Sherry describes several robots including those available on the market as social companions. They are, to name a few, Aibo, My Real Baby, Seal Paro, GOV, Kismet, Doll Madison, etc.

I was surprised to learn how critical Sherry is of robots: tech evil that will corrupt humanity.

Let’s look at the simple tech solution called Eliza. It is a program that chats with people, and very often in their conversation with Eliza people open up about their problems and seek advice from an application that can’t really think for them. The author says:

“The idea that simple act of expressing feelings constitutes therapy is widespread both in the popular culture and among therapists (way to blow off steam) and is very helpful”. However, “in psychoanalytic tradition – The motor for cure is the relationship with the therapist. The term transference is used to describe the patient’s way of imagining the therapist, whose relative neutrality makes it possible for patients to bring the baggage of past relationships into this new one. In this relationship, treatment is not about the simple act of telling secrets or receiving advice. It may begin with projection but offers push back, and insistence that therapist and patient together take account of what is going on in their relationship.

When we talk to robots, we share thoughts with machines that can offer no such resistance. Our stories fall literally, on deaf ears. If there is meaning, it is because the person with the robots has heard him or herself talk aloud”.

I shall argue that exactly the talking aloud sometimes is very important.  Once in a while we need to hear ourselves and to listen to the voice of consciousness that we often suppress, but when we let ourselves talk it out, we learn more about ourselves… especially what our beliefs and priorities are. Now, I’m not saying we should stop here… This is not enough. And I agree with vicious circle, the author mentions.

“We may talk ourselves into a bad decision…” I get that, lest correct it.  First, lets create robots or tools that do give push back with knowledge me may lack and act as therapists.

What if Eliza is just a hint of a new generation of smart machines that incorporate knowledge of the universe and give us support in difficult moments… and instruct us to consider all possible options (even the ones we don’t know about yet), and calm us down in the moments of despair… Or make people check-in with human mentors, who can arbitrate and give useful tips.

Everyone can use knowledge from people, enlightened and normal people who struggled through same issues themselves, that is knowledge of the human mind or the Universe… to become more humane and compassionate… If for now robots are just a recording machine, lets record the best we can and constantly make updates… Why isn’t it possible to create what inspires human to do the best, not the worst…

Currently, people use Eliza because they don’t get judged but feel safe to express their feelings freely, because humans may not understand them or will not listen to them for free. They have to pay… No one is completely substituting humans with programs, technology should enhance our decision-making and mitigate problems, and be therapeutic. The best of both worlds.

The marketing machinery has lured more and a more Americans into the psychiatric drugstore. As new drugs were brought to market, disease “awareness” campaign was conducted and diagnostic categories were expanded. Now, once a business gets a customer into its story, it wants to keep that customer and get that customer to buy multiple products, and that’s when the psychiatric “drug trap” kicks in.

The “broken brain” story helps with customer retention, of course, for it a person suffers a “chemical imbalance”, then it makes sense that he or she will have to take the medication to correct it indefinitely, like ”insulin for diabetes”. But more important, the drugs create chemical imbalances in the brain, and this helps turn a first-time customer into a long-term user, and often into a buyer of multiple drugs.

The patients’ brain adopts to the first drug and makes it difficult to go off the medication. The first drug triggers a need for a second, and so on.

Such is the story of the psychiatric drug business. The industry has excelled at expanding the market for its drugs, and this generates a great deal of wealth for many. However, the enterprise has depended on the telling of a false story to the American public, and the hiding of results that reveal the poor long-term outcomes with this paradigm of care. It also is exacting a horrible toll on our society. The number of people disabled by mental illness during the past 20 years has soared, and now the epidemic has spread to our children. Indeed, millions of children and adolescent are being groomed to be lifelong users of these drugs.

What patients say: “The meds isolate you. They interfere with your empathy. There is flatness to you, and so you are uncomfortable with people all the time. They make it hard for you to get along. The drugs may take care of aggression and anxiety and some paranoia, those sorts of symptoms, but they don’t help with the empathy that helps you get along with people.”

From a societal and moral point of view, this is a bottom line that cries out for change.

