How Daniel Stayed Happy

Just before I finished writing a workbook on attitudinal competence, my eldest son, Daniel, died on 15th February 2004, a day after the birthday of his then six-year old sister Kiri.

I found it impossible to be attitudinally competent and choked on the extremes of grief anger and guilt. Looking back now after two and a half years, I can see the beauty of the timing and the learning that I was given.

Happiness and grief are not compatible, yet they can grow from one another, depending not on the situation, but upon our thoughts and related actions in the situation.

Even though Daniel had a life long illness and we knew his time was short, we were not then sad. We were happy because he was happy. Daniel was always happy, except when in pain or more ill than usual. Then he was just quiet and slept.

I am still amazed at how a person who is a virtual prisoner in his own body, with full awareness and intelligence, could be as happy as Daniel was.

Daniel was 187 cm, solidly built and required a king size bed. One day, just before he went into hospice I lay next to him, to enjoy a conversation with this wonderful young man who was so inherently wise and uncomplicated.

Daniel's conversations with me were direct, succinct, unpretentious and movingly insightful – I'm not sure whether he was aware of the impact he had on me.

I was curious as to how he managed to be so happy despite his circumstances – bedridden, diabetic, devoid of energy to move his body, blind and partially deaf, only in touch with the world via the TV's sound and conversations with people.

Daniel and I hadn't lived together since he was six months old. As I was then a covert operator for a federal agency, the conditions for my wife were horrendous, and understandably they left me. Most covert operators' marriages or relationships failed. But we were close and in contact and I visited regularly, though from interstate.

So these conversations were precious for me and I think also for Daniel.

"How do you manage to always be happy?" I asked.

Daniel laughed and said "I just choose to be happy."

I asked "How do you do that?"

"I only think what I want to think."

I thought about that.

Then he added "And how dumb is it to choose thoughts that make you unhappy?"

I said "But what about the fact that you can't do all the things that you'd like to?"

"What is the point of thinking about that? I accept that I'm restricted. Everyone has tried their best and this is the way it is. I know what is going to happen, so why waste time on that stuff?"

I was silent.

Daniel turned and looked at me with eyes that could feel, not see, and said "You know the whole world is in my head Dad. Everything goes on in my head".

I thought about my own senses, my own world and said "Yep, you're right, all of us are in the same boat, it's all just in our heads, our sensory perceptions and our thoughts about them, and sometimes, unfortunately, the meanings we give them." "But don't you get it Dad? I can think whatever I want and then feel it on the inside. So why would I want to think about things, or in ways that make me feel unhappy?"

"But what about your situation?" I pressed.

"You're not listening to me Dad. I told you that I accept my situation. It is what it is. Everything that could be done has been done. I just think about what makes me feel happy."

"What sorts of things do you think about?"

"Well, I think about the fun I've had". When Daniel was a boy he was mobile and swam in the Pan Pacific Games for the Disabled. When he stayed with me he loved sitting in the driver's seat of a broken down truck I had on my property, and pretend to be a truck-driver. As Daniel became more immobile he loved conversing at length with friends, also blind, he'd made at school. He had a ball on his 21st birthday - the last time he was mobile for a whole day. Whenever I visited I'd take him for a coastal drive down towards Victor Harbour, south of Adelaide, where he loved the smell and feel of the beaches down there. His devoted mother Margaret looked after him as no other mother could have, and ensured he enjoyed as much as his condition would allow.

"I think about the things I like and imagine they're happening now – it's the same as if it was really happening! I can taste feel hear move and see everything in my head as though it was happening now. I can eat whatever I want and not get fatter [obesity was a symptom of his illness]! And I can think and feel things I'm not going to talk to you about!" he said, throwing his head back, laughing loudly. In that moment with me he was authentically and infectiously happy.

Daniel was not distracted by perceived external situations. The biggest thing he had to deal with – bigger than most of us could imagine or probably cope with – he had fully accepted.

He skilled himself at deliberately choosing thoughts that made him happy, regardless of what was happening in the perceived world – the world brought to us by our senses and then given meaning or interpreted by us – which is all that happens to everyone.

Daniel had expressed his happiness method:

1. Recognize the "Isness" of any situation.
2. Do what you can to improve it.
3. Accept everything that you can't change.
4. Deliberately think about (and do) what makes you happy.
5. Do not be distracted by external situations, they're only perceptions anyway, and
6. Alter them by our very carefully chosen thoughts and related actions.

I didn't follow that formula immediately when he passed away. As I stood above his open coffin and placed on Daniel's hands Kiri's drawing of him and Kiri playing under a tree together, which she had asked me to "put in Daniels' box with him", I was stricken by the enormity of the grief I felt.

I believe that was healthy too, though certainly not to be stuck with it.

As I reflected on everything that Daniel had meant to me and had taught me, I remembered our happiness conversation and choose to deliberately use his method on my grief: -

1. The truth was he had gone.
2. There was nothing I could do to bring him back.
3. I accepted his going.
4. & 5. I recalled the good times we had, not about missing them, but to feel their happiness. 6. I altered the grief based perceptions of his going to carefully chosen thoughts about how he was now out of his bodily prison and in relief.

Today I think of Daniel with a smile of intense gratitude and I am happy.

We become sad not because of what we lose, but because of what we think about that loss. We can make ourselves happy by generating renewable happy thoughts, regardless of our situation. If we accept situations that we cannot change or control, and focus on thinking about that which is true and happy, with related actions – then we are happy.

As I travel I notice happy people in all situations – abundance and poverty; health and illness, with family and friends or alone. It's not their situation that renders them happy, but their thoughts and related actions.

I love you Daniel, and thank you!

Article Source: http://www.rightbiz.com

David Deane-Spread coaches board directors and CEOs. He developed the training method for Attitudinal Competence and authored the system "Master the Power of Your Attitudes". An ex-Army officer, covert operations specialist and director and CEO of both private and public companies, David works with his clients' senior leadership team to deliver excessive ROI (returns on investment). Visit David at www.daviddeane-spread.com

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