Read an Excerpt
The Happy Christian
Ten Ways To Be A Joyful Believer in a Gloomy World
By DAVID MURRAY Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2015 David Philip Murray
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-2202-0
CHAPTER 1
HAPPY FACTS
FACTS > FEEELINGS = POSITIVE +
FEELINGS HAVE BIG MUSCLES. They are often the most powerful force in our lives. They can bully our minds, our consciences, and our wills. They can even knock out the facts and bring truth to its knees.
This is perhaps okay when the feelings are good, when we experience joy, peace, and happiness. But more often anxiety, fear, sadness, and guilt rear their ugly heads and start shoving us around. That vicious tag team can quickly bruise and bloody us, confusing our minds and blurring our vision. Nothing looks good when we've gone a few rounds with them. We just want to slink out of the ring of life and crawl back into bed again.
How then can we get our emotions under control? How can we knock down guilt and wrestle fear to the ground? How can we summon allies like joy and peace to our side, especially when we often feel so alone in the fight of our lives? How can we be happy when there is so much to be sad about?
Many, many factors make up our moods—the weather, our bank balance, sports results, our genes, our health, our body chemistry, and our sleep—but no factor is more influential than our thoughts, especially our thinking patterns and habits.
THE 40 PERCENT SOLUTION
That probably surprises you, doesn't it? Because most people think that the way to happiness is more money, more friends, more success, more health, more fame, more beauty, more muscles, and on and on.
Scientists who study happiness (often called positive psychologists) have discovered that improvements in life circumstances or situations account for only about 10 percent of our happiness. In other words, for all the effort people are putting into becoming more wealthy, healthy, popular, or muscular, the emotional return on the investment is minuscule. These positive events create some happiness, but it's usually minimal and brief.
These scientists also discovered that each of us has a baseline happiness that is difficult to change. Just as we all have a baseline weight that we tend to gravitate toward regardless of our efforts at dieting or muscle building, our parents have bequeathed us a happiness set point in our genes that we tend to return to no matter how many setbacks or triumphs we experience. Research has indicated that our genes explain about 50 percent of our happiness or lack of it.
Now if you can count, you're beginning to get worried. If happiness is 10 percent life circumstances plus 50 percent genes, that leaves only 40 percent to work with. The good news is, that is still a relatively large number. No, it's not 90 percent, but neither is it 5 percent. There's still quite a lot of potential, a lot that's in our power to change, in this 40 percent. And what makes up that 40 percent? These same scientists tell us it's our daily choices about what we think about and do.
And that's good news. Because of all these mood-altering factors, our thoughts are probably the easiest to change. There's nothing we can do about the weather, apart from moving to California. Our bank balance never seems to change, no matter how much is poured into it. Relying on sports results to lift our spirits is like relying on a bungee cord. Our genetic inheritance is fixed until the resurrection. We can do quite a bit to improve our health until we get to about fifty, when it all starts to fall apart. Meds can sometimes balance our body chemistry and moods but often imbalance other areas. We could certainly increase and improve our sleep if spouses would stop snoring (not mine, of course), the baby would stop crying, and the teenagers would stop crashing around the house at midnight.
But our thoughts—what we think and how we think—are potentially powerful allies in the fight for optimistic faith in a pessimistic culture. Our thoughts can be changed, even if our circumstances can't. Gretchen Rubin articulated this in her best-selling book The Happiness Project: "I didn't want to reject my life. I wanted to change my life without changing my life, by finding more happiness in my own kitchen. I knew I wouldn't discover happiness in a faraway place or in unusual circumstances." She didn't want to spend a fortune, travel the world, or wait for years: "I needed to find a way to do it here and now. I needed to change the lens through which I viewed everything familiar."
In this chapter, we'll change the lens. We'll discover how unhealthy some of our thinking patterns are and how they determine and often damage our moods. We'll find out how we have fallen into some flawed thinking habits and default thinking patterns, many of which began early in life and have continued to develop and strengthen since then. We will also begin to see the connections between these thoughts and our moods, our feelings.
But this is not all about diagnosis; I also want to provide a prescription, a cure, a method of changing and retraining our thoughts, lifting them out of their old ruts, and raising them to a higher and healthier plane. And in the process, we will knock guilt down, bloody anxiety's nose, put fear under our feet, and chase sadness out of the ring. Allies such as peace, joy, assurance, and confidence will then come running to our side, protecting and shielding us from future malicious assaults.