Loren Mosher believed that psychosis could arise in response to emotional and inner trauma and in its own way, could be a coping mechanism. As such he believed there was the possibility that people could grapple with their hallucinations and delusions, struggle through a schizophrenic break, and regain their sanity. And if that was so, he reasoned that if he provided newly psychotic patients with a safe house, one staffed by people who had an evident empathy for others and who wouldn’t be frightened by strange behaviors, many would get well, even though they were not treated with antipsychotics.

“I thought that sincere human involvement and understanding were critical to healing interactions. The idea was to treat people as people, as human beings, with dignity and respect.” It was a twelve room Victorian house in Santa Clara, CA. which opened in 1971, Soteria House.

Another interesting theory is Tony Stanton’s “attachment theory”, which is based on the importance of emotional relationships to a child’s well-being. In the late 70s, he (while in charge of a psychiatric ward for children at a county hospital in CA) assigned a “mentor” to every child. The children were not medicated, and he saw a number of them become attached to their mentors and “blossom”.

“You just can’t organize yourself without a connection to another human being, and you can’t make that connection if you embalm yourself with drugs”. When a child enters Seneca Center’s residential program, Stanton doesn’t ask “what is wrong” with the child, but rather “what happened to them”.

He gets the department of social services, schools and other agencies to send him all of the records they have on the child, and then he spends eight to ten hours constructing a “life chart”. As might be expected, the charts regularly tell of children who have been sexually abused, physically abused, and horribly neglected. But Stanton also tracks their medication history and how their behavior may have changed after they put on a particular drug, and given that they children who arrive at Seneca Center are seriously disturbed, these medical histories regularly tell of psychiatric care that has worsened their behavior. The children regularly arrive at the center on drug cocktails, and thus It can take a month or two to withdraws the medication. And often they do become more aggressive for a time.

“Most times when the kids come in, they can’t keep their heads up, they are lethargic, they are just a blank and there is minimal engagement. You just can’t get through to them. But when they come off their meds, you can engage them and you get to see who they are. You get a sense of their personality, their sense of humor, and what kinds of things they like to do. You may have to use psychical restraints for a time, but to me, it’s worth it”.

Once they are off meds, the children begin to think of themselves in a new way. They see that they can control their own behavior, and this gives them a sense of “agency”, Stanton said. The Seneca center uses behavior-modification techniques to promote this self-control, with the children constantly having to abide by a well-defined set of rules. They have to ask permission to go to the bathroom and enter bedrooms, and if they don’t’ comply with the rules, they may be sent to a “time-out” or lose a privilege.

But the staff tries to focus on reinforcing positive behaviors, offering words of praise and rewarding the kids in various ways. The children are required to keep their rooms clean and perform a daily chore, and at times they will help prepare the evening meal.

“The question of feeling in charge of yourself and being responsible for yourself is the central issue in their lives.” Stanton said. “They may only partially get there while they are with us, but when we are really successful, we see them develop this sense of “O, I can do this; I want to be in control of myself and my own life”. They see themselves as having that power”.

Even more important, once the children are off the medications they are better able to form emotional bonds with the staff, and the staff with them. They have known rejection all their lives, and they need to form relationships that nurture a belief that they are worthy of being loved, and when that happens, their “internal narrative” can switch from “I’m a bad kid” to “I’m a good kid”.

Please, read the rest of the book by Robert Whitaker “Anatomy of an Epidemic” for more thorough understanding of mental health situation in the United States.

The Turku psychiatrists decide on treatment based on case specific, but most important, they settled on group family therapy – of a particularly collaborative type – as the care treatment. Psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and others trained in family therapy all served on two- and three-member “psychosis teams”, which would meet regularly with the patient and his or her family. Decisions about the patient’s treatment were made jointly at those meetings. In those sessions, the therapists did not worry about getting the patient’s psychotic symptoms to abate. Instead, they focused the conversation on the patient’s past successes and achievements, with the thought that this would help strengthen his or her “grip on life”. The hope is that they haven’t lost the idea that they can be like others. The patient might also receive individual psychotherapy to help this process along, and eventually the patients would be encouraged to construct a new “self-narrative” for going forward, the patient imagining a future where he or she was integrated into society, rather than isolated from it.

“With the biological conception of psychosis, you can’t see the past achievements” or the future possibilities.

