Think happy thoughts...
Last August, Janet Thurston climbed an astounding 3,350 metres up the glaciated side of a volcano, until she began to shake violently and had trouble speaking. After several months of intensive workouts and thousands of dollars invested in guides, it was not making the next 900 metres to the summit of Mount Rainier in Washington that she was suddenly worried about. It was being unable to get back down. Janet had an advanced case of hypothermia.
But the 49-year-old Winnipeg-based visual artist and breast cancer survivor is not one to succumb to fear. Janet summoned her last ounce of energy and descended the volcano, although to this day she doesn't know how she did it. Afterward, she was able to see the bright side of what could be considered a disappointing adventure. "I learned a lot about myself and about courage," Janet says, and without skipping a beat, she adds, "and the mountain will still be there if I want to try again."
Fighting fear
Janet doesn't claim to be perpetually sunny. Yet her ability to face fear, derive meaning from hardships and see the silver lining in difficult circumstances has endowed her with a deep satisfaction with life.
While fear can have a positive aspect, as is the case with Janet, it can often make us miserable -- but not just in the way we might think, says Dan Baker, a noted medical psychologist based in the United States. In nearly three decades of treating everyone from cardiac patients to those with eating disorders, Baker has come to believe that fear run amok is the greatest enemy of happiness. In his popular book What Happy People Know (Rodale; co-authored with Cameron Stauth), Baker argues that fear of never having enough and never being enough insidiously govern people's lives, keeping us generally unfulfilled and unhappy. The good news is that by focusing on the positive things in your life -- or what you have rather than what you don't have -- you can triumph over fear, creating a happier you.
Positive psychology
"There's a powerful message in the thinking of positive psychology," says Robert J. Flynn, a professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa. "What it says is we will not ignore people's limitations or weaknesses nor the tried-and-true methods for dealing with them, but we will also give equal time to developing their strengths and character. We're not all born optimists but we can learn to be that way."
Happy people create a backup stash of positive feelings by regularly appreciating the people, things and memories they love, for example, feelings that help put the neocortex in the driver's seat, building an immunity for emotional health. The more you practise something -- positive responses to life's setbacks -- the better you are at it so old fears have less power. Happy people instinctively exercise choice and build on their personal power rather than feeling victimized. They speak constructively about their lives and spend their energy building upon their personal strengths to create more meaning and purpose in life.
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