Mental Fitness Now™

One of the questions that I am asked quite often at talks, workshops and classes that I facilitate goes something like this: “Are you happier now than you were as a Buddhist monk, leading a relatively simple, worry free life of meditation?”*(see note below)

To this my answer is always emphatically ‘yes’ for the following reason: I am happier now because, since moving back into the life of a layman, I have been practising and repeating the basic happiness skills that I learned as a Buddhist monk repeatedly for many years and I have got better at them. As a result my happiness has steadily improved year in, year out over the seven or eight years since I left the ordained life.  I can also say with confidence that my basic happiness levels will improve steadily in the years to come. This has happened in spite of the added potential stress that comes from running a business, starting a family and all of the other aspects of ordinary life that can be causes of worry and anxiety.

For me this really boils down to the value of consistency and repetition. Quite often when people think about inner transformation there is a gap in their mind between the amount of effort they THINK it will take to change bad habits, and the amount of effort it ACTUALLY takes. When they realize that the change that they are looking for will take longer than they thought, they get discouraged and give up.

So, what we are looking for from a mental fitness point of view is developing the ability to practice good mental, emotional and spiritual habits slowly and steadily over a long period of time. This means becoming more like the tortoise than the hare in that traditional children’s story about the race between the hare and the tortoise. We do not want to start off with a lot of enthusiasm, only to lose it when the going gets tough and give up. Rather we need to practise gentle, sustainable effort over a long period of time, without being in too much of a hurry to see results quickly.

This can be difficult for people in this day and age as we are living in a society that has such a quick-fix mentality, where results are wanted instantly but in my experience there are no such methods for deep sustained happiness and fulfilment. Rather, this comes from repeating good happiness habits again and again until they become hard wired into our system. Once they are hard wired in this way, then happiness really does become effortless because it is just a subconscious habit, and natural way that we have of viewing and engaging our world.

So, the basic message of this article is: find out what genuine good quality happiness habits are, then repeat, repeat, repeat!

* After graduated from University I spend the next decade focusing very intensively on meditation and inner growth, including five years as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. In 2003 I left the ordained life and founded my own personal development business.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use or quote this article, but you MUST obtain Toby’s permission first.