Achieving Happiness Column for 8-29-04 By Tom Muha, Ph.D. How To Feel Fully Alive Are you prematurely dead? Before you give your final answer, you may want to look over the following checklist of what the happiest people on earth say it means to be fully alive: ¨ Your heart is warmed every day when you think of how deeply you are loved. ¨ A contented smile spreads across your face several times a day as you let others know how much you love them. ¨ People are happier when they’re around you. ¨ You break out into a hardy laugh several times during the day. ¨ People constantly seek you out for strength and support. ¨ When your inner critic doubts whether you’re good enough to handle your problems, the optimistic part of you can respond with a resounding “Yes!” ¨ You feel stronger because of the adversity you’ve overcome. ¨ You find yourself deeply moved during the course of your day by the beauty of ordinary moments. ¨ You feel your love of life growing each day. ¨ If you died today, you’d be satisfied with the full life you’ve led. These are characteristics of people who are vibrantly happy. They are the  individuals who have learned how to be in love with life. Those who are flourishing have broken free of the trance induced by rushing through life, distracted by what’s urgent and missing what’s important. They have come to realize that happiness doesn’t derive from what you have or what you do, but is centered around who you are with and how you are with them. They are happy in relationships because they have an abundance of loving interactions. In fact, their love constantly grows stronger as they generate at least five positive connections for every one negative encounter. Parents teach children to be loving by empathizing with their feelings, encouraging them to find ways to transform their negative emotions into positive ones, and then reinforcing their efforts to move toward satisfying solutions. Many of us didn’t have parents who taught us how to manage our emotions in this way, and consequently we are not very good at identifying our feelings, soothing ourselves, and thinking of proactive strategies for producing a positive life. Fortunately, the new science of success and satisfaction has found that you can learn at any age how to have happiness. Positive psychology researcher Suzanne Ouellette Kobasa has discovered that one of the key ingredients of happiness is hardiness, which she defines as “a set of beliefs about oneself, the world, and how they interact. It takes shape as a sense of personal commitment to what you are doing, a sense of control over your life, and a feeling of challenge.” These essential elements are referred to as the three C’s: being committed, controlled, and challenged. Commitment can best be summed up by Admiral Jim Stockdale: “Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties; and at the same time confront the brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be.” Hardiness also requires that you remain in control. Having control means being aware of your negative emotions so that you don’t stay stuck in them for long. The path of the happiest people winds through hell at times, but they consciously choose to savor the precious moments of the present rather than allow their minds to be contaminated by their pain from the past or fear of the future.           The final trait of hardy people is that they see life as a challenge. In fact, people who become more positive as they age understand that their strengths could only have been forged in the hot fires of the hell they’ve endured. The unhappy aspects of life will find you without any effort on your part, although you’ll undoubtedly make significant contributions to your own suffering anyway. People who develop hardiness learn to suspend their emotions when responding to a challenge. They master the art of being in flow, that state in which they are zestfully engaged in working through the catastrophes of life by concentrating on the possibilities for success. No matter your current condition, you can use the three C’s - commitment, control and challenge - to become a hardier person. Happiness comes when you find ways to counterbalance the bad times, making it your job to generate enough joy to offset the junk. Review the checklist again to identify those areas in which you can begin to flourish. Then grab your schedule book and add those activities that will make feel fully alive to your to do list.   Tom Muha is a psychologist in Annapolis. He welcomes your comments and questions. To contact him call (443) 454-7274 or email him at tom@achievinghappiness.com.