Shortcuts to Happiness. Part xx

As I continue to walk my path in life trying to be happier more loving to all around me, its sometimes hard to sustain that feeling of happiness that is so essential to me now.
Hardships and occurrences may happen in life, which is hard to cope with and life does not always take the path that I feel I want or expect, but one thing that I have found that helps me to sustain the ‘happiness feeling’ is ‘Gratitude.’

Gratitude is a personality characteristic that people clearly display when they become happier. Although a lot of work and effort has gone into their individual journeys toward increased clarity and comfort, most find that a sustained experience of happiness goes beyond their dreams.

When we are happy, we are truly grateful. The reverse also holds true. When we are grateful we are truly happy. In fact, sometimes I call gratitude the sweetest way to embrace happiness when I forget. We can cut through all the misery by turning our attention to being grateful.

In spite of all the catastrophes that might occur we can find little and larger ways to be thankful for what we have. Gratitude then becomes the shortest of shortcuts to happiness. Before proceeding further, we would do well to deal first with what might feel like a natural human propensity to resist gratitude and appreciation.

Most of us have probably been raised with the ‘should’ of politeness. Perhaps we have said thank you so often without sincere appreciation, so that the words stand devoid of any real feeling and meaning. How often have I heard my parents and others tell me to say thank you as a child, when I didn’t want to or see the need to, so my need to say thank you now is sometimes polluted by the memories of insincere gratitude. Gratitude was a pretense, almost a punishment for not being allowed to express my true feelings.

Not only do we resist feeling appreciation, we refrain from expressing it for strategic and tactical reasons. If I say “Thank you” do we now owe something in return? If we express gratitude for help does that diminish us? Suppression of feelings for reasons of self-protection is an illusion. We gain nothing by our silence and our stoicism. We do not cheat the world with our lack of gratitude we only cheat ourselves.

To simply mouth the expression of gratitude is what has been the problem since childhood with the obligatory “thank you.” Words! They did not always encourage us to do it. A smile begins to do it. A hug amplifies the feeling. A helping hand or meaningful support makes gratitude even more tangible. In no way do our actions minimize the silent gratitude we might feel while viewing a sunset or watching a sky full of eagles migrate to a foreign land. To be grateful means not only to delight, enjoy and appreciate, but also to recognize simultaneously the blessing and the wonder of an experience. In such moments there is only happiness.

Shortcuts to Happiness. Part xix

The secret to Happiness lies not in events but in our responses to them. One of the most difficult events a person can face is the death of a loved one or the ‘death’ of a relationship, or (I know this sounds strange) to an addiction e.g. alcohol: drugs: cigarettes, anything where there is withdrawal to produce cravings. There is always a grieving process.

I once knew a guy who had lost his sister in a traffic accident. He was a close friend of mine and my immediate response was to want to go and comfort him. I felt the pangs of hurt that death causes which I remember so well from my Grandfather. I wondered what I could say or do to comfort my friend whose grief must have been so deep. Would he be hysterical or collapsing in anguish and sorrow, crying miserably because of his loss?

When I arrived at his house I realized that I didn’t know what to say or how to act. I imagined consoling my friend but I wasn’t sure how to do it. Was I to hug him, cry with him or curse the universe with him, my goodness I thought, he had to face the death of his younger sister and he was only a young guy himself, I entered his room where he sat quietly with a candle burning on the desk. He smiled easily and to my surprise he talked about his sisters passing.

In accordance with his religious doctrine, he believed she had become one with G-d and the universe. The candle was a symbol of eternal life and the transition into another dimension. He believed that something had been gained by her loss and I learned that our reactions and experiences follow from our beliefs and judgments, the biggest belief here being, G-d or a Higher Power of this persons understanding.

Our viewpoint determines our experience. As a young girl I viewed death as the most difficult of human events, having struggled myself with the loss of relationships and death but, I realized that others had the capability, of embracing it quite differently. Death is neither good nor bad until we judge it so and we judge it within our own cultural, religious and personal biases.