“I would advise case-specific use (of the drugs)”, Rakkolainen said. “Try without antipsychotics. You can treat them better without medication. They become more interactive, They become themselves”. Added Aaltonen: “If you can postpone mediation, that’s important”.

Psychiatrists and psychologist in Western Lapland have a different conception of psychosis. It doesn’t really fit in either biological or psychological category. They believe that psychosis arises from a very frayed social relationships. ”Psychosis does not live in the head. It lives in the in-between of family members and in-between of people”, Salo explained, “It is in the relationship, and the one who is psychotic makes the bad condition visible. He or she “wears the symptoms” and has the burden to carry them”.

Within 24 hours of a call, a meeting with mental health professional, patient and the family members is held. There must be at least two staff members present at the meeting, and preferably three, and this becomes a “team” that ideally will stay together during the patient’s treatment. Everyone goes to that first meeting aware that they “know nothing”, said nurse Mia Kurtti. The job is to promote an open dialog in which everybody’s thoughts can become known, with the family members (and friends) viewed as co-workers.

From the onset, the therapists strive to give both the patient and family a sense of hope. ”the message that we give is that we can manage the crisis. We have experience that people can get better, and we have trust in this kind of possibility”, Alakare said. It may take time for a patient to recover.

Open dialog therapy had drawn the attention of mental health professionals in other European countries. This approach produced good outcomes, “This really happens, it is not just a theory”.

Why does it work? “We like to know what they (doctors) really think, rather than just have them give us advice”, said the parents of the meetings.  My own idea is that they value fair process and being recognized and treated as a special individual who is appreciated not as a crowd.

Natural antidepressants:

In Domestic Medicine, Buchan prescribed this pithy remedy for melancholy: “The patient ought to take as much exercise in the open air as he can bear. A plan of this kind, with a strict attention to diet is a much more rational method of cure than confining the patient within doors, and plying him with medicines”.

Two centuries later, British medical authorities rediscovered the wisdom of Buchan advice. In 2004, the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence, which acts as an advisory panel to the country’s National Health Service, decided that “antidepressants are not recommended for the initial treatment of mind depression, because the risk-benefit ratio is poor.” Instead, physicians should try non-drug alternative and advise “patients of all ages with mild depression of the benefits of following a structured and supervised exercise program”.

Today more than 20 percent of the GPs in the UK prescribe exercise to depressed patients with some frequency, which is four times the percentage who did in 2004.

A “prescription” for exercise typically provides the patient with twenty-four weeks of treatment. An exercise professional assess the patient’s fitness and develops an appropriate “activity plan” with the patient than given discounted or free access to the collaborating YMCA or gym.

Patients work out on exercise machines, swim, and take carious exercise classes. In addition, many exercise-referral plans provide access to “green gyms”. The outdoor activities may involve group walks, outdoor stretching classes, and volunteer environmental work (managing local woodlands, improving footpaths, creating community gardens, etc.)

Throughout the 6 months of treatment, the exercise professional monitors the patient’s health and progress. Patients have found “exercise-on-description” treatment to be quite helpful. They told the Mental Health Foundation that exercise allowed them to “take control of their recovery” and to stop thinking of themselves as “victims” of a disease.

Now there may be a number of social factors contributing to the epidemic. Our society may be organized in a way today that leads to a great degree of stress and emotional turmoil. For instance, we may lack the close-knit neighborhood that help people stay well. Relationships are the foundation of human happiness, or so It seems, and as Robert Putnam wrote in 2000, we spend too much time “bowling alone”. We also may watch too much television and get too little exercise, a combination that is known to be a prescription for becoming depressed. The food we eat – more processed foods and so on – might be playing a role too. And the common use of illicit drugs – marijuana, cocaine, and hallucinogens – has clearly contributed to the epidemic. Finally, one a person goes on SSI or SSDI, there is a tremendous financial disincentive to return to work.

As a foster mother, Gately was required to follow “medical advice” and give psychiatric medications to the children who arrived on them. Most of the children were on cocktails, and it seemed to her that the drugs were primarily being used to make the children quieter and easier to manage.

