A simple 4-pronged approach for a happier life
Original Medium Post HERE
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How to live community joy: lessons from the Mediterranean Diet
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My family gathered for a Mediterranean-style meal at Rino’s Place in East Boston. They give food to spare.
You can increase your joy (emotional wellbeing x time). The community joy pillars can get you there.
But how can we apply this community joy approach in our lives and our communities?
This week: a four-pronged approach, derived from the uniquely impactful Mediterranean diet.
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What is a healthy diet?
Are eggs good or bad?
Should we drink coffee or avoid it?
What’s better: butter or margarine?
We’re bombarded with contradictory research.[1] Trying to eat a healthy diet could sometimes feel like a fool’s errand, as what is considered healthy in one study suddenly becomes unhealthy in the next.
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Mixed research on joy
The same could be said for the pursuit of happiness and joy:
Does income above $70,000 matter for happiness?
Do we gain more happiness from gratitude journaling or processing bad things in our journal?
How much does weather matter?[2]
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Good news: a simpler, proven approach
With all the noise and conflicting nutrition research, one finding has consistently held up:
The Mediterranean diet is great for your health, healthy bodyweight, mental health, longevity, and more.[3]
Here is a summary of the diet: eat a lot of fresh vegetables and fruit. Choose whole grains. Get most protein from beans, nuts, and legumes; a bit from seafood; and less from poultry and much less from red meat. Don’t overdo dairy — but enjoy some fresh cheese and yogurt.
Put olive oil on everything, or drink a shot of it straight.
Avoid processed foods and refined sugars.
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4 reasons the Mediterranean diet works so well
We know the key elements of the Mediterranean diet, but foods aren’t enough if people don’t eat them. This diet works well because people enjoy it for a lifetime.
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But why? The Mediterranean diet is:
1) Simple: It includes meals you can prepare in no or little time (vegetables dipped in hummus, anyone?)
2) Flexible: You can choose your favorite types of beans, nuts, fruits, vegetables, fish. The guidelines are broad enough to make food shopping easy, and to give many options for eating at restaurants with friends.
3) Culturally embedded: Mediterranean cultures (and other culturally healthy eaters[4] around the world) didn’t set out to eat the world’s healthiest diet. They took delicious local foods and enmeshed them in their cultures. Shops sell the ingredients, restaurants serve the foods, festivals and holidays incorporate the food and wine. People can eat a Mediterranean diet for life as easily as others can spend a (shorter — on average) lifetime eating fast food.
4) Delicious: The Mediterranean diet is delicious and makes us feel good — so we want to eat it.
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Taking a Mediterranean diet approach to joy
We can take a Mediterranean diet approach to integrating the pillars of joy in our lives and communities.
We don’t have a laundry list of joy tips based on one-off studies or contested research.
The consistently-research-proven Mediterranean diet provides a manageable list of delicious food categories for a healthy lifestyle. We offer five manageable, mutually reinforcing community joy pillars that can be integrated into a life of sustained emotional wellbeing.
Our five pillars fit two criteria: 1) research has consistently identified them as being most important for joy; and 2) we have some personal control over them.
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The 5 pillars are:
· Relationships
· Purpose
· Fitness
· Mindfulness
· Fun
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How do we apply the Mediterranean diet’s four-pronged approach for community joy?
1) Simple: Integrate the five pillars of joy into your existing activities — or into a new activity (meditation, perhaps) you’ve been meaning to take up. Use five questions to guide the way. Don’t worry about happiness research beyond that.
2) Flexible: Apply the pillars for your personal tastes. If you are an introvert who prefers to spend time one-on-one, schedule a regular walk with a friend. If you’re an extrovert, lead and attend community festivals. Choose your favorite exercise for fitness, be it line dancing, mountain climbing, running with the bulls, running without the bulls, or gardening.
3) Culturally embed it. Joy lives in community. Joy is contagious. Make your community’s culture a culture of joy. Support the movement that’s already there — somewhere.
4) Make it delicious. Have fun. Savor the journey. Don’t focus minute-to-minute on finding joy (just like you shouldn’t worry about long-term health while enjoying tomatoes, arugula, burrata, EVOO, and balsamic). Ironically, when we focus more on community joy than our own happiness, we will be more likely to find our own happiness too.
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From our honeymoon stop in Sicily: a great place to enjoy a Mediterranean meal!
Buon appetito!
The Mediterranean diet and community joy can have a nice symbiosis.
This summer, find your community’s most Mediterranean setting. Pursue your purpose and advance community joy with a delicious dinner with friends.
Support your personal fitness by walking to an al fresco dinner with broccoli rabe, bruschetta, pasta e fagioli, a spot of red wine, and some fresh fruit.
Mindfully enjoy the meal with friends and family with whom you have great relationships. Tell some funny stories — and have fun.
Stay joyful East Boston.
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Please share, subscribe, and join our movement by emailing me or supporting East Boston Social Centers. Look out each week for our posts about boosting joy the only way we can: in community.
[1] Eggs are good and eggs are bad (but more research indicates in moderation, as part of healthy meals, eggs have some benefits). Current research suggests moderate coffee consumption is healthy for most (but not all) people. Stick margarine is bad; beyond that, there is debate. Olive oil definitely is better. All true as of today.
[2] There are no reductions in unhappiness for earnings > $75K (after inflation adjustment). For most people, happiness continues to increase some with income — but our pillars of joy matter much more. More on journaling. Impact of climate varies; the world’s happiest places include colder, cloudier ones, and sunnier warmer ones. (Our pillars matter more than climate).