Shortcuts to Happiness. Part xviii

In my experience I realize that we not only give over our opinions on every subject, but we have learned to judge from a particular stand point. We have become very clever at pinpointing all that’s difficult and bad in our lives and in the world around us. The media reflects and reinforces this bias. The reward is continual stress, discomfort and anxiety. We set ourselves up for unhappiness rather than for peace and comfort.

We spend most of our lives judging, but by making these very judgments because we want to distinguish between “good and bad” “right and wrong” “possible or impossible” in order to help us make decisions and choose behaviors we are distancing ourselves from creating new possibilities in our lives. Instead we get stuck in our very own conclusions, our judgments keeping us in our unhappiness.

For example someone might declare his/her love for us. Immediately, we ask ourselves “is this persons’ declaration of love, caring and intimacy good or bad for me”? One possible answer this is ‘good’ (the judgment) now I can feel valued (the feeling) and we can get married (the action). Or the alternative might be this is ‘bad’ for me (the judgment) because I will now feel pressured (the feeling) to commit more time and energy to this relationship so I better leave to preserve my freedom (the action).

Very simply the stimulus, in this case, (the declaration of love) does not create happiness or unhappiness; the stimulus just is! How we judge it determines how we feel and how we act. If we judge a circumstance to be good (not only for us, but for those we love and for humanity) we feel excited, happy, fulfilled and tend to support or move toward the experience. If we judge it as bad, then we feel duly angry, fearful, anxious or sad and tend to move away from the experience.

As human beings we have demonstrated an uncanny ability to turn any set of circumstances into an opportunity to be uncomfortable or unhappy. Unwittingly, we have been misled by a culture that has taught us systematically to use discomfort at almost every juncture as the best way to take care of ourselves.
Frequently we view ourselves as responders to or victims of situations rather than the authors of our experiences.

As a result we can easily loose our way and become confused with our entire thinking process, condemning it erroneously for robbing us of inner peace and tranquility. In contrast we can be grateful for our skills and talents and use them for our benefit. We can in fact use our capabilities to create beliefs and make judgments as a tool for our own personal liberation from discomfort.

Shortcuts to Happiness. Part xvii

Growing up, my biggest fear was not just of other people but of myself, I became more and more afraid of what I saw was developing in me (character defects) and afraid of what others would see. Especially my Mother who thought I was perfect. I felt the risk that I associated with authenticity to be quite threatening but in reality it is quite illusory. The more we nurture ourselves and remove our masks we can allow our uncensored expression, allowing the rhythms within blend with those surrounding us. We create inner-outer harmony. It’s a little like positive attraction, if we think positively we attract the positive.

In my experience, once personal authenticity has been discovered, I feel we can abandon the masks and masquerades that are not truly ours so that we can embrace and nurture our most inner essence. We give up only the laborious task of playing the games. We have nothing to hide from anyone, especially ourselves. In effect, we simplify our lives. One face greets every situation without embarrassment or regret, we know who we are.

Before my own recovery of my authentic self, I would rehearse the ‘right’ response to the imagined or real situation. Now I can trust myself in most situations (progress not perfection) to trust myself by allowing the response I feel in any given moment. Some people mistakenly think that this gives them a license to kill” to be rude and attacking but what materializes suggests quite the opposite. Unhappy commentaries are not signs of authenticity they are signs of unhappiness. My experience teaches me that increased openness and honesty enhance a sense of personal ease and inner harmony bringing growing comfort (happiness) instead of dis-ease, which in turn brings increased respect and love for those around us.

This doorway to happiness is opened easily. We can begin by sharing with a friend, son, daughter, parent, spouse some fact about ourselves we might have kept secret or at least, shared rarely or only partially with anyone else. The very next time we try to keep the ‘secret’ in a conversation we can override that impulse and allow our thoughts and feelings to be expressed. As we begin now to share more freely our concerns, we may also begin now to smile more freely at a child or some interaction on the bus or hold out our hand more easily to a stranger. These acts too can be wondrous expressions of personal authenticity.
Once I could accept myself for who I am and I know what my faults are it’s easier to accept the faults of others.

Next week: Letting go of judgments……… and then we’re really on the happiness path.