She has kept track of a number of the ninety- six children, and as could be expected, many have struggled as adults. “When I look back on the kids that stayed on the drugs and those who got off, it is the ones that are off that are the successes.” She says. “Liz should never have been on the drugs. She got off the drugs and is doing great. She is a full time student in nursing school and almost ready to graduate, and is about to get married. The thing is, if you get off the drugs, you start building these coping mechanisms. You learn internal controls. You start building these strengths. Most of these kids have had very bad stuff happen to them. But they are able to rise above their past once they are off the medications, and then they can move on. The kids who were drugged and continue to be drugged never have the opportunity to build coping skills. And because they never had that opportunity as a teenager, as an adult they don’t know what to do with themselves”. It isn’t a scientific study, but her experience does offer a peek into the toll that the medicating of foster kids is taking. Most of those who stayed on the drugs, she says, ended up “filing for disability”.

Sam Clayborn from New York tells from personal experience what it is like to have been a foster kid in the US. He was born in Harlem and by age six he was living in a residential group home. He says: “They were not so hot on psychiatric diagnoses back then”, he explains. “They were more into beating your ass, restraining you, and just throwing you into an empty room. I’m glad I grew up when it was like that rather than what it is today, because if I grew up now, I’d be drugged up. I’d be doped out and zonked out”.

Starting around 2000, rates of black youth diagnosed with bipolar disorder soared, and based on hospital discharges, they are now said to suffer from bipolar disorder at a greater rate than whites.

Sometimes children with criminal records get to choose – to go to juvenile prison or mental institution, they choose the latter not knowing that they are damaging themselves.

“The Tuskegee syphilis experiments were nothing compared to this. That’s mild shit compared to what they are doing to black kids today. The pharmaceutical companies and the government are cheating in cahoots, and they are doing a wicked dance with a lot of people’s lives. They don’t give a shit about these kids. It’s all about capitalism, and they will sacrifice all the niggers in the hood. We are damaging these kids for life, and the majority of these kids will never rebound. These kids will be destroyed and they are going to make the SSI rolls more overwhelmed”.

“This is happening to a lot of the brothers today, and once they are on the medication, it take them away from themselves. They lose all the willpower to struggle, to change, to make something out of themselves and have success. They succumb to the chemical handcuffs of the mediations. It’s medical bondage is what it is.”

From the book “Anatomy of an Epidemic” by Robert Whitaker.

All of this physiology – 100 billion neurons, the 150 trillion synapses, the various neurotransmitter pathways, tell of a brain that is almost infinitely complex. Yet the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders boiled this complexity down to a simple disease mechanism, one easy to grasp.

Once again this is a story of neurotransmitter pathways that have been transformed by the medications. After several weeks, their feedback loops are partially disabled, the presynaptic neurons are releasing less dopamine than normal, the drug is thwarting dopamine’s effects by blocking D2 receptors, and the postsynaptic neurons have an abnormally high density of these receptors. The drugs do not normalize brain chemistry, but disturb it, sometimes to a degree that could be considered “pathological”. That is how “create perturbations in neurotransmitter functions”. Knock down a “target symptom”.

The drugs ameliorate anxiety for a short period of time and thus they can provide a depressed person much needed relief. However they work by perturbing a neurotransmitter system, and in response, the brain undergoes a compensatory adaptations, and as a result of this change, the person becomes vulnerable to relapse upon drug withdrawal. That difficulty in turn may lead some to take the drugs indefinitely, and these patients are likely to become more anxious, more depressed, and cognitively impaired.

There is a story that psychiatry doesn’t tell, which shows that our societal delusion about the benefits of psychiatric drugs isn’t entirely an innocent one. It had to grossly exaggerate the value of its new drugs, silence critics, and keep the story of poor long-term outcomes hidden. This is a willful conscious process, and the very fact that psychiatry has had to employ such storytelling methods reveals a great deal about the merits of this paradigm of care, much more than a single study ever could.

Writer suggests full disclosure.

The real question is “When and how psychiatric medications should be used?” The drugs may alleviate symptoms over the short term, and there are some people who may stabilize well over the long term on them, and so clearly there is a place for the drugs in psychiatry’s toolbox. However, a “best” use paradigm of care would require psychiatry, NAMI, and the rest of the psychiatric establishment to think about the medications in a scientifically honest way and to speak honestly about them to the public. Psychiatry would have to acknowledge that the biological causes of mental disorders remain unknown. It would have to admit that the drugs, rather than fix chemical imbalances in the brain, perturb the normal functioning of neurotransmitter pathways. It would have to stop hiding the results of long-term studies that reveal that the medications are worsening long-term outcomes.

