This is the first post in the ‘Happiness’ series where I will be providing you with information that will give you a better understanding of how our perceptions of ourselves and external stimuli influence our emotions.
My thoughts in this series are largely inspired by teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama – love that guy! Let’s begin…
Why the long face?
One thing we all have in common as human beings is the need to live our lives without feeling stressed and unhappy all the time. A life void of emotional pain.
Here in the UK where there are many opportunities to get jobs and where if you don’t have a job the government actually gives you money, putting myself in the shoes of an outsider, from a country where people’s young children need to rummage through rubbish sites to survive, I wouldn’t expect there to be a lot of stressed out people amongst the UK population. How wrong!
According to statistics from a recent study by the Mental Health Foundation and YouGov, a staggering 79% of the population have felt so overwhelmed by stress at some point in the year, that they have found it difficult to cope. The biggest culprit in stressing people out seems to be work (76%) followed by finances, family and relationships. What’s going on?
I want you to know that I feel a bit heartless saying this, but I truly believe – from observations made within myself and others – that most of this emotional unrest is self-inflicted.
Happiness is a human right?
It is understandable to believe that it is our right to live in a state of constant happiness as God’s children, and that if only it wasn’t for the negative people out there upsetting our inner-peace with either their bad manners and unfair treatment or the stresses of trying to make ends meet, the crappy job, the unruly children, the worthless spouse, the memory of some traumatic event, the state of the world…we would be happy!
The more pragmatic and sceptical readers may well be thinking that it’s unrealistic to expect to be happy all the time and we can’t change the past, life is all about ups and downs; life is not about walking around with a permanent big grin on your face like some sort of big idiot! A bit harsh…but there is some truth in this.
Now we’re getting somewhere
Yes, when the children are being saintly, the spouse tending to your every need, when you have a good day at work or suddenly come into some money, you do feel happy and you want that happiness to last; ‘Why can’t life be like this all the time to rarse’! (a Jamaican colloquial).
Many years ago, if someone had said to me that I could be happy all the time if I wanted to be, I would have said ‘What the hell are you talking about. Make yourself useful and go and make me a cup of tea instead of sitting there talking foolishness!’.
I would have thought they were living in cloud cuckoo land and would begin to question their ways of thinking. Well, as it happened, I started to question my own thinking and decided to embark on a quest for knowledge.
The sceptic is spot on though for believing that life is all about the ups and downs but incorrect in believing that we can’t obtain a lasting sense of happiness. We can, but first, we need to get clearer about the true meaning of happiness. What happiness is and what happiness is not.
So what is ‘Happiness’?
According to online sources, the word ‘happy’ derives from the Icelandic word ‘happ’ meaning ‘luck or faith’. Ask yourself right now, what does happiness mean to you? Most of you will struggle with this and will find yourself going around in circles. You know what happiness feels like but what is it?
What happiness is NOT is that short lived feeling of elation you get when something goes right for you, when your desires are actualised. Imagine for a moment experiencing the arrival of your new posh car upgrade after having to use nasty public transport for a few months. You’ve got the biggest grin on your face and butterflies in your stomach as you open the door to drive it for the first time. You feel happy.
A year on from this moment you’re not going to be feeling this same sense of happiness, the novelty would have worn off from time and you may even find yourself in the throws of feeling lack because you now desire the newer upgrade. That happiness feeling was not sustainable, you soon went back to the baseline of feeling miserable.
You see, most people confuse happiness with joy or pleasure which are both short-term emotions based on external factors.
True sustainable happiness doesn’t have anything to do with factors outside of our own self, it is an internal state of peace, contentment and acceptance developed by acquiring the right knowledge and mental practices that will enable you to transform your perceptions and responses to external stimuli and circumstances.
An example from a time in my past when I wasn’t thinking too straight:
I have a decent vacuum cleaner with a suction so powerful, it lifts the laminate flooring slightly when on full power. One day, I got it into my head that I ‘needed’ one of those stick vacuum cleaners because it would be less strain on my back, looks nice and takes up less space, but I didn’t have stick vacuum cleaner money at the time and became obsessed with getting one. I developed a real hatred for my existing vacuum cleaner, I even started calling it names and refusing to use it. I felt miserable and believed I’d be happy again when I got my ‘stick’.
One day I came to my senses after feeling mentally exhausted from my self imposed and overinflated feeling of lack and need, and gave myself a good talking to; ‘What the hell Yvonne, you need to sort this s&*$ out, why are you doing this to yourself’? Because of a vacuum cleaner? Really?’
It wasn’t just the vacuum cleaner though, the experience had started a downward spiral into bringing up feelings of lack in other areas of my life and soon I was drowning in feelings of unworthiness (wutlessness) and lack of self-esteem and non-clinical depression.
‘What do I do’?
I started by brushing up on my knowledge of ‘gratitude’. This led me to write down a list of the all the things I was grateful to the vacuum cleaner for. It allowed me to easily get rid of insects, clean my floor quicker and easier than using the dustpan and brush. There was also the powerful suction, the nice cute design, etc.
I did this for about 1 day and found myself beginning to develop feelings of gratitude towards the vacuum cleaner instead of feelings of hate.
I continued this line of thinking in the following days by looking for and finding other things in my life that I was grateful for, which I had always taken for granted, like having two hands (some people don’t, God bless them).
Soon, I went from feeling utterly miserable to feeling content, happy and grateful. Not because I got a new vacuum cleaner but because I gave myself a new mindset.
This is just the beginning of the story of adopting a new mindset for happiness. There are plenty of other variables that need to be taken into consideration if one is to achieve a more comprehensive feeling of equilibrium throughout life’s ups and downs. I will touch on those in further writings.
I hope you found this useful. If you did, please share with people you think would benefit from reading this. x
