I Want To Be Unhappy!!!!
Is there any way we can be happy without effort. One day wake up and it is a feeling that we cannot run away from? Is there anyway where our learned trait and habits are that of a positive nature? Could we have success in transforming our mindset to that of loving all the time and not having a reason for it, with no effort and just because? What I know now in my present perceived reality is that there is little effort spent in being miserable. It is much easier to blame everyone else and including work, government, school, the milkman, the in-laws, and the person that cut you off this morning….. It is so easy and comforting to know we do not have to take accountability for our unhappiness. In the first place most of the time we have created our own damage to our psyche. We have conditioned ourselves to believe the perceptions we have allowed ourselves to listen to. There is a group of people that have visited Los Angeles this month from the Special Olympics. They did not choose their current state of being. Their being is perceived by the rest of the world as challenging and out of the normal in society, yet they are an amazing group of people performing amazing feats that a “normal” person cannot even begin to accomplish. They are truly special. They have attacked that exterior perception of themselves and internalized their view of themselves as amazing and powerful! If you watch any news reports about their games and see their faces, they are always happy. Are they challenged? Yes of course they are, but not in the way you think. They are challenged because of the general view of their state of being. They do know the difference between unhappiness and happiness. They do have a choice and know that either is available.
Effortless happiness is only achieved through quiet time or what is called meditation, or at least some inter thinking of ones being. Getting in touch with your essence so important if you are to find that internal happiness that is called love. We all have it inside us. It is our soul, essence, being, spirit, Conscious…..Yes conscious….. If we start to understand what we are about and how we are made we can stop suffering. WE will always experience. The perceptions of the experience will change. We can sort out the emotions and feelings and categorize them accordingly. We can wash our different negative states of mind with love and transform them into amazing experiences that strengthen us and shape who we can potentially be. It is hard work but worth the effort. It is harder to work towards that connection to our essence than to accept the vulgarity of pain and discomfort as “normal”.
I always tell people that they have a choice. To be happy or not. I always get the reply that I make it sound so easy. Where in that statement did I say it was easy? I said one or the other is our choice. The easy choice and most comfortable is unhappiness. There is no effort involved. No work. Just sit back accept and feel what the majority of the world is believing. Hard work is being uncomfortable, feeling the pain, conditioning you to something that is not”normal”. Inside us we have the drive that is our love for ourselves; a sense of the effort is good and just. We have a fire inside us that connects to the feeling of happiness and joy, when we experience it we do not feel our physical pains, we heal quicker, think logically, love everyone and it is reciprocated. We share our true inner selves with the world around us and it feels awesome!
Happy or Unhappy? Give it a try. I bet I am right. If I am not then don’t read this blog. I will still love you anyway.
The Power of Thought
You demonstrate success or failure according to your habitual trend of thought. In you which is stronger? – Success thoughts or failure thoughts? If your mind is ordinarily in a negative state, an occasional positive thought is not sufficient to attract success. But if you think rightly, you will find your goal even though you seemed enveloped in darkness.
You alone are responsible for yourself. No one else may answer for your deeds when the final reckoning comes. Your work in the world – in the sphere where you and your own past activity, has placed you – can be performed only by one person – yourself. And your work can be called a success only when in some way it serves your fellow man.
Don’t mentally review any problem constantly. Let it rest at times and it may work itself out; but see that you do not rest so long that your discrimination is lost. Rather use these rest periods to go deep within the calm region of your own inner self. Attuned with your soul, you will be able to think correctly regarding everything you do; and if your thoughts and actions have gone astray they can be re-aligned. This power of divine attunement can be achieved by practice and effort.
The Surprising Science of Happiness by Dan Gilbert
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Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won’t have to hunt for happiness. ~ William E. Gladstone, British Prime Minister, 1892 – 1894
What is real happiness? Is happiness that we make up true happiness?
According to social psychologist, Dan Gilbert, there are 2 kinds of happiness. One is natural happiness which we experience when we get what we want and the other is synthetic happiness which we manufacture when we don’t get what we want.
Here’s a question for you: Is one better than the other?
Let’s find out.
In denial or truly happy?
I am sure you have heard about people who after experiencing a bad event or a disappointing setback tells others and themselves that they are better off despite not getting what they want and that they wouldn’t change that for anything in the world.
Well, it turns out that these people aren’t overt-optimists who are in denial about their misfortune. It turns out that their “synthetic” happiness did make them happy. For real.
In his Ted Talk, social psychologist Dan Gilbert talks about people fabricating happiness after not getting what they want or experiencing a real nasty experience such as being wrongly convicted and served decades worth of a jail sentence for something he has not done.
The sentiment expressed by the man who was wrongly convicted was that it was a “glorious experience”. Really? Surely that is not the right feelings to have after serving time for so long for something you did not do?
Naturally, we think that these people must be lying to themselves, they can’t be truly happy with their experience but we could be wrong….
Using unconscious memory to test happiness
Well, in an experiment Gilbert conducted on patients with anterograde amnesia who cannot form new memories he first asked the patients to rate a lineup of 6 Monet prints from 1 being the least-liked to 6 being the most-liked. Then, he told them that as a gift they would be given either print number 3 or 4 as a gift and most of them picked number 3 over 4 just because of preference. The researchers then left the room and returned (bear in mind that the patients do not remember the research team nor what transpired before) and the patients was asked again to rank the 6 paintings from least-liked to most-liked.
