Happiness keeps us busy.
Walk into the average bookstore and you will find at least an entire department that focuses on being happier. Happiness keeps us busy.
In fact, being happy seems the most accessible among millennials!
For example, we find happiness with our lives more important than a good career or a large sum of money on our account. But do not we become very unhappy from that desire for happiness?
A color palette of emotions
How often do you not hear that you have to create your own happiness and that it is bad for your energy to be sad?
A spiritual person always has positive energy.
You see a monk never look sad or pissed?
In Buddhism they accept suffering as a part of life. Pain, grief, anger: it is all part of it. It is all those emotions that make us human. After all, there is no joy without sorrow. Or, as they say so beautifully: 'no rain, no flowers'.
Sadness is therefore part of your happiness. Just like anger. And joy. And euphoria. It makes us whole, as a human being. The idea is that our emotions are positive or negative.
"Using them all means that we live a rich, satisfying life."
Embrace your down day
A rich and satisfying life by simply letting all the emotions that we experience as humans are there. That does not sound wrong, right?
It's all in acceptance. A monk also hits his little toe sometimes at a table. And he probably thinks that is as uncomfortable as you. And sometimes things happen in your life that you have no influence on, but that make you very sad. That's what a monk really has. But it's part of life. Everything is allowed.
As Morgan Harper Nichols once said so beautifully, "For the highs and lows, and moments in between, mountains and valleys, rivers and streams, for where you are now, and where you will go, for 'I've always known' and 'I told you so', for 'nothing is happening' and 'all has gone wrong', it 's here in this journey, you' ll learn to be strong, you will get where you 're going, landing where you belong'.
Acceptance and Commitment TherapyHave to embrace trouble with misery? You can find help with that. The American psychologist Steven C. Hayes has developed the ACT method. ACT stands for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a new form of Behavioral Therapy. The ACT method helps to lead a rich and meaningful life in which one learns to deal effectively with setbacks that inevitably come your way. ACT does this on the basis of six powerful principles that enable everyone to develop a skill that will enrich life. It revolves around:
- Acceptance: Actively inviting unpleasant thoughts, feelings and circumstances
- Defusion: Letting go of your thoughts so that they will hit you less quickly.
- As a Context: Creating a different, more flexible relationship with yourself.
- Here and Now: Getting in touch with the here and now.
- Values: Discover what you really find important in life.
- Committed Acting: Start doing things based on your values.
And of course you can still look for happiness.
But realize that things outside yourself often make you happy temporarily. It is the small things in your life that bring real happiness, according to happiness scientist and sociologist Christine Carter in her book 'Do nothing more'. Thus gratitude is 'a kind of holy grail to happiness'. And that gratitude, that is what you can teach yourself. In the form of a gratitude diary, for example.
At the end of the day you write down three things that you are grateful for.
For your beautiful family, for example. And the fact that your fridge was full and that's why you did not have to go shopping for a short while. But also for the less fun things, which makes you appreciate the nicer things even more. In everything, give thanks (even after that angry or sad mood).
Have a nice weekend, Tommy
Recent Comments
18
Love this share Tommy on happiness
It's beautiful.
The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy process has helped in my life.
I would have it no other way.
My health issues automatically turn to health soltutions.
This is how I choose to live my life.
Happy!
Many blessings
Maxine
It makes me happy when I can make other people happy in this case with my post
Have a great day
Tommy
This is a beautiful post Tommy!
I’ve always been a “glass is half full” kind of person, and I have a sister who is just the opposite.
I’ve often wondered how that happens with 2 people from the same parents who are raised in the same environment. Is it something in the way our brains are wired? Can it be taught?
Thanks for sharing and making us think about our true happiness.
KyleAnn
Hi KyleAnn,
I and my younger brother are also quite different personalities so it's just how someone is looking at life. Or many times I give the following example if two people read the same book and then they will give both a verbal version on what they did read it will most likely don't sound the same. Because both have a different interpretation on what they did read.
And for sure it can be taught. Change little habits a the time. I did write a blog about that. And that is how I change my client's habits related to nutrition.
Have a great day
Tommy
Thank you! I will look up the blog you wrote, maybe it will give me some tips I can share with my sister. She knows she has a negative attitude, and even refers to herself as a “negative Nancy” (her name is Amy)!
That is great post-Tommy and a beautiful one at that. But happiness is other things as well. You can be just a happy person and I have seen where a person is just happy all the time.
The little things are what make people happy even though they want the big things it is not so much the wants it is the needs that make us the happiest. That is my opinion.
Mary
⭐️ appreciation, acceptance of all = affluence ...
all the best for happiness! ... cheerio ... 😊
cheers Tommy
I spent 3 hours last weekend trying to explain to a ten year old the difference between a pessimist and an optimist. Unfortunately he has already became one of those jaded critics and just can't get it.
See more comments
Thanks for sharing this information Tommy very interesting and powerful!