How can we insist that our society’s mental health system be driven by honest science rather than by a partnership that is constantly seeking to expand the market for psychiatric drugs?

From the book “Anatomy of an Epidemic” by Robert Whitaker.

To cure black bile (depression) Hippocrates recommended the administration of mandrake and hellebore, changes in diet and the use of cathartic and emetic herbs.

During the Middle Ages, the deeply melancholic person was seen as possessed by demons. Priests and exorcists would be called upon to drive out the devils. Then with arrival of the Renaissance in the 15^th century, the teachings of the Greeks were rediscovered, and physician once again offered medical explanations for persisted melancholy.

Psychiatry’s modern conception of depression has its roots in Emil Kraepelin’s work, which had two major categories, and later three: depressive episode only, manic episode only and episodes of both kinds. In the short span of 40 years, depression had been utterly transformed. Prior to the arrival of the drugs, it had been a fairly rare disorder, and outcomes generally were good. Patients and their families could be reassured that it was unlikely that the emotional problems would turn chronic. It just took time – 6 to 12 months or so – for the patient to recover. Today, the NIMH informs that public that depressive disorders afflict one in 10 Americans every year, that depression is “appearing earlier in life” than it did in the past, and that the long-term outlook for those it strikes is glum.

There was an intellectual challenge to this theory’s legitimacy, an attack launched in 1961 by Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist at the State University of New York in Syracuse. In the book The Myth of Mental Illness, he argued that psychiatric disorders were not medical in kind, but rather labels applied to people who struggled with “problems in living” or simply behaved in socially deviant ways. Psychiatrists had more in common with ministers and police than they did with physicians. His book helped launch an “antipsychiatry” movement by various academics in the United States and Europe. All questioned the “medical model” of mental disorders and suggested that madness could be a “sane” reaction to the oppressive society. Mental hospitals might better be described as facilities for social control, rather than for healing, a viewpoint popularized in “One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest”, which swept the Oscars in 1975. Jack Nicolson’s character got lobotomized (part of his brain surgically removed) for failing to stay in line.

And finally internal issues: during the 1970s, there was a deep philosophical split between the Freudians and those who embraced a “medical model” of psychiatric disorders. In addition there was a third faction in the field, composed of “social psychiatrists”. This group thought that psychosis and emotional distress often arose from an individual’s conflict with his or her environment. If that was so, altering that environment or creating a supportive new one (ex. Soteria Project) would be a good way to help a person heal. The field had “identity crisis”.

But then they got an idea.

The purpose of DART, the NIMH explained in 1988 was to change public attitudes so that there is greater acceptance of depression as a disorder rather than a weakness. It regularly goes undiagnosed and undertreated. And that it could be a fatal disease if left untreated”. Welcome to the epidemic!

From the book “Anatomy of an Epidemic” by Robert Whitaker.

“According to scientists, we have about 60,000 thoughts a day. It is one thought per second during every waking hour. For the average person, 80 % of these habitual thoughts are negative. Every day we have more than 45,000 negative thoughts. Of those 60,000, 95% are the same thoughts you had yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.

Your thoughts aren’t always true.

We are so accustomed to believing our thoughts are true and automatically reacting to them, that we’re hardly aware we are doing it. Until we become aware of this, our path to happy for no reason is blocked.

You don’t’ believe everything you hear, do you? Of course not. You don’t believe everything you read either. And in this age of special effects and Photoshop, you certainly can’t believe everything you see. So …

Don’t believe everything you think! All suffering comes from believing our thoughts.

Thought are just packets of energy formed by neurochemical events in your brain, which can be measured in terms of electrical impulses and wave frequencies. Your thoughts don’t always give you an accurate picture of reality, yet your mind goes on broadcasting them anyway. When you shine a light on your negative thoughts – and see that you don’t have to believe them – it takes away much of their power to create misery. They have a strong grip on us, because we are wired that way.  It stems from our primitive survival mechanisms that have run amok.

