The Practice Of Being Happy Is The Best Workout (Part 4) An open letter to a friend

Humour displays an honesty about you, and people will know the difference. Having it and you can get a way with a lot. Self deprecating humour is a great way to lower barriers. For a start it shows that you do not take yourself serious and people by their nature worry about things like that. If you practise this type of humour, mean it. Listen rather than talking and people will actually remember what a great conversationist you were  as well even though you hardly said anything at all. Put it another way, people are more interested in what they are saying rather than what you said, and will remember strongly long afterwards on how you made them feel too. There is a lot of work to be done here but with all things, the more you practise….well you know the rest.

There is an old, and I mean old, Chinese saying for living life to the full: ‘Having something to do, having someone to love and having something to look forward to.’ If you have all three then you are away in a hat. But if you have just one of these things going on in your life this is a good thing, and by that benchmark too there is a good chance that the other one or two goals will come in time. In fewer word, get busy !!

Humour or laughter has shown conclusively that it builds the immune system against illness and disease. It has medicinal power of the best out there whether it is of the conventional or non-conventional kind, and is a legal high (and free) and better than any hash or whatever else you fancy.

Dammit, humour is the best medicine. So aside from all the other social taboos and no go areas that you are currently wrestling with it that is stopping humour running wild in your head, let us look at some of those in other people. You may be surprised how they apply to you. You are not that different and most of this ‘important’ stuff is really just garden variety bacon and cabbage dinners anyway. Lets set about setting you ‘free’ or at least trying.

In a study recently it was asked of men and women what bothered them the most beyond making a living. The answer that came back at number one place in that study was what other people thought of them. Of course all life being local in one way or another, this applied to family, extended relations and friends. Keeping up with the ‘Joneses’ it seemed was more than a state of mind. 

When the Celtic tiger rolled into Ireland, (and it could have been anywhere else too!!) on borrowed money and time for little over a decade, and left afterwards with a wimper and its tale between its legs, the ‘what will people think of me’ psychosis  (WWPTOM for short) practically had become a national disease with no known cure, at least then. 

Wife's bought brand new range rover jeeps just to pop down to the local shop, well, really to be seen, setting themselves back around 40,000 euros just for that kick of, ‘I’ve got one over on you feeling.’

Developers and solicitors, and other lesser known species bought ever bigger jeeps and considered it a privilege for you that they would even take time out just to take your phone call. Come to think of it, we considered it one too if they did, and if you got paid for all the work that you did for them, that would have been considered a blessing on top as well.

WWPTOM back then created all sorts of heightened secondary mental illnesses as well like arrogance, narcissism and plain downright bullying in tandem with so much corruption that to be truthful or straight was considered a mental decease in itself.

To be continued…… 

Barry Clifford

Photo Minute: Cold but beautiful England (click on photo for best results)

The Practice Of Happiness Is The Best Workout ( an open letter to a friend) (Part 3)

All the usual cliches apply that laughter is the best medicine. It is the most physical manifestation of feeling and being happy. A high that is as good as sex, well, nearly, and it shows. When Norman Cousins, a man who seemed to have it all, was diagnosed with a form of cancer and told he had but months to live, he took that message lying down and set to work to be able to stand up again. He used every trick in the book of laughter to laugh his way back to health: funny videos, movies, and happy people. Only six months later his cancer was in remission and he was back even more happy than he was before. 

In a controlled experiment over many years, doctors took a sample of two types of people and circumstance and watched what happened. One type were in bad relationships, caring for someone that had a debilitating illness alone, and who had a curmudgeon personality. Single mothers and single middle aged men were in there too, along with other negative type personalities- so on and so forth. 

The other type of course were the opposite. Under the microscope doctors found the negative situation, and people associated with it, produced increased cancer cells, while the positive type person produced less or none at all with increased anti bodies to fight any that might manifest itself. That's the science. There is more....

Laughter produces endorphins, a natural high better than any pint of Guinness in a thatched pub with an open fire and Van Morrison playing in the background. Happy people make others happy and want to be around each other. The exact opposite is also true for Mr Sad and Mrs negative. You will have more friends and a better chance of getting the girl as well. All of this increases in a social setting than an isolated one, so get out and about whether you want the girl or not. 

