Conceptualize Happiness

Art by ~ghettojack

Often it feels that we are in such a hurry to become happier, that we forget to stop and think what "happiness" is, and what it means to us. 

The very first step to lasting happiness is to formulate what it is and what it isn’t.

Each of us is different. We perceive the world differently. Our five senses, our physical experiences, spiritual experiences, our  mental processes and emotions are different. 

On the physical level, we are different on the outside, which is pretty obvious by our looks, as well as on the inside (which sometimes is less obvious, but nonetheless, very true). We perceive and relate to the smell, the sound, the touch, the sight, and the taste individually. For example, each of us experiences pain differently: some endure it, others cannot tolerate it at all, some bear it silently, others moan and yell. Our attitude to pain is different as well. Some find it unpleasant but tolerable, while others fear it and will go to great length to avoid it, whereas others find pleasure in it. Such difference of perception happens with any physical experience.

The same individuality applies to our spiritual, intellectual, moral and emotional functions. When we read the same book or watch the same movie, we each pay attention to different cues, and arrive to slightly (or vastly) different conclusions. One may like it, another love it passionately and want to re-read it or watch it again,  the third one resent it, the forth one will not be able to get past the first chapter/ten minutes, and someone else might find it boring and forget it in a week. 

We love differently, we grieve differently, we think differently, we memorize differently. We hold different notions of kindness, beauty, good and evil. By the same token, there is no universal notion of happiness. It is a general term for something that we experience distinctly and dissimilarly to others. 

Therefore, we should not try to emulate the displays of happiness that we see in other people or on television and movies. If you are not the smiley, bouncy type, do not think that you are less happy because you do not laugh out loud when something nice happens to you. Happiness may be experienced in different ways - it can be loud, fun, cheerful, gay, merry, hilarious or it can be quiet, contemplative, insightful, content, peaceful. We can feel it differently at different times and the way we experience happiness may change with age.

Do not expect to naturally react to life similarly to your heroes, parents, or friends. And do not expect or insist that your children react to things the same way as you do. They are different inside the same way they look differently or have different fingerprints than you.

To be able to control things, we should be able to conceptualize them. For many centuries, humans did not understand the nature and causes of various diseases. Therefore, they were believed to be divine punishment, similar to other phenomena, such as thunder, lightning, or eclipse. Now in many cases we have a better understanding of disease processes, what they are and what causes them, and we can control them better by prevention or treatment.

So, to be happy let us first conceptualize what we think happiness is.  If we do not have a good idea about what it is, we cannot move toward it, and we will not recognize that we may already have it. We will have to include some things, and to exclude others.

Exercises:

Below are exercises that are focused on the theory of happiness. It may take a lot of time to understand what is right for you, incorporating what you learned from this blog and from your own experience. The theory may never be complete. It changes and evolves as do you, your personality, and your understanding.

Exercise 1:

Think about your emotional response to the state of happiness. How do you know when you are happy? What do you feel when you know you are happy?

·         elation

·         intensity

·         calm

·         serenity

·         smile

·         laugh

·         cry with tears of joy

·         satisfaction

·         pleasure

·         self esteem

·         peacefulness

·         other - list them for yourself

Ask yourself:

When you are happy, do you feel the emotion for a short time, or does it last for a long time?

If happiness means elation and pleasure, do you consider yourself no longer happy when these feelings subside?

What does it mean to you to be a happy person in a long term? What feeling or emotion do you need to have to know that your entire life if happy? 

When you wish to be happier, or for you loved ones to be happier, what do you have in mind?

Exercise 2: 

Decide what happiness has always meant to you. Make a list. You can use some of these:

·         Just being alive

·         Relationships

·         Good education

·         Children

·         Health

·         Being physically attractive, being beautiful

·         Financial status

·         Possessions

·         Doing what you love

·         Having great career

·         Peer approval and popularity

·         Good entertainment (computer games, movies, music, electronic media, etc.)

·         Country living

·         City living

·         Relaxing

·         Being busy

·         Taking care of others

·         Feeling the care of others

·         Just feeling good about life

·         Contentment

·         Add anything else

Do not try to include things that you think are appropriate or constitute the "right answer". This exercise is not for anybody's judgment, it is just for you, for your own understanding. So just pick whatever you always wanted in order to be happy.

Look at the above list carefully.  Ask yourself:

Are these things that ultimately make you happy or are they your goals in life? (our goals in life do not necessarily overlap with our happiness). 

Are they mostly important for your success or for your own well-being and happiness?

If you do not achieve them, will you still be able to be happy?  

If you do achieve them, are you pretty much guaranteed to have happiness ever after?

Do you already have some of the things on the list?

Do most of the things on your list depend on outside circumstances or your own attitude?
  
Does it seem unreasonable to you to feel happy for no particular reason?

How would you explain happiness to your children? What attitude do you want to instill in them?

Based on the above reflections (which may take a minute, a day or months), decide if you want to add or subtract something from your list above to clarify your concept of happiness.

And remember that the state of happiness originates, develops and exists inside of us, from our state of mind, from our attitude toward the world around us. It does not originate from outside. Things happen, or do not happen. We are the ones who react to them in different ways.

Now we can recognize our individual sources of happiness and our unique reactions to them. Therefore, we have a better sense of what our happiness is and a better control of it.