2 greatest barriers to happiness, fear and anxiety, have been hardwired in us for millennia to ensure our survival as a species. In today’s world this old wiring has become more harmful than helpful.”

In Borneo, the natives have an ingenious technique for capturing the wild monkeys that raid their crops and stores of food. They take an empty coconut shell and make a small hole in it, just large enough for a monkey’s hand. They out some rice into the coconut for bait and tie the coconut to the ground. The grieving monkey smelling the food comes to investigate. He sticks his hand inside the coconut to grab the rice but when he tried to pull out, because it’s clasped in a fist around the rice, it will not fit through a hole anymore. To escape the trap, monkey must let go of the rice. Because they will not let go, the monkeys of Borneo remain trapped.

A lot of us just like those monkeys: trapped by our negative thoughts because we just won’t let go of them. And the more we resist them, the more they stick around. It doesn’t help to try pushing them away – they’ll just keep coming back.

Marci suggests “Is it really true?” exercise, which helps understand a lot of what we think is not true www.happyfornoreason.com/bookgifts.

Happiness habits for empowerment:

1. Focus on the solution
2. Look for the lesson and the gift
3. Make peace with yourself

According to the Dalai Lama, it is important to know which habits support happiness in your life and which don’t. In his book, The Art of Happiness, he writes:

“One begins identifying those factors which lead to happiness and those factors which lead to suffering. Having done this, one then sets about gradually eliminating those factors which lead to suffering and cultivating those which lead to happiness. That is the way.”

Marci tells about 3 Guiding Principles to live by:

1. What expands you makes you happier (The Law of Expansion)
2. The Universe is out to support you (The Law of Universal Support)
3. What you appreciate, appreciates (The Law of Attraction)

Marci’s favorite tool for using the Law of Attraction is what she calls her Secret Formula:

Intention – Be clear about what you want, in this case your desire for your greater happiness.

Attention – What you put your attention on grows stronger in your life. Put your attention on happiness by practicing the happiness habits each day.

No Tension – Let go and relax. As you practice the habits, be easy with yourself and trust that you are removing the blocks to experiencing greater happiness.

Setting your intention and envisioning your ideal.

“Start by writing down a declaration of your intention. Begin with “I’m grateful that I’m.. “

And complete the sentence with what Happy for No reason feels like to you. Use the phrase I’m because these are the two most powerful words in the English language; they help call your intention into being. Use present tense, as the power and immediacy of the present tense magnetize your heart’s desire to you. Now picture yourself being Happy for No reason. What would life be like if you were experiencing that state of unshakable inner peace and wellbeing? What would you feel and do? How would you interact with others?

Imagining how you want to feel may seem fanciful or silly, but it’s actually a very powerful exercise. The more clearly you can experience what Happy for no reason feels like to you, the more easily you will bring it into being. Just doing this process puts you in the vibrational field of Happy for no Reason. You probably began to feel happier just from intending and imagining it.

I also recommend that you create a vision board to look at as you practice the Happiness Habits. A vision board is a visual representation of whatever you want to create in your life. Many people use these boards to focus on the things they want to get, but could be images that represent states of feeling happy. People you love, or happy images, etc. images that make you feel expanded, open and uplifted. My board is hanging on the wall across from her desk and she looks at it throughout the day.”

Another interesting fact in the book is about the happiness set point. Marci says: “Like your weight set-point, which keeps the scale hovering around the same number; your happiness set point will remain the same unless you make a concerted effort to change it. But the truth is, to be truly happy, all you have to do is raise your happiness set-point.” To do it, we need to practice happiness habits. Marci discovered 21 of them, which you can download from her website www.happyfornoreason.com/bookgifts.

She also creatively came up with 7 specific steps for becoming happy for no reason, which correspond to the seven main areas of your life: personal power, mind, heart, body, soul, purpose, and people. This holistic approach is vital.

Taking Ownership of your happiness has 2 aspects:

1. Accepting that being happy is up to you and that you have the ability and power to be happier by changing your habits.
2. Taking response-ability: responding to all the events in your life in a way that supports your happiness.

Our ability to respond to what happens to us dramatically affects our happiness. Years ago, Marci’s mentor, Jack Canfield, taught her the following simple equation that explains this concept:

E+R=O (Events + Response =Outcome)

People who are Happy for no Reason orchestrate events in their lives when they are able to. When they are not able to change the events, they change their responses. You always have the right to change your attitude.