When you are depressed, the body, as already said, shows it in how you look, walk and talk. But by simply walking with more confidence, shoulders back, smiling more and speaking strongly and clearly, the body reverses the message to the mind. A sort of trick that enables you to get back in the groove. Keep the negative body too long and it may well stay that way. There is more good news........

Barry Clifford

To be continued.........

The Practice Of Being Happy Is The Best Workout (An open letter to a friend I know) (Part 2)

.....but before we concentrate on the physical first it is perhaps better to lighten or enlighten up the mind a bit with an inconvenient truth: Let's look at the scientific maths of what makes you and me. Not a whole lot there I'm afraid. 80% water, 20% blood, bone and gristle and the rest is opinion. It is that opinion that can be the death of you or the life blood of what it means to have fun and especially poking some of that at yourself while you are at it.

If you are still taking yourself serious at this point, let's look at a few more facts: We are, give or take a percentage or two, an ape. Of course I'm not calling you a monkey, no, it is me who is the monkey.....and all in good time perhaps that these things become self evident. 

This of course may be just one more of those vexing opinions that us humans have, and for me it is just hard to refute Charles Darwin and all the scientists that came after him that said he did not go far enough in believing that we descended from the ape. Fransde Waal, a primate scientist, said all this on National Geographic in 2005 and unless I get opposite proof, I'm sticking with him, for since then the evidence has only gotten a lot stronger. There's more........

There's also the amazing and rarified odds that you got here at all, ape or not.

A man passes on average 250,000,000 cells to his partner ever time they copulate for want of a better word. Now, if things get out of hand, pardon the pun, or whatever passes for lovemaking these days, then the chances of you being born at all would have got a whole slimmer on that night you were conceived. This does not even include the forces that your ancestors faced, and we all want them to be Vikings anyway descended from one of their Norse Gods, and not the drunk that copulated with a rough house Madam that no one else wanted ( hence the reason she became a Madam in the first place) three hundred plus years ago. 

Think of the fighting that went on, and your ancestral daddy and mammy came through it all. There is also this: That night again or day you were conceived you went up against those 250,000,000 hopefuls and won, and their chance, which was and always only going to be one, will never come again. You see, you are tougher than you think and if nothing else is a reason to be cheerful. If you still are serious about you or life there is more again........

To be continued………

Barry Clifford

The Practice Of Being Happy Is the Best Workout; An open letter to a friend I know (Part 1)

We are not all born happy and many have to work at it for a variety of reasons throughout our lifetime. Whatever the cause of our unhappiness it can only be reversed by practicing happiness, and like any workout it takes effort until it becomes as natural as breathing. It starts off by getting rid of the clutter in our lives. 

Clutter is normally the people who make you feel negative about life and yourself. Make a list and make sure you give them the exit door and don't look back. The next step is to ask why you ever took yourself so serious before, why you worried so much what other people thought of you. The reality is, aside from a precious few friends that you think you have, and Facebook does not count, nobody cares about you. Sad but true and when that reality sets in, it can and will become liberating when you accept it. That's when the real workout begins.

It starts off being selective in what you read and what you view and who you hang out with. No more re- run documentaries of the Holocaust for you, no more books about serial killers either! There are better visual and audio aids for self development than this, and anyway, this stuff went on long before you arrived and be still be going on long after you leave this mortal coil. 

If you haven't being physically exercising lately start today. At least a walk and work you way up. If it gets a bit boring put on the music and no sad songs here either. Buy more than a few happy and positive books about anything and everything. Get busy by socialising more or help in a soup kitchen if you can for those less unfortunate, and they are many of them. It just feels good to give too. 

The mind is where it is all at, and what ails you in the moment will pass. A push or two from you will make it pass quicker as well rather than it be an all day affair. If you are not in charge of what and how you think, then you are influenced by things that ultimately do not matter!! 

The mind also shows itself in the physical as well, betraying to others what you are feeling. That is if it could be called a betrayal at all because, for the most part, no one is thinking about these things except 'victimised' you. I know that part hurts but no worse than you have felt before, whether something bad happened to you where you had no choice, or where it did when you had a choice. The latter position will always prove more powerful moving forward in future workouts. But you can bet also that being depressed - that you look it too. This can be turned into a positive as well.

Barry Clifford

( to be continued....)

