Teaching youth to be happy – The Gunnar Project

I’ve met someone very special. Someone who has faced unthinkable tragedy and turned it into something beautiful to create positive change.

Anne and Marc Miller. Teaching youth about happiness.

Marc Miller took my Mindfulness Meditation Facilitator Training course when I recently taught it at UC Berkeley.  From the moment we interacted, I immediately knew he was a special person.  Here is his story.

Marc and his wife, Anne, tragically lost their 19 year old son, Gunnar.  Gunnar loved life, loved sports, had lots of friends and always wanted to make others happy.  He overcame an alcohol addiction by getting treatment, then had a skateboarding accident and never woke up.

Gunnar

This extremely difficult and raw experience gave rise to Marc and Anne Miller’s purpose to start The Gunnar Project, which helps define and teach happiness to youth.  They are changing attitudes and lives in a beautiful way.

The Mission of the Gunnar Project:

Connect young adults (actually everyone) to Happiness. 

We are working hard to define Happiness and clearly distinguish it from Happy.

They are defining Happiness as: 

The enjoyable, healthy experience of pleasure, satisfaction or contentment creating a feeling that Life is Good, Meaningful and Worthwhile!

I invite you to visit www.gunnarproject.org to learn more.

I am honoured to know Marc, and wanted to share his story and purpose with you.  We need more people like Marc and Anne in this world to help remind us to appreciate the gift of life, and stop sweating the small stuff.

Marc is now using what he learned in my Facilitator Training course to run guided meditations with youth.

~Wendy Quan, of The Calm Monkey.

 

 

Accept yourself through meditation

Sitting in silence, sitting in acceptance.

Learning to accept the person you are is much easier said than done. Although we probably don’t like to admit it, it hurts when someone doesn’t like us, or judges us unfairly.  Each time it happens it can make us question who we are, and easily turn into feelings of inadequacy.

One of the cornerstones of a good meditation practice is to have no judgment.  When I teach mindfulness and meditation, I explain this as ‘practicing having no judgment at all about you, your meditation practice and simply everything’.  Here is a key phrase that really helps me so I share it with my students:

If you don’t judge,  you can’t get frustrated.

Think about that phrase for a moment . . . and do this:  think about one irritating thing in your life.  Now just for a moment, remove your judgments about this thing or person.  When you do this, doesn’t it completely lighten up how you experience that thing now?  If it doesn’t then you haven’t really removed the judgment, have you.  Try again.

This is a big practice that is much easier said than done.  Meditation can be a wonderful tool to ease the judgments you have in life, and the result is remarkable – more peace in your life.

Now apply that practice to yourself.  If you sit in meditation, say, just a few minutes a day, and practice having no judgment of yourself, imagine how that would cultivate an amazing sense of peace in your life – a sense of self-acceptance.

We are all probably too hard on ourselves on the most part – we don’t feel worthy enough, pretty enough, thin enough, popular enough, wealthy enough…

Here’s a meditation for you:

Identify judgments you have about yourself.  Just sit quietly in meditation and run through things that you judge yourself on.  Then practice removing those judgments.  Feel what it is like when those judgments are gone and you find self-acceptance.

Please try this practice.  I wish you peace and joy in your life.  Happy meditating!

~Wendy Quan, of The Calm Monkey.

11 habits of supremely happy people

Reminders to help us be happy.

When you encounter a really happy person, are you envious or actually just a tiny bit annoyed?

I always like to see research about happiness, because the first thing I do is compare myself to what the scientists say I should be doing.  We all just want to be happy.  I think for most people, it’s hard to be happy all the time, but when I see these little reminders, it helps keep me a little bit more on track.

Here is a list from The Huffington Post about The 11 Daily Habits of Supremely Happy People.  Here are habits that happy people do to reinforce their happiness. How do you fare?

1. They smile
2. They build and nurture relationships
3. They create value
4. They eat healthy
5. They live in the moment
6. They set goals
7. They’re accountable
8. They laugh
9. They’re adventurous
10. They think positive
11. They embrace change

I think they missed two, well, sort of . . . making meditation and mindfulness part of my everyday life have been two of the most important life skills I have adopted.  Mindfulness is about #5 above – living in the moment, but with a non-judgmental attitude. Meditation is also a beautiful way to notice your life, build resiliency and cultivate joy.

As a change manager who teaches meditation, I was glad to see #11 ‘They embrace change’.  I echo this as I see that the people who don’t let workplace change get them down are indeed generally happier people.

Whatever you choose to do, do it with awareness and intention!  Notice how you are living your life. Appreciate the good things in your life.

Wishing you a series of wonderful moments, every day.

~Wendy Quan, The Calm Monkey

 

 

Don’t wait for a death

Create moments to pause

Did this heading catch your attention?  I hope so.  I say this because in the past while I’ve had conversations with a few people who said they finally ‘get it’.  They get that having someone important in their lives die finally made them realize that they need to pay attention to their lives.

Our lives are so busy.  Our lives are overwhelming. There is too much to do. We have to make more money.  We need more time.  If only…

I invite you to take control of your life, and make one change.  That change is to take intentional pauses in your life, every single day.

A pause can be:

• Stopping and taking a moment to just ‘be’.  Take a few deep, slow breaths. You really can fit this into your life, no excuses.  You can do this before you leave your house in the morning, before you start the engine in your car, as you wait for a bus, right after you wash your hands. The possible moments are endless.
• Meditating for 5 minutes each morning when you get out of bed.  You can get wonderful benefits from just 5 minutes of meditation per day, such as decreased anxiety and depression, and creating more joy in your life. Get started with easy guided meditations.

The busier you feel, the more you need this practice.

I am just delighted to talk to people who have discovered this important life practice.  They all tell me that they wish they had realized this sooner.

So don’t let a serious illness or death be the catalyst for change.  Let the desire to have a better life be the catalyst for you to change.

Wishing you peace and calm,

~Wendy Quan, The Calm Monkey