MAJOR SHIFT
This probably sounds a bit odd to you. We are very used to the idea of making diagnoses, fixing problems, or putting right what's wrong; we're not so familiar with the idea of prescribing positive action, growing graces, or expanding happiness. But until we major much more on getting above the baseline, on rising above the average, we will always remain vulnerable and uncomfortably close to falling into the abyss again. Basic faith will get us out of the negatives and back to the baseline average. But if we want to flourish and thrive, we have to aim higher; we have to build a positive faith.
Simple Formula
As I wrote in the introduction: "As a person thinks in his heart, so is he." We are what we think. What we think is the major factor in determining how we feel. Two people can look at the same situation and walk away with two very different moods because they think differently about it.
A father looks at his son's artistic abilities and moans that he lacks the discipline to be a doctor. His mother, on the other hand, is excited when she thinks about how her son will beautify the world and bring pleasure to many through his paintings and poems.
Same facts; different feelings. Because the people have different thoughts about the facts.
Our hopes of living positive lives depend largely on getting our thoughts about the facts right. Most unhappy people are unhappy not because of their situation but because they let their feelings rule their thoughts, or they think about things in the wrong way.
The first step in making this right is identifying some of the ways our thoughts and feelings have gone wrong. Let me share some examples from my life. You'll probably recognize yourself in some of these.
DAMAGING THOUGHT PATTERNS
Black-or-White Thinking
I have the tendency to think in extreme, black-or-white categories. Shades of gray do not exist; it's all or nothing. For example, maybe my sermon goes so badly one Sunday that I conclude, "I was never called to the ministry." Or the fleeting thought passes through my mind: God does not exist. I can't be a Christian if I ever think that, can I? Whether preaching or praying, the extreme conclusion begins to drag down my mood.
Generalizing
Sometimes, when I experience something horrible, I'm convinced that the same thing will happen to me again and again. I remember the first time I asked a young lady for a date, only to be rebuffed. My conclusion? "Well, there's no point in ever asking anyone else, is there? This is always going to happen to me, and I better just get used to the single life." Another time I tried to witness to someone, but when the person mocked me, I moped around for days groaning, "I'll never win a soul for Christ, so I might as well shut up."
Filtering
I also have an amazing ability to pick out the negative in every situation and think about it to the exclusion of everything else. I filter out anything positive and find everything is negative. We're especially good at this when our kids come home with 90 percent on an exam. First question? "What happened to the other 10 percent?" Or we hear a great sermon, but all we can think about is the pastor's stupid grammatical mistake that spoiled the whole thing. Such tunnel vision is not good for the mood or the soul.
Transforming
Ever managed to transform a positive experience into a negative? Yes, I'm pretty good at that too. Someone compliments me. But instead of expressing humble thanks to her and to God, What's she after? is my suspicious thought. I read my Bible and find a verse that speaks assurance to my heart. But instead of thanking God, I think, It's probably the Devil trying to deceive me.
Mind Reading
Although I do not believe in psychics, I can read your mind. Yes, I know all your innermost thoughts about me. When you passed me in the mall without stopping to speak, I immediately knew it was because you hated me. I heard later that you broke your glasses and were on the way to the optician, but I know better.
Fortune-telling
I not only read minds; I also tell fortunes. At times I feel in my bones that things are going to turn out really badly, and sure enough it always happens. Another person I know with that skill convinced himself that his job interview would be a catastrophe. When the CEO saw him and said, "Cheer up, we're not the firing squad!" he knew his prophecy was about to be fulfilled. Funny how what we feel often determines what actually happens.
Telescoping
I've found this amazing telescope that helps me find and focus on the sins of the distant past in a way that leads to present feelings of guilt, condemnation, and fear. Then when it comes to my present blessings and benefits, I turn the telescope the other way around, shrinking the good things until they are nearly invisible. No one can trump me when it comes to magnifying guilt and minimizing grace.
Perfecting
"I should ... I ought ... I should ... I ought." On and on it goes. An ever-lengthening list of obligations, duties, and targets. So much self-imposed pressure toward goals of unattainable standards, with all the frustration and resentment that accompanies the failure to reach them. Striving for the perfect day, the perfect home, the perfect yard, the perfect sermon, and the perfectly completed to-do list. Never realized. Never satisfied. Never content.
Personalizing
Thankfully, this is not one of my many skills, but younger people often fall into the trap of incorrectly viewing themselves as the cause of a bad event. I know one teenage girl who lost so many close relatives to death in a short space of time that she blamed herself for it all and lapsed into severe depression.