Smokin’ Joe KO’d by sucker punch reply from heavyweight Honohan

                                                                 Patrick Honohan

There was one light moment at the Oireachtas banking inquiry in an otherwise depressing trawl through Ireland in the dark months of autumn 2008.

When it came to Irish Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins’ turn to question a witness — Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan — Joe pulled out his standard anti-capitalist address.

Wasn’t it the case that the ideology of the government, the banks, the speculators, most of the media, was at the heart of the problem that led to the collapse of the economy?

Wasn’t it all about an ideology involving the greedy pursuit of “super profits” by the banks? Didn’t that result in a regulatory system where the “prevailing spirit is don’t separate the lion from his prey, but let them at it”.

Then the reply that shook everybody awake. “That’s right,” said the governor. Even Joe was stopped in his tracks.

A laugh erupted. “You agree?” Joe asked, incredulously.

“Well, that’s a dramatic way of putting it,” Honohan said. But, by and large, he had no problem with Joe’s analysis of how the profit-crazed banks led the whole country into perdition.

On the third day of the inquiry it was difficult to escape the conclusion that Higgins had been right all along back in those days when he was, as he pointed out himself yesterday, a lonely voice in the Dáil, railing against the “speculators” who were driving up the cost of housing.

Honohan was a lively witness, careful to apply nuance to his utterances, but devoid of the kind of hyperactive caution that financial heads display when they are brought out in public.

He thinks the bank guarantee of September 2008 was a mistake, but an understandable one.

However, he doesn’t buy the peddled wisdom that the guarantee was to blame for the subsequent years of austerity.

“The cost of the austerity measures is much, much bigger than the cost of the guarantee.”

He also debunked the myth that the Troika which took control of the country in November 2010 were to blame for much of the austerity.

“The bailout reduced austerity measures,” he said, although that statement could have done with a little elaboration.

As for the cost of the guarantee, he puts it at around €40 billion and change, with the scope for a little more to be “whittled down” from the original cost of €64 billion.

He is of the opinion that it should have been obvious at the time of the guarantee that Anglo was a busted flush.

The management running the bank should have been removed.

“That would have been more clear had they known what the size of the problem was.

“But all the investment banks that looked at it saw that Anglo’s model was not credible in the market,” he said.

However, had the government moved to shut the thing down, they would have had to withstand a severe going over from our European partners, Honohan added.

How much that option had been explored is something that Brian Cowen, in particular, will be expected to answer when he comes in to give evidence.

The governor was quite open to speculating on the mindset of the bankers who had acted in such a reckless fashion.

These, after all, were supposed to be very brainy boys, who knew their sums.

Honohan confirmed the suspicion of many when he set out his theory.

“The conjecture I’m left with is – in the banks - they might have said ‘gosh this could all go wrong, but if it does there will be a rescue, the State will step in, or Europe will step in’,” said Honohan.

So it went, among those who were regarded as the poster boys for capitalism.

In that regard, smokin’ Joe Higgins can claim that he could see it while many had their heads in the clouds

Michael Clifford

The Pen Is Sill Mightier Than Any Sword

Last Wednesday’s murderous attack at the Paris office of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was the work of those who believe that cartoons can be so obnoxious that they justified the slaughter of 17 people, 12 at the magazine itself.

It is clear from the carnage that the perpetrators hoped to silence those responsible for the cartoons that gave offence to millions of Muslims worldwide.

Other critics of extreme Islamism have met the same fate. In November, 2004, the Dutch film maker Theodoor van Gogh was murdered for producing a short film which criticised the treatment of women in Muslim countries.

A year later, cartoons in a Danish newspaper depicting the Prophet Mohammed led to worldwide violent protests, resulting in more than 200 reported deaths, attacks on Danish and other European diplomatic missions and on churches and Christians.

This was not the first assault on Charlie Hebdo. In 2011, the magazine was renamed ‘Charia Hebdo’ for an issue that invited the Prophet Mohammed to be guest editor. Its cover included an image of the prophet with the headline: ‘A thousand lashes if you don’t die laughing.’

Fanatical Islamists did not get the joke and fire-bombed the magazine’s offices. Yet the perpetrators failed to terrify the journalists into submission and the magazine barely skipped a beat, publishing the following week.

