100% Happy 88% of the Time (Copy)
Today - the day I am writing this -
Though not necessarily the day you are reading it ofc -
Is 8/8
Double infinity.
Beautifully impossible.
Once upon a time
I noticed I was tracing the figure 8
With my index finger on my thumb.
As if one part of me
Was trying to communicate to another part of me.
Something that seemed so obvious
But I wasn’t getting.
Hey honey.
You keep thinking about limitations.
But check this out.
I’d be watching a movie.
Or talking to my agent.
Or sitting at my computer
Cursing the cursor.
And then I’d notice.
My index finger
Doing figure 8’s.
Infinity signs.
But - I mean what was I supposed to do with that?
I don’t know honey
Why don’t you ask the 8 Ball?
And then my friend BEK
You know him from his genius cartoon in The New Yorker
Or maybe his TV writing or books.
Bruce suggested I should shift my workshops
From The Comedians Way to
How to be happy - or something like that.
Happiness?
I’d always considered happiness kind of borgoise.
But you know one day you wake up and you’re miserable
And suddenly happiness
Doesn’t seem so bougie any more.
Anyway - Bruce is one of those friends you listen to.
I hope you have some friends like that.
You don’t talk to them very often
And they happen to be kind of a genius
And they have perspective.
And they just see stuff.
So I started playing around with it.
And doing a little research.
And one thing really hit me.
Your own happiness
Impacts people like 10 degrees of separation,
Your happiness impacts
Friends of friends of friends of friends
Of friends,
And even more than that.
And even people who aren’t friends.
Literally increasing your happiness vibration
(And ofc using the word happiness here
The same way we use God.
To mean so much more.
Peace of mind - centeredness - joy - equanimity - inspiration
Whatever your combo plate is.)
Is one of the most impactful ways thing you have
Of changing the world.
I’m not saying the more direct ways of changing the world
Political action - kindness - etc aren’t effective
But they actually do make you feel happier usually.
It’s all connected.
So. Ok I was in.
Sitting and thing about happiness and perpetually noticing
I am tracing infinity signs on my hand.
And then I started noticing
That so many of the happiness gurus
Seemed to be saying that if you did their things
You would actually be happy.
And I just started feeling like they were approaching it
As if it was a linear progress.
You’d start at unhappy.
Get to fine.
Then eventually be happy.
But I kept thinking about the infinity sign.
And how much I felt like it described some essential truth.
Life isn’t linear.
It’s curved.
Sometimes an infinity sign.
Sometimes a circle.
Sometomes a spiral.
Almost never a straight line.
And I thought well
What if you take that line
And bring the two ends together.
You see that happy and unhappy are so close.
And fine is all the way down at the bottom.
And what a shlep it is
To get up to happy from being fine.
But if you are willing to be unhappy
It’s just a little leap
Over to happiness.
Of course if you take that little space
And bring it into the lab
And blow it up 10k times
You see it’s a pit of demons.
So just jump right over that.
Performing 100% Happy 88% of the Time at the Hollywood Improv
And I started to think
That maybe
One of the secrets of happiness
Was the willingness to be unhappy.
Because of course change makes us unhappy.
But the have to change to be happy.
Because life is change.
And that willingness
Is part of the equation.
I thought about the infinity sign I was tracing on my thumb.
Ok what about it?
Well what if I tried for being 100% happy
88% of the time.
And being 100% unhappy
12% of the time.
It felt right.
Of course it was silly.
Almost none of us can be 100% happy even 1% of the time.
I mean maybe some kids.
You see those moments.
It’s truly awesome.
But the 88% 12% part felt right.
And I started to live that way.
I started to be willing to be uncomfortable.
Feel emotions I’d been blocking.
Thinking my way out of.
Doing spiritual bypassing on.
And of course it doesn’t go day by day.
Sometimes there’s a year.
Or even two that are part of the 12%
For a lot of people it was 2016-2020.
Sometimes you can take that 12% everyday form 3-5.
But especially for creatives
You need access to all those feelings>
And you also need to not live there.
We need to be there so we donlt have to be there.
It’s been about 12 years now
Since I listened to that traced 8 on my finger.
And it really revolutionized my life.
Super grateful.
And one of the many reasons
My creativity program is called
The Infinite Creator.
So that’s that.
For now.
Infinitely Yours,
Beth