Things that make you say "Mmmmm" - Talk 13 of 25
Topic: Happiness
Theme: Things that make you say “Mmmmm”
Author: Barry Sweet
Date: January 7, 2018
Video Production by Tim & Karen Morse. Morsephotography.com
I was In a doctor's office years ago… And I read an article on George Lucas, it was right after he had done the very first Star Wars, and they asked him “Well George, now that you're the center of Hollywood and you've got more fame than you can stand and money than you can spend. What do you do with your time?
And he said, “Anything that keeps me engaged.” About that same time in history was when they were doing the studies on Happiness. And the guy that was the proponent of those studies said that the happiest people in the world are people who are “engaged”. It doesn't matter if you're engaged in skydiving, mountain climbing, tennis, reading a book, or crochet… as long as you're engaged… you don't realize you have a self, you don't realize that there is a self, you don't realize that you area self. You're just completely, blissfully, engaged and happy.
I noticed that when I was happy, the essence of what I was saying within myself was “I love this…”. And whenever I was saying the essence of those words (and I didn't even have to say the words), but when I said: “I love this”…
I was happy.
But the nonverbal way of saying it (which was a vocal way) is to say “Mmmm” because when you say “Mmmm”… You're happy! And then I noticed that there's a physiological response that goes along with it, where you roll your eyes back in your head and you go “Mmmm”. And that says “I'm happy” So then I wondered if I could run that whole thing in reverse and if I could say “I love this” and roll my eyes back in my head and make myself feel happy.
And I realized I could do it right now. Go ahead… try it right now… it works! When you go “Mmmm” it makes that feeling inside of you, so it's cool! I sort do sort of reverse engineering on emotions to see if I could trigger them.
And about that same time, I saw an editorial on TV with Alan Alda doing a tour around an art museum that was given by a robot. The developers had developed a robot that would go around the museum and it would go 11.5 feet and it would turn to the wall and it would say “This is the Water Lilies painted by Claude Monet in 1919.” And then it would turn, and go along the wall 15.2 feet and would turn to the wall and say This is the Bal du Moulin de la Galette by August Renoir that was painted in 1876. And then would turn to the wall and go 8.1 feet and then it would say “And this is the Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte by George Serrat painted in 1884… And it would take people around the museum and they were delighted by it because suddenly this robot was giving a tour of the museum!
Since everybody loved it so much, the second generation of the robot designers decided they would give the robot two things: Courtesy and Emotion. They built two sets of diode bars into the chest of the robot and the first set was 10 diode bars of green… and the next set was 10 diode bars of red.
And if it would go an hour… and it wouldn't bump into anything… then it would get a green diode bar (because the museum was open for 10 hours) So it was one hour bar for every one of the 10 hours. If it would go another hour and it hadn’t been bumping into anything, it would get another green diode bar. And then if it would go an hour and it would bump into something, it would get a red diode on the bar and it would say “Oh excuse me…!” and then if it would bump into something again, it get another red diode and it would say “Oh pardon me again…! And then if it would bump into something again it would say “Where are your parents?!” Because it would know that it was kids screwing with it, because things aren't in the way of the robot in the museum.
And so at the end of the day, they would say to the robot “Well, how was your day…?” And if it had more green than red on its diode bars, it would say “Oh I had a really good day!” And if it had more red than green it would say “Oh I had a ba-a-d day”. And if it had about 50/50… They’d say “How was your day?” and the robot would say “Aww, it was all right…” And I thought “Man, I am just like that… If I have a smooth road day and my bride says “Barry how was your day?” I say “It was great! I just loved it. Everything went so right!”. And if I have a bad day with lots of roadblocks or bad roadblock day, I’d say “Oh, it was a terrible day.” and if I have about 50/50… and she says “How was your day?” I’d say. “Aww, I was all right…”.
And so that's when I stumbled on this idea of Plus Points. We take things and put them around our house, little paintings or a photograph, or a sculpture or some candles, things that when we walk by… make us go “Mmmm… I love that ”. And we choose a partner in life, so that when we come home we say “Mmmm…I love you”. And what it does is give us a little green diode bar… a green on our diode bar… So that at the end of the day, you have more green than red. And I started then to realize that you could, if you had had a bad day, and just left life up to itself… but you did what I called a “Manually Inserted Plus Point”. In other words, you’d say “I've had something really hard to happen, I'm going to go take five minutes just lay in the sun”, or “I've had a rough morning, I’m going to call that person makes me laugh all the time”. You can actually Manually Insert some green diodes on your bar and then maybe overbalance your bad day.
But diodes are not all created equal, Plus Points are not all created equal. Your grandmother can't die and then you just go lay in the sun for five minutes and that balances it out… but you get the point. You can have more intentionality in your day by doing some MIPPs Manually Inserted Plus Points.
Then I learned about the research studies done by Emoto, who took some beakers of water and put labels on them like “Peace” and “Happiness” and “Laughter” and “Joy” and “Kindness”. He then froze that water and put the crystals under the slide scope and took photographs of them and they're beautiful, they're perfectly-shapen with these gorgeous snowflake patterns that are inspiring and beautiful and pretty and symmetrical. And then he took some other beakers of water and put words like “Kill” “ Hatred” “Murder” “Lying” “Theft” “Rape”. And he took those molecules, froze them and put them under the slide scope and they were all mis-shapen and grossly formed. And then he took the water that was pretty… switched it with the labels that were awful, and then the water actually changed shapes.
And so you know we’re made up of a bunch of water… and I think we might want to be careful of the self-talk that we do, and the things we say to ourselves maybe we're changing our water chemistry. And the clothes that we wear that have things on them… we might want to think about what we're wearing. If those studies are true… And then I went so far as to think “Gosh, I'd love to contact the Tyvek company. You know, that wraps houses in waterproof paper before they put the siding on… and have a whole line of Tyvek that says “Happiness, Peace, Kindness, Love”.
And I just wonder what that would do to live in your house that was shrink wrapped with that stuff, as opposed to a house that said: “Murder, Killing, Death, Cruelty”. I’ve got a suspicion (and I don't know if I'm right). It's only a suspicion… that your life might be different in those homes. And because I believe these wild ideas, when I painted Sierra's bedroom when she was a little girl, before I changed the colors of the house, I took the paint roller and I wrote “I love you” with the roller and let it dry.
And then I painted over it … and who knows if it made a difference in her life at all. Who knows…?
So since happiness is so important… I hire primarily philosophers and comedians because when I come in (and the rangers are not working with visitors planning dream wilderness trips)… they're either belly laughing with their feet in the air or they're in a deep philosophical conversation about life… And I'm not the kind of boss that comes in and says “Hey! What’s everybody laughing about!?!” I’m the kind of boss that comes in and says “Hey! What’s everybody laughing about…??” (because I want to get in on it!).
And it's rich to live a life with philosophers and comedians. It's rich in depth. It's rich in fun. And we all consider ourselves SOL (which is Students of Life) and we sit at the feet of life, just learning and trying to figure out how this planet works and how we can live it well, so that when we're done, we say “Ahhh, Well done… Well done… Well done life. Do Life Well.