I'll share my experiences of meeting happy people all around the world and engaging them in conversation.
Concepts like gratitude, comparative satisfaction, life's purpose and something labeled "resilience" are bandaids. They stick for awhile. They protect for a bit. But then they come off, most often well before the underlying wound or trauma has healed.
The universal I found was to accept that happiness is a choice. And you can suffer as well while being happy. But when you wake up, you have a choice, happy or not. Don't choose to contextualize it in any way. Don't try and rank it. Just chose to be it. It has been the most worthwhile of new habits to develop in my life. It doesn't avoid suffering. It actually emphasizes empathy.
But it's a choice and I believe that if you don't chose it you'll never "achieve" it. Because it's not something you achieve. I've found many resistant to accepting they have a choice. The ones I know personally have all chosen "victim hood." And many are quite good at explaining that victim hood "happened" to them and that they are unable to chose happiness. Often they say victimhood is empathy or compassion or even loving. Oh well.
Knowing that you can simply chose to be happy is a LOT of responsibility. I think that choice scares many, but it truly gets easier every day. And from that flows presence. For the big and small things.
I'll share my experiences of meeting happy people all around the world and engaging them in conversation.
Concepts like gratitude, comparative satisfaction, life's purpose and something labeled "resilience" are bandaids. They stick for awhile. They protect for a bit. But then they come off, most often well before the underlying wound or trauma has healed.
The universal I found was to accept that happiness is a choice. And you can suffer as well while being happy. But when you wake up, you have a choice, happy or not. Don't choose to contextualize it in any way. Don't try and rank it. Just chose to be it. It has been the most worthwhile of new habits to develop in my life. It doesn't avoid suffering. It actually emphasizes empathy.
But it's a choice and I believe that if you don't chose it you'll never "achieve" it. Because it's not something you achieve. I've found many resistant to accepting they have a choice. The ones I know personally have all chosen "victim hood." And many are quite good at explaining that victim hood "happened" to them and that they are unable to chose happiness. Often they say victimhood is empathy or compassion or even loving. Oh well.
Knowing that you can simply chose to be happy is a LOT of responsibility. I think that choice scares many, but it truly gets easier every day. And from that flows presence. For the big and small things.