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Published August 20, 2008
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Finding your Happy Zone
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| By Andrea A. Firth |
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| Bob Nozik, MD speaks to the Diablo Valley Happiness Club at the Lafayette Senior Services Center Photo Andrea A. Firth |
The 1980’s song by a capella singer Bobbie McFerrin defined the key to contentment as don’t worry, be happy, with a few oooh, oooh, ooohs thrown in. To many, this may seem like an oversimplified approach to the often-elusive goal of happiness. In that case, Dr. Bob Nozik, the leader of the Diablo Valley Happiness Club, may be able to provide a more realistic formula for a happy life.
Facilitated by Nozik, the Diablo Valley Happiness Club meets the second Thursday of each month at the Lafayette Community Center and explores the notion of ideal happiness and ways to get there. Nozik, a retired physician and professor Emeritus at UC Medical Center, is the author of Happiness 4 Life: Here’s How to Do It—a primer for a happy life based on his own experiences.
Nozik boasts having maintained a happy state for the past 21 years. While Nozik does not deny the thrill that comes from temporary, external pleasures (known in psychology circles as hedonic happiness), he emphasizes that what he has experienced is long-term, sustained happiness—more clinically defined as eudaimonic happiness. “That’s what you are really after,” says Nozik, “deep inner happiness that persists and stays with you even after sad events.”
Happiness clubs are not a new concept. Founder Lionel Ketchian established the first Happiness Club eight years ago in Connecticut with the mission to promote the benefits of being happy. Since that first meeting, Happiness Clubs have spread across the country and a website (www.happiness.com) has been created to connect people from around the world to the practice of being happy. Ketchian was led to his current role as leader of the happy zone following a personal epiphany sixteen years earlier.
Ketchian was in a happy place. He had a good job, good health, and a family that loved him—he was happy. Yet he was paralyzed by the idea that this happy feeling could disappear and be taken away from him. At that moment, Ketchian made the decision to stay happy and to spread the word about how to do it.
Like Ketchian, Nozik wants to share his techniques for being happy, really happy. A clinician and researcher by training, Nozik follows the scientific literature related to happiness, but he bases most of his advice on his personal experience. With his relaxed manner and frequent grin, attendees to Nozik’s happiness sessions are quickly put at ease. He advocates simple, and often underestimated, strategies such as smiling. “The act of smiling causes biochemical changes,” explains Nozik. “By acting happy, you will raise your level of happiness,” he adds.
The next meeting of the Diablo Valley Happiness Club will be held on September 11th at the Lafayette Senior Center located at 500 St. Mary’s Road in the Elderberry Room. Drop ins are welcome; with questions call 284-5050. |
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| Reach Andrea A. Firth at: andrea@lamorindaweekly.com |
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA