"Happiness is the only thing that multiples when you share it." ~Albert Schweitzer, a German physician and Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Several years ago I started having severe pain in my neck and shoulder. I have some disk issues in my neck, which a steroid shot seemed to help. But my shoulder problem had been pretty unresponsive to convention medicine. My pain was chronic and often a 10 on the subjective units of distress scale.The culprit: bone spurs. I really was not up to even thinking about surgery. So, the physical therapist recommended strengthening my upper body. To a girl who never has even tried to do a push up, this did not sound very fun. No, not at all. But, I had to do something. My solution was to start Vinyasa yoga at Xplore Yoga. This type of yoga has many upper body strengthening postures. It was perfect for my goals. And now, I am happy to say that after just over a year of practicing I am completely pain free in my shoulder. Being out of pain is great but the really cool and fun part about all of this is that I can do all kinds of things I never ever dreamed of doing at my age. Several months ago I accomplished dolphin forearm stand for the first time. I was so excited and happy and shocked that I could do this pose, I got a fellow yogi to take a picture of me in the posture and stared sharing it with just about anybody who was willing to look at it. I was so happy. Then a funny thing started to happen. Even though everyone I shared with was genuinely happy for me in my accomplishments after my excitement died down, I started to feel this slight awkward feeling of, "Oh God. Have I shared too much of my happiness? Maybe I should have kept my joy to myself? People probably don't really want to know about this." Whoops. Too late. Today I learned from a listserv I am on that a study showed that sharing our joy or happiness is good for everybody as long as there is positive feedback. It may even cause the joy to multiple. A colleague shared a recent study by Nathaniel Lambert and colleagues at Brigham Young University as to why this may be. Their research shows that discussing positive experiences leads to heightened well-being, increased overall life satisfaction and even more energy.
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