Here’s the interesting bit:
The individuals now rank the number 3 painting at number 2, higher than before and the number 4 painting which was rejected was now ranked even lower than before at number 5. The results indicated that they are happier with the painting they had owned more than before and they liked the rejected painting even less even though they do not have any conscious memory of the paintings.
With this experiment, Gilbert found that individuals make their own synthetic happiness unconsciously. Gilbert also found that this unconscious ability to synthesize happiness happens more often in situations where we do not have control over the situation.
In essence, we are really good at making ourselves feel better about an outcome that occurs from a situation that is out of our hands.
Now, what does this mean for you and why should you pay any attention?
Here are 3 reasons why you should pay attention:
1. Synthetic happiness is not fake. It is not something you make up when you are pissed off about not getting what you want. Synthetic happiness is a natural mechanism we all have in our brains that lets us see a not-so-ideal situation in a different light and learn to like our situation which in turns does let us become happier in time to come.
2. The ability to synthesize happiness is a vital skill to have because we cannot have everything we want all of the time. The truth is we will all face disappointment at some points in our life and we need to be able to manufacture happiness and become adept at seeing the better side of life.
Here’s a point to ponder: clinically-depressed individuals do not have the ability to synthesize happiness in most situations of their lives and that is why they find it harder to see the greener side of life.
3. We often grossly overestimate or underestimate how naturally happy we will feel in any situation. Truth is we will only truly know how happy we will feel and continue to feel when we are actually experiencing thus being able to synthesize happiness helps us cope with the uncertainty of our future outcome.
In Conclusion:
The joyful state that we feel is made up of both synthetic and natural happiness. Neither is better than the other because to lead a balanced life we need both: Natural happiness lets us experience the good stuff and synthetic happiness lets us adapt and appreciate what we do have when the outcome is less than ideal. When you start exercising the ability to synthesize happiness, you may find that some situations are not as terrible as they appear at first.
Can you think of a time when you synthesized happiness? What event caused you to synthesize happiness at the time and did the feeling of happiness continued?
Share your comments below.
What is Abundance?
What is the first thing you think when you hear “abundance?” Money? Love? A large circle of friends and family? While we can apply the concept of abundance to all of those aspects of our lives, the essential meaning of abundance is that you are solidly happy with who you are and no external event or situation—whether good or bad—can add or subtract from that happiness.
No one is happy all the time, but when you are truly in a mindset of abundance, you live with balance, hopefulness, and unlimited possibility.
Our innate nature is one of peace and abundance; it comes from within.
Abundance is a way of thinking and of living, even when you have less money, love, or support than you would like. Life delivers a continually changing set of circumstances. Living in abundance can give you a constant source of stability that isn’t based on external things, but you must change your perspective and believe in all the potential that lies within your reach. Abundance is a state of mind. It can’t be lost, taken, or bestowed on you. It is about what brings you joy and fulfillment, not about what you have.
The pursuit of “more,” which is so common in our culture, is not the road to abundance.
Money can, no doubt, make life easier, but it does not buy happiness, as the saying goes. The obsessive pursuit of money can create an imbalance that stands in the way of the kind of abundance that is genuine. If you focus too narrowly on having more money, deeper love, or a wildly successful career and become convinced that those things will “fix” everything, you’ll lose sight of the bigger picture of abundance.
Abundance that concentrates on one thing is destined to create discontent and disappointment.
You must look at every aspect of your life. Pursuing money without bringing the consciousness of abundance to everything in your life will be a fleeting and empty experience. Everything is connected to everything else, so just making loads of money or finding love won’t bring you abundance in the true sense of the word.
To understand abundance and how it can be yours, you have to grasp how the mindset of lack may be playing a role in your life. Lack is the mentality that there’s a shortage or scarcity of good things in life, and then you create fear around that idea. Operating from a place of lack skews the truth of abundance in life and colors your perspective toward hopelessness and futility. Begin to identify how your own fearful thoughts, actions, and behavior may be driven by a belief that says “there’s not enough for me.” Change that belief system and your actions and behavior will follow.
Authentic abundance comes when you have balanced everything in your life, as best as you can. That includes giving away what you have too much of. If you have a lot of love but not enough money, what should you give away? Love. Do you have more money than other things in life? Give away some money! It takes courage and love to give AND to receive. It is all about balance. The things that you want in your life, you must first give away. If you give more hugs, you will get more kisses! You have to break the fear—that is what is causing the lack. Self-sabotage happens when you have too much of something and you become complacent, disconnected, and, sometimes, even greedy.
When you look at abundance with new meaning and discover it inside yourself, there’s no limitation on the extraordinary life that you can experience.
Written By Derek O’Neill (His Website)- An internationally acclaimed psychotherapist, motivational speaker, author, martial arts sensei, and humanitarian. He is the author of More Truth Will Set You Free, the “Get a Grip” series of pocket-sized books, several children’s books. Inspired by his worldly travels, he formed SQ Foundation, a not-for-profit organization focused on helping solve global issues facing humanity today. With charitable projects in twelve countries, the Foundation brings food, medicine, education, shelter, and other basic needs to children, families, and communities in need. In 2012, he was honored as Humanitarian of the Year and named International Celebrity Ambassador for Variety International the Children’s Charity.