Try some of the exercises from Marci’s website and remember to take baby steps, overcoming your resistance to change.  Don’t be harsh on yourself. And remember to create a support system, as happiness loves company. Invite other people to join you. Enlist the support of a couch, mentor, friend, or a group of friends. Remember, you can increase the impact of practicing happy for no reason sevenfold by simply discussing your experience with other people. Happiness revolution starts with us, because the world is as we are.

On the second day I walked to the beach and sat on the bench, it was all I could do, as I had no energy to exercise yet. I just wanted to absorb ocean breeze and see the beach. It felt familiar, just like back home in Sochi. People mainly with dogs were passing by and we didn’t know each other’s stories. But I wanted them to know that I was happy just to be here. Everything may pass you by unless you choose to take a note and appreciated every moment of it. I’ve been looking around me and noticing all. I made a big step into improving my life. I’m so glad I came and explored Santa Monica, but it is time to leave. How familiar can you get with something in just over 2 months? Familiar enough to love it:

1. Wind-bended rows of Palm trees on the 4^th Street
2. Strangers on the beach walk asking you to try their products or validate their business ideas
3. Captive chess pieces waiting to be released in the chess park cells
4. Homeless people sleeping in the Palisades Park in the morning with child-like peaceful faces
5. The bucket of Shrimper’s Net Catch with Secret Recipe Cajun spice at Bubba Gump
6. Dragon Roll at Hara sushi, always packed and serving only fresh, tasty and half-priced sushi
7. Jazz nights at Casa del Mar with older than your average crowd
8. Quantified Self events, where people and numbers meet at Coloft
9. Writing from Inner Self Class with Rachelle at Santa Monica Community College
10. Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine Herbs at Yo San University Clinic
11. Chocolate croissant at the Coffee Bean with fire pit on Wilshire Street
12. One Dollar Oyster specials at Enterprise Fish Company on Main Street
13. Church bells ringing  at The First United Methodist Church on 11^th street at 11AM
14. Socializing with drinks in the garden by the pool at Viceroy
15. Urth café on Main street, where I organized my first CA happiness formula testing
16. The drills of beach volleyball with Thao Pham at 106 Entrada Drive
17. Pet center on 826 Wilshire Blvd, where you can volunteer to walk the dog, who is unfortunate
18. Handsome men working as cashiers in the Whole Foods store
19. Tall grown up man walking an elderly woman on Washington street every day
20. Lounge at Sonoma wine country in Santa Monica Place
21. Drivers’ and pedestrians’ agitation during Farmer’s market on Wednesdays
22. Monthly Philosophy Club with Brian at Yahoo center
23. Beautiful courtyard of the Main Library and its themed events
24. No plastic bag policy in the stores
25. Lean LA events with panel discussions in the Civic Center
26. Post office as a remainder of the old era: while you can hardly find a post office box on the street, some people still use snail mail
27. One week free pass to work at the Coworksla sharing space
28. Muscle gym puzzle because you never know if those who practice there are normal people or Circle de Soleil gymnasts
29. Napoleon cake at the Ukrainian Deli on Wilshire
30. Vons smart-phone friendly sophisticated coupon system
31. 24 hour Fedex on Wilshire with its ivy-covered wall
32. Eclectic plays like “Why we have a body” at Edgemar center for the arts
33. The Aquamarine color of the Lady, The Georgian Hotel
34. The feel of the Callahan’s diner reminds me of New York
35. Montana Street’s Fathers Office, where noone under 21 is admitted
36. Fog and rain, and you are in a completely different place altogether
37. Tourists off sightseeing buses eating Krispy Kreme donuts as part of their tour in the Palisades Park
38. Architectural feats of different ages, shapes and colors
39. Group joggers, boot campers and serious cyclists in full gear in action by the beach
40. Exotic trees and flawless flower beds in very unexpected places
41. The challenge of the big stairs from the beach to the bluffs
42. Wide white beach, the ultimate answer to Santa Monica’s heart

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Watch video of the performance Pearls Before Breakfast.

From Washington Post by Gene Weingarten.