You don't need to be Sigmund Freud to realize that all these poor thought patterns will inevitably produce unhelpful emotions and behavior. If we always think about problems and negatives, imagine the future is hopeless, believe everyone hates us, or assume we have achieved nothing because we didn't achieve everything, or if we blame ourselves for things we had nothing to do with, we are on a dangerous downward spiral.
Such thought habits increase sadness, negativity, pessimism, and helplessness; they also undermine concentration, friendships, problem-solving ability, and motivation.
Good News! You Have a Plastic Brain!
The good news for those of us who tend to fall into one or more or all of these harmful thought habits is that we can retrain our brains to think more positively and feel more cheerful.
Until the 1970s, most scientists believed that brain structure and emotional makeup were primarily hereditary/genetic and more or less set in stone, especially after the teenage years. More recent research has demonstrated that we can actually change our brain structures and connections, improving our overall mood in the process.
So how do we change our brains? Is there a pill, an operation, or a one-off intervention? No, we retrain our brains by multiple little daily decisions. That's good news and bad news.
It's good news because it means we don't need to do anything dramatic, expensive, or invasive. We can do it here and now.
The bad news is that it involves effort, disciplined and determined effort, to increase the number of positive experiences in our everyday lives. These multiple little daily positives give us a quick squirt of happy emotions and improved performance, and as they become a habit, they raise our baseline happiness. Scientists call this neuroplasticity—yes, the brain is plastic, and that's actually a good thing—to convey how adaptable, flexible, and elastic our brains are.
X-Games and Mind Games
Let me take you into the forest to explain. My kids love to cycle through the paths in the woods that back up to our yard. But every year, new spring growth covers the pathways. For a few weeks, the kids slow down as they ride through, pushing away the leaves and branches that hang in the wrong place. They run over the fresh undergrowth rather gingerly, not wanting to wipe out. But as the days and weeks pass, the branches and undergrowth submit to the repeated assaults and clear the way for our would-be X-Gamers so they can fly through the forest with the greatest of ease.
Something similar happens in our brains. We create electrical and chemical pathways with our thoughts. As we think our way down these pathways, we strengthen the brain connections. As somebody put it, "Cells that fire together, wire together." The more we travel these mental paths, the faster and easier these paths become so that eventually our thoughts and resultant actions feel automatic.
Just think about how you learned to type at your computer. With practice it became easier as the pathways were more frequently used and the connections grew stronger and faster. So much so that you can now type almost without thinking. Your thoughts and actions have reshaped your brain pathways. Through repetition, a good habit has become ingrained and cemented in your brain structures and processes.
Renewing Our Minds
This plastic brain possibility opens up tremendous opportunities for personal change, growth, and development. Pessimists can become optimists. "No-men" (and women) can become "yes-men" (and women). Frightening obstacles can become inviting challenges. Difficulties can become possibilities. No, we cannot change reality, but we can change the way we view reality, regardless of age or stage in life.
These scientific discoveries are both confirmed and explained in Scripture. Through the apostle Paul, God calls us to "be transformed by the renewing of [our] mind[s]." Thus, science and Scripture agree; we can retrain our brains, we can renew our minds, and thereby we can be transformed. Science and Scripture disagree, to some extent, about what needs to be transformed and how this takes place, and we'll consider these differences throughout this book.
For now, though, let's work through a few examples of brain retraining, mind renewing, and plastic remolding. I want to introduce you to a simple six-step method that will help you address bad thinking habits and change them for the better.
TO-DO EXAMPLE
Let's start with the bane of my life—my to-do list. I'm sitting at my desk at the end of a busy day, and I'm staring at my list in disbelief.
Step 1: What are the facts? I started out the day with thirty items on the list, worked hard and completed fifteen tasks, but I added twenty more to the list.
Step 2: What are my thoughts about the facts? I'm thinking, Oh no, I've got more to do now than when I started out this morning. I've gone backward rather than forward. If it keeps going like this, I'm going to be completely stressed out, and I'll never manage a day off with my family this week.
Step 3: What are my feelings? Guilt, stress, anxiety, tension, fear, sadness, or whatever.
Step 4: Can I change the facts? No, even if I set fire to the list, the tasks remain to be done.
Step 5: Can I change my thoughts about the facts? Not without help, but my wife is an expert at this. She sees my furrowed brow and stiff shoulders, comes alongside me with coffee and a cookie, and asks, "What's wrong, darling?" I show her my to-do list, and she begins to laugh. "What are you laughing at?"
"You don't think you accomplished anything today, do you?"
"No, look, I started out with a list this long, and despite all I've done today, it has grown even longer."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Happy Christian by DAVID MURRAY. Copyright © 2015 David Philip Murray. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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