82. Happiness is a habit – Monique Rhodes
Life was a winding road for happiness specialist Monique Rhodes before she found her calling. In her late teens she was so depressed she tried to take her own life. Then she traveled the world. For thirteen years, all she owned would fit in a bag. She lived in slums and castles, she criss-crossed India on a motorbike. She was also an accomplished singer-songwriter. While in India, Monique understood by accident that she was a good meditation teacher. She began to develop a mindfulness meditation program that is now used at thirty universities and colleges around the world, the 10 Minute Mind. She has since developed other programs, like the Happiness Baseline. She runs a daily bite-sized podcast, In Your Right Mind. And she has worked with a number of well-known spiritual teachers and leaders, like Eckhart Tolle. ”Learning how to deal with your thoughts and emotions is difficult for young people. I asked myself, sitting in a hospital bed, why is it that some people are happy and that others, like me, are struggling so much? Is it something I can change? That's where all the adventures came from. And it completely transformed my life”, Monique says. ”Today I work with thousands of students around the world, teaching the things I wish we were taught when we were younger.” So, what is the secret? Basically learning how to bring back the scattered mind to the present moment as often and as long as possible. ”Build a relationship with your mind, learn how to work with it. It’s problematic to dance away into the past and into the future. Those are places that don’t exist. The only moment that is real is now.” ”We live in our thoughts without connecting to our heart. We don’t know how to manage our minds.” Monique reads a lot, she says. ”We have a propensity to not hold our focus for very long on specific things. Reading is a good antidote to that.” The core of Monique Rhodes’ message is this: Happiness is a habit. When we experience something we judge that and react to it based not on the present moment but on something in the past. It may remind us, subconsciously or consciously, of something that happened to us before, positive or negative. ”This is how we relate all the time.” Meditation slows down that automated process. ”You begin to learn to be more in the present moment. Every moment we have a choice as to how to react.” Many people think meditation is not only woo-woo but also difficult. It’s not. This is what meditation is, according to Monique Rhodes: ”Get your mind into the present moment. Your mind will go off, you bring it back. Your practice is in the bringing back. Every time you bring the mind back, you build a muscle.” Monique Rhodes describes herself as habitually courageous, habitually positive, habitually grateful and someone who habitually sees the goodness in people. ”Because I have built a series of habits around this.” At the same time it is important not to just sit in a glorious feeling of wellbeing all the time. The risk is that a kind of arrogance seeps in, as Monique puts it. ”We have a tendency not to see the light that exists in the negative things that arise and to fear the shadow side when positive things happen. But if you allow it all to just be, you can stay in a pretty happy place most of your life.” Monique’s website The 10 Minute Mind In the Right Mind podcast