Filmmaker Roko Belic Projects ‘Happy’

Americans, and Canadians too, are suffering from an epidemic that many are just too busy to notice. We are overworked, we are overbooked, and life’s most fulfilling aspects are being overlooked.

Take Back Your Time (TBYT) is a North American initiative to slow down modern life’s frantic pursuits. On October 24, the TBYT coalition is calling for a worldwide commitment to reverse the “time famine,” a scarcity of meaningful moments that threatens health, families, relationships, communities and even our global environment.

To become happier is a fun process. It’s not like a grueling struggle. All you’re trying to do is find those things that make you happy to do them.

The interests of Roko Belic, director of the new documentary film Happy, dovetail with the concerns of Take Back Your Time. Belic’s documentary weaves a bright fabric of perspectives from the Dalai Lama, happiness researchers and a handful of the planet’s most fulfilled and flourishing people. The Happy filmmaker took a few moments from promoting his labor of love to talk keys to happiness and Take Back Your Time.

TakePart: Do happy people have any common traits?

Roko Belic: Ed Diener is a scientist who’s studied happiness for about 30 years. He says there are different formulas for happiness. Some people need to have a job that’s fulfilling to them. Other people might need free time to do the things they love. But the one common thread among all happy people is that they have good relationships. That doesn’t mean they love everyone or that they have tons of friends. It means you have someone who you love and someone who loves you. It doesn’t have to be the same person. As long as you love somebody, and somebody else loves you, if somebody is there for you, and you reciprocate, that’s one of the best indicators of whether a person is happy or not.

TakePart: What are some ways people can increase their happiness?

Roko Belic: Whether you believe in it or not, when you do physical aerobic exercise, things happen in your brain, in your body, in your physiology that boost your happiness.

A few specific forms of meditation have been proven to lead to increased happiness. At least one form of meditation—the Tibetan meditation on compassion and loving kindness—is so powerful that it physically changes the size of certain areas of your brain that are related to feelings of pleasure and happiness.

Another thing is the state of “flow.” It’s a focused state where you’re totally concentrated and engaged in an activity. It could be gardening or cooking or even cleaning your house. You’re not thinking about problems at work, or any plans for the future. You’re just in the moment. That experience of flow boosts people’s happiness as well.

So these are accessible tools to us. They’re fun. One of my greatest lessons from making the film is that to become happier is a fun process. It’s not like a grueling struggle. To become happy is fun. All you’re trying to do is find those things that make you happy to do them. It’s that simple.

The challenge is to know what actually makes you happy versus what you think makes you happy.

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TakePart: Say a little more about that Tibetan meditation.

Roko Belic: The meditation on compassion and loving kindness works in segments. Essentially, for the first 20 minutes you sit in a comfortable position and you think of three or four nice thing to say to yourself. For example, “I wish myself health, happiness and a peaceful life.” You say that over and over to yourself in your head. You’re not saying anything out loud. You’re in a calm state. You really try to mean it. “I really wish myself health, happiness and a peaceful life.”

At the end of 20 minutes, you take a break for five or 10 minutes. You stay quiet and you sort of ponder what you’ve just been doing. Then you sit down for another 20 minutes, and you do it for somebody you love. “I wish my wife health, happiness and a peaceful life.” You really think about them. You try to savor that feeling.

Then you take another break, and you come back. For the next 20 minutes, you do it for somebody you don’t actually know. Let’s say the person who served you coffee that morning. “I wish the coffee person health, happiness and a peaceful life.” You try to picture their face and, even though you don’t know their life, to imagine them being happier and more healthful and peaceful.

Then you take another break. You come back and do it for somebody you hate, somebody who has wronged you. Somebody who has done something evil, maybe somebody from your childhood, or somebody who hurt somebody you love. That, of course, is challenging. To genuinely wish that person health, happiness and a peaceful life is, for most of us at least, not a reflex.

Doing that for 20 minutes, you start to realize: Wow if you really practice that, it starts to dissolve the barriers. It dissolves the “them” and “us” or the “me” and “you.” It dissolves the feeling that somebody is either for us or against us.

Then you take another break. You come back, and you do it for all living beings. The purpose of this meditation is to connect you in a loving way to all living things. You are embracing the entire world. The result of that physically thickens parts of your cerebral cortex that are responsible for feelings of pleasure and happiness.

TakePart: Can a person do an abbreviated version?

Roko Belic: You can pick one a day. So the first day you do it for yourself. The next day, you do it for somebody you love. The next day for somebody you don’t know, and so on. If you commute on a bus or train to work, you could do it literally at that time.

The important thing is to recognize that your time has always been and will always be yours.

TakePart: What is “positive psychology” all about?

Roko Belic: The aim of positive psychology is to understand the mechanisms of our wellbeing: To understand the components of a happy, fulfilling, flourishing human being. Happiness was considered a very unscientific subject for most of history. Relatively recently, scientists recognized that if they can study depression and pathology, they can study the other end of the same spectrum, which is flourishing and happiness.

TakePart: How is positive psychology applied in therapy?

Roko Belic: A set of methodology developed by a guy named Martin Seligman focuses on what he calls people’s signature strengths. He and many psychologists, rather than exclusively focusing on the challenges and suffering that somebody has experienced, and understanding those and going through them, they also figure out what that person is good at, where that person feels fulfilled and is flourishing. Can practical changes be made in that person’s life to enable them to better express those sides of themselves?

Regardless of what you may think the social status implications would be of taking a job that maybe sounds like it would be a demotion, scientists are seeing that people in jobs that align with their values and interests and enable them to go into flow, are happier than people who are doing things just for the social status position.

TakePart: What can a happy person do to make happiness contagious?

Roko Belic: Happiness already is contagious. Research done over the past couple of years showed if you are happy, your friends are much more likely to be happy. And if you are happy, your friends’ friends are also more likely to be happy. This is strange: Your friends’ friends, people you don’t even know, your happiness influences theirs. Another degree away, your friends’ friends’ friends are more likely to be happy if you are happy, and vice versa. If you’re miserable, your friends’ friends’ friends are likely to feel that, even if you don’t know them.

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TakePart: Any thoughts on Take Back Your Time Day?

Roko Belic: The important thing is to recognize that your time has always been and will always be yours. If we feel like we’ve lost time during the day because of work and our commute, and we’re just so busy, just recognize fundamentally that we are the only person in the entire world experiencing that day and those experiences. It’s up to us to recognize that the time is our time already. It’s completely within our control to shift our perspective toward something that might bring more happiness. If on Take Back Your Time Day, you still have a full day of work, and you still have errands to run and chores, you can recognize that your sense of wellbeing is dictated by the way you perceive it.

A friend of mine grew up in Africa. Every time we would leave the house, even if we were going to the grocery store, he would call that a safari. Safari, the word just means to take a journey, but in English it carries this exotic feeling. So we would go on safari to the grocery store, we would go on safari to the movies. It’s the same grocery store, the same car you used to get there, but to see life as an adventure is key to taking back your time and finding more happiness and fulfillment in your life.

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