Episode One of the On Relationships podcast with Elaine Smookler, relationships columnist of Mindful magazine, and Stephany Tlalka, Deputy Editor, Mindful Digital, explores the relationship between mindfulness and happiness. Do you input mindfulness on one end (through meditation and mindfulness practices) and then happiness comes out the other? Why can’t we just make that feeling of well-being happen for us when we want it to?
Through our chat, we’ll also get to know Elaine a bit more. She tends to face things with a sense of humor, even when she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Armed with laughter, and a lot of resilience, she’s gained a great deal of knowledge about what makes her happy, and what drives her, particularly in moments of uncertainty, discomfort—and even in pain.
ST: Elaine, you’ve been practicing mindfulness for over 20 years and you’re on the faculty at the Centre for Mindfulness in Toronto, but you were also in the broadcasting business for awhile. You were working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and you were about to move up in the industry. But then, something happened. Uncertainty struck.
ES: They were grooming me for a national radio show and I got down—it was between me and one other person and they flew me to Calgary to be the host of this national radio show and I got there and I just felt—and this is how I am—I’ve never been driven by success, I’m driven only by my heart and energy. And my heart and my energy said, literally like Elaine I know, ego, I thought this is what you wanted, you said you wanted to host your own show, every night for an hour. It was a big deal. But when I got there, I was like…this is not it, I can’t be here. I can’t do this. Even though I had no idea what I was going to go to, I had to let it go. And it was such an interesting experience, it was like, this is not where I belong. I can’t do this.
ST: Even though what you had next was complete uncertainty and probably a lot of fear tied to that, you still felt—
ES: What I had next was living with my parents for a year who I hadn’t lived with for 20 years with no job, with no money, with no prospects, with no clue who I was. I’d left Vancouver, I’d just come back to Toronto still not sure what I was going to do. They (the CBC) flew me to Calgary, and it was going to be like “Here’s your next big thing” and there was my parent’s rec room, or my Dad’s office in the condo, actually, where I was going to sleep on the futon, bed-chesterfield, and there was a national radio show every single night, and I was like…I can’t. I can’t do what’s not right for me. But it was a powerful life moment for me because it was one of those “meeting my ego” moments where I went “Oh, so something in me is bigger than my ego? Who knew. I thought my ego was the biggest part of me!”
It was going to be like “Here’s your next big thing” and there was my parent’s rec room.
ST: So your ego met your heart?
ES: Yeah, my ego met my heart and…I had an amazing, amazing life in Vancouver, I was a known personality there, I did lots of amazing things, and thought this is the biggest life will ever get for me and life has gotten 10 times more amazing since hanging in there with myself and continuing to just follow my inner guide, which said “Don’t worry what it looks like.” Stop paying attention to what it looks like. You’re not going to know anything by what something looks like. You’re going to just have to go with the energy. You’ll know who you should be with, you’ll know who you should be working with. You’ll know what it is when you get there and that’s what it’s been—I just take one step, one step, one step, it’s so amazing, stuff just—every single day of my life is like a TV show. Every day. It has a TV show storyline, beginning-middle-end quality. It’s really amazing, really fun.
I thought this is the biggest life will ever get for me and life has gotten 10 times more amazing since hanging in there with myself.
ST: But when you say that, it doesn’t feel like, happy-go-lucky, I’m reading The Secret as I’m listening to you talk kind of thing, where every day is like picking flowers and putting them in a basket and giving it to a small child kind of thing. There’s a different kind of quality, there’s a substantial quality to that.
ES: Well as an example, yesterday as I was on set and one of the topics that I talked about for the filming that we just did was the notion of happiness, you know, everybody wants to pursue happiness, and one of the things that I realized is first of all, it is very challenging for us to know what makes us happy and the notion of happiness is a very complicated idea so we may see that somebody has a fancy car or a nice house or a great body or whatever and think, “That’s what I want,” but if you don’t investigate it, you may not, you may discover, that’s not what I want, and getting that is not going to make me happy—but then it’s even more confusing. So it takes awhile to know, well, what would make me happy, really?
For me, one of the things I discovered is I accept a certain amount of pain as part of happiness, and I think of it as “roughage”—like, in your diet. So you would not want a smooth diet of only smooth food, unless you have a colon problem.
I accept a certain amount of pain as part of happiness, and I think of it as “roughage.”
ST: You wouldn’t accept a diet of sports cars.
ES: A diet, even just dietarily, a diet of food that is only processed, so in other words the notion of happiness being a car that looks like this or a career that looks like this, money, a great body, a great spouse, or a handsome or beautiful spouse, is to me like processed food. It’s a processed idea of happiness. Whereas my experience is, just like with food, you need roughage in your diet to keep it healthy. A smooth diet of only smooth food is what lead kings to gout. It has many health issues. But when you integrate roughage, as it were, into your diet, then you’re healthy. So I’ve had a lot of painful experi