Make Room for Negative Emotions (Can't Live With Them, Can't Live Without Them)

art by ~lovelylittlesunshine

It is generally agreed upon and taught to everyone since we are little that we should develop the "good" feelings in us and work on minimizing the "bad" ones. Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. We are so used to this that we go through life taking it for granted. We genuinely try to be "better" people, to overcome fear and pain and be braver, to overcome irritation and be non-judgmental, to disregard tiredness and occasional apathy and push on, never quit, to overcome feeling depressed or disappointed and to always think positively. Nonetheless, we still experience the "bad" emotions and feel guilty for it.

But I believe that negative emotions are a natural part of us, and in moderation, they are necessary.

However nice it is to be positive and think positive, we will not be able to exist without negative emotions, because they signal something is wrong, make us aware of the surroundings and thus, protect us. 

For example, fear is a form of our survival instinct. To have no healthy fear is not wise and can bring our demise. Pain lets us know when we are in a dangerous situation. People who have a very high pain threshold (for example, with severe Diabetes) can step on glass without noticing and end up with infected wounds, or have a heart attack without feeling the chest pain and not seek medical help. Tiredness signals we need to rest and replenish our energy so that we don't drop, and so on.

Negative emotions spur us on. When we do not like the present circumstances, it makes us work toward something better, something more acceptable, something more comfortable.  If we are not satisfied, it may help us become better and more successful. Oftentimes, growth and progress occur not in spite of unpleasant experiences but because of them.

Negative emotions are evidence of our sound mental health. We may dream about the perfect life, but in the real world the good and the bad mixed in together. And we have to react adequately. That means to accentuate the positive and to notice the negative, and adjust our behavior accordingly. 

The trick is to be balanced, to match the negative reaction to the scale of the adverse event. We should distinguish between real tragedies and nuisances in our lives. 

When we go through a life altering experience such as a divorce, onset of a serious disease, loss of loved ones, etc., it is normal to go through the stages of grieve[1] that include denial, anger, rage, envy, sadness, depression, regret, fear, detachment, and more.

If we get a traffic ticket or a bad grade in school, a lot of the above emotional responses would be an exaggeration that can throw us out of balance.

In his book How to Lose Control and Gain Emotional Freedom, Jerry D. Duvinsky, PhD writes that we are conditioned to think that emotions such as grief, anger, despair, helplessness, or loneliness are inherently bad, evil, dangerous, or wrong, so we feel the need to control them, suppress them, or disregard them. Granted, they are uncomfortable, powerful, and at times rather inconvenient. But our attempts to avoid them may produce deeper problems and lead to more suffering.

Negative emotions are intrinsic and indivisible part of us that helps us adjust, survive and improve ourselves. Instead of spending much effort to suppress them, we should recognize that unpleasant emotions are just symptoms of something else happening. Otherwise, we may give into them and behave in a destructive way. For example, quitting a job because of giving into feeling not appreciated by colleagues who did not invite you to an office party, or cheating on spouse because of giving into feeling angry with him for not putting the toilet seat up. 

Instead, we should accept that life is not supposed to be perfect or easy. We will waste a lot of our vital energy wishing to never get hurt, scared, or disappointed. Rather, we should be glad that we have the ability to distinguish the good from the bad in our lives. We should acknowledge full range of our emotions as our faithful messengers of our environment, without labeling them "bad" or otherwise, and learn to recognize and deal with their cause, instead of focusing on the emotion itself.  For example, it is not the pain that is our problem, but the nail we stepped on. We can suppress the pain by taking pills, but we would be much better off removing the nail. Instead of being overwhelmed by an emotion, we should resolve its cause.  So if we get a bad grade in school, we should not mope around and feel stupid, but study to get a better one on the next test.

Negative emotions are a necessary part of us. So if we try to ignore them and smile despite anything, then firstly, our life can be endangered, secondly, we cannot react to circumstances adequately and wisely, and thirdly, we can develop personality disorders. If we ever will reach the mental state when we think only positive thoughts and smile all the time, it is possible we've gone crazy. So make room for some negative emotions in your head. And as always, remember that everything is good in moderation.

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[1] The Kübler-Ross model (a.k.a., "the five stages of grief"), which hypothesizes that when a person is faced with a life altering or a life threatening event, he/she will experience a series of emotional "stages": denial; anger; bargaining; depression; and, acceptance.

 

Exploring Happiness Pre-requisites: Money

art by ~Saphaer69

Money, undoubtedly, is a very powerful and desirable object in our society and for each of us individually. It shapes our lives. We choose careers because of it. We spend most of our precious waking hours working instead of doing something else that we may enjoy better because of it. Money grants unbelievable opportunities, inspires hideous crimes and spurs on amazing scientific and artistic achievements. Money is a huge engine of our world, whether we like it or not. And despite the saying about money not being able to buy happiness, the majority of us tie money closely to our levels of happiness.

Our consumerist culture nurtures the idea that money can buy us some happiness. Marketing campaigns ingrain the heavy suggestion that buying certain things makes us happy - a car, a shampoo, a bag of chips. They claim we "open happiness" when we open a bottle of not-too-healthy soft beverage, or that we will be touched by happiness when showering with certain body wash. Even if we do not take the ads seriously, using the commercial break time for other things, like grabbing a can of the said soft beverage, the notion is still there in our heads and even more so in the heads of our children. It distorts and devalues the true meaning of happiness. It also makes us confuse pleasures with real happiness (