This time round, they employed the ‘final solution’ by murdering as many as they could in the hope that extreme violence and terror would prevail.

They have, once again, failed miserably.

Not only is Charlie Hebdo alive and well but the murders have secured its future. It has now been transformed from an obscure magazine — largely unknown even in France — to a worldwide phenomenon ‘liked’ by tens of millions online on social media.

The magazine’s distributors initially planned to print 1m copies of the latest issue put together by survivors of last week’s shootings but said demand from France and abroad forced them to increase that up to fivefold.

The original paper printed 60,000 copies a week, selling 30,000, with the rest left for free in cafes, bars and restaurants around Paris. The latest edition of the journal had a print run of three million.

Yesterday, the paper’s distributors said they would print an extra two million copies of its latest edition to meet demand, after three million copies sold out in France at breakfast time.

You can multiply that by 10 or more, if you take the online interest into account. That’s at least 50m people directly supporting a bunch of obscure journalists bent on exhibiting a peculiar form of Gallic provocation.

It’s as if a scarcely browsed college magazine had suddenly become The New York Times.

The pen has proved mightier than the sword — even the sword of Islam.

The killers have failed doubly. Those who led the murderous crusade against the cartoonists planned to sacrifice themselves and to become martyrs for the Islamist cause. In fact, they have made Christian martyrs out of the journalists they killed.

In cities across Europe and around the world, marchers have taken to the streets to support freedom of speech and to offer condolences to the people of France.

Last weekend in Paris, more than one million people, including 40 world leaders, marched in solidarity and sadness, denouncing the violence, and proclaiming “Je suis Charlie!” and “We are not afraid!”

The reaction to the murders has been the same in many other places. From Boston to Brussels, Dublin to Dresden, tens of thousands gathered in support of Charlie Hebdo.

The sub-text to that is a declaration in favour of freedom of speech, a concept dear to Western hearts but alien to many Muslims.

Salman Rushdie, who is on the al-Qaeda hit list and received death threats over his novel The Satanic Verses, expressed his support for Charlie Hebdo. He told the Guardian newspaper: “I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity.”

He may be overstating things a bit. Satire is equally capable of being alienating and infantile.

In any event, freedom of expression is not an untrammelled right, even in the West. It is tempered by laws, convention, commercial interests, reasons of taste and a desire not to cause unnecessary offence.

Censorship is a part of daily life in many parts of the democratic world. On Monday, two political leaders were photo-shopped out of an image of world leaders showing solidarity in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks.

The conservative Israeli daily newspaper HaMevaser, (The Announcer) ran a front-page image of Sunday’s rally in Paris — minus German chancellor Angela Merkel and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo.

In the original photo, Merkel was positioned between French president François Hollande and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. But in the printed version, the chancellor was wiped from the record.

Censorship is also part of the criminal law in many jurisdictions. In Ireland, blasphemy and incitement to hatred are unlawful while in Germany overt Holocaust denial can land you in jail.

Censorship has also been employed as a political tool, most notably in Ireland under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act (since repealed) that forbade radio and TV stations from giving voice to — among many others — Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams.

The media also exercises restraint and newspapers do not publish everything simply because they can. Good taste, sensitivity and the desire not to be gratuitously offensive all come into play in editorial decision making.

Yet, it is incumbent on us all to defend the right to be obnoxious, even while we may disagree fundamentally with the views expressed.

For historical evidence of that, you need look no further than France itself. The novelist Francois-Marie Aroet — known by his nom de plume Voltaire — was a satirical polemicist famous for his attacks on the Catholic Church and the French establishment.

He was a cartoonist with words and he is remembered and revered not only for his plays, poems, letters and essays but for his wit and his advocacy of freedom of expression.

He knew the dangers of satire, once writing: “Qui plume a, guerre a” — ‘to hold a pen is to be at war’. Yet, he persisted, risking persecution, prison or worse because of his beliefs.

His biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall captured his philosophy best, giving voice to it in this way: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” — a quotation sometimes mistakenly attributed to Voltaire himself.

He was funny and satirical to the end. On his death-bed a priest at his side asked him to renounce Satan. Acutely aware that the end was nigh, Voltaire responded: “Now is not the time for making new enemies.”

Dan Buckley