs.

…What does the music sound like? Is it pleasant or is it annoying? Is it something you can even hear?

Here’s my recommendation: as you would create a playlist of songs on your phone to elicit/ facilitate certain moods, so too should you create a playlist of activities in your life that do the same.

Things that aren’t extraordinary in nature, aren’t added to highlight reels, and don’t involve state-altering substances—normal moment things that can help you come into tune with the background music of your life.

Things like screen-free walks, hikes, meditation, art, dance, exercise, journaling, conversation, etc.

Things that are… pleasant.

P.s. Today, I’m thankful for a quiet neighborhood. A place where I can easily tune and re-tune the background song(s) of my life.

Happiness via Subtraction

Published on January 23, 2023

When we remove:

Fear of judgment
Superfluous desires
Unrealistic expectations
Depressive mental environments
Obsessive needs to be happier *than*

What’s left is what was always there—the happiness we once knew that was slowly buried by modern and corrupt influences.

The way to add happiness to our lives isn’t via more… it’s via less.

P.s. I started uploading quotes from Will by Will Smith to MoveMe Quotes. If you’d like to read along, you can get the book here. And you can read the insights I upload for free here.