Shortcuts to Happiness: (Part iii)

When we were small children we were encouraged to play ‘make believe’ we were encouraged to be imaginative and creative, to fantasize and enjoy. Then as we became older the messages from our parents and teachers started to change. What we heard was “grow up!” “be realistic!” make believe became a more serious game of ‘making beliefs’ perhaps being judgmental, drawing conclusions, deciding what’s good and bad, right and wrong. All of our emotions and behaviors then follow from the beliefs we create.

Our parents, teachers, political leaders, religious leaders, corporate executives compete busily to teach us or sell us beliefs so that they can influence our feelings and behavior. They know and we soon learn, that winning the games of power, both personal and political, depends on what we choose to believe.
Homemakers, army generals, doctors, truck drivers, lawyers……….almost everyone in our society today has this in common: they operate from their beliefs. How they vote, what sort of army they support, if any, where they live; what they buy; whom they marry; what clothes they will wear all come from a our beliefs.

We can understand the power of beliefs in the political and business world yet do we apply that same clarity to ourselves. Do the beliefs we hold serve us? Do they empower us or lead us to feel hopeless and inferior? Do they lead us to happiness or unhappiness?

Very often we will reformulate what other people say – the beliefs they sell – into conclusions or beliefs about ourselves. Most of which we have heard in childhood comments like these…….
· “be seen but not heard” (Conclusion: What I say doesn’t matter)
· “I know better than you” (conclusion: I’m not intelligent enough to know)
· ”You are too young to understand” (Conclusion: When I get older I’ll get smarter- I hope)
· “Don’t question what I say just listen” (Conclusion: Other people’s statements are more important than my own.)
· “You make me unhappy” (Conclusion: I have the power to cause unhappiness in people.)
· “If you loved me you would keep your room neat” (Conclusion: If I don’t do what my Mother wants it means I don’t love her.)

Once childhood and adolescence pass by then the messages appear to change, or do they?
· “If you loved me, you’d be more caring and sexually active” (Conclusion: I still have to do what people want in order to prove that I love them.)
· “You’ll never understand me” (Conclusion: It’s still not ok to disagree and have my own opinions.)
· “You make me furious” (Conclusion: I cause what others feel.)
· “Can’t you do it right?” (Conclusion: I’m inept and ill equipped; there must be something wrong with me.

We have a choice of questioning our beliefs, not as a sign of disrespect or indictment of ourselves or others, but to give ourselves an opportunity to review, to reaffirm, to change and most significantly, to facilitate happiness.