I have a theory about happiness. It is a great idea to practice a number of activities to be truly happy. It’s not always what’s best for you at the time, but can add up to happiness eventually. The first practice is one of self-forgiveness. If you are a caring person, you might just likely feel guilty about things you’ve done in the past.
Realize, first of all, everyone does that stuff. It’s an experience we experiment with, then we’re supposed to feel guilty. This is how our brains work, usually. Forgiving one’s self about past things is very difficult. We’re supposed to feel shame and guilt – that shapes our goodness tendencies to avoid pain. Realize that you did what you did for a reason, possibly because you momentarily felt evil. Love yourself anyway and move on, and don’t do evil, hurtful things.
Once you’ve done that, the next step is to love everybody else. That’s even harder. If you find this step too hard, shrink your enemies down to little infants and then you can find love in your heart for them. In the world of hatred, one must look to one’s own self for the happiness one deserves. The underlying causes of happiness are the messages your brain tells your mind. In the other words, we are the rulers of our own happiness. It isn’t a big mystery but people act like it is.
Without our dysfunctional brains telling us dysfunctional messages we would be much happier. However, in this day and age we have no baseline for wisdom. Whatever wisdom we are able to muster, the evening news takes away by telling us what to think instead.
If only we could find somewhere the real truth about things, events, and memories and true stories about the way the world is, we could perhaps stand to hear it. I don’t know if reality is a happy pill these days, but it’s better than fake news brought to you by mega-corporations all bought and paid for by pharma and oil industries.
I’m not suggesting reality will set you free or make you happy, but at least you can feel like you really know things and that’s the best place to start figuring out things.
I want to know why people are so utterly unable to achieve happiness. I believe they actually require some sadness in their lives to balance the multitude of other feelings.
It is natural to an extent. In the world of psychology, I suggest rational emotive therapy. I wrote a blog about it already, but the true nature of supreme happiness is love. That is the hardest feeling in the world to hold onto. Once we find real love, unfortunately, we immediately start to fear its loss. Could there be tragedy? Could there be disloyalty? Could there be arguments? Do you suddenly get jealous? That’s a buzzkill. There goes your happiness, just like that.
To stay happy when you are happy is the hard part since everything changes constantly. The best advice is to simply enjoy the happiness without hanging onto it. You don’t own it; it occurs for you if you are lucky. Enjoy it. Prolong it by not thinking with your fear mind. As I’ve said, happiness is elusive. In the final analysis, I have to accept Alan Watt’s theory about the wisdom of insecurity. Once you embrace your insecurity, you will find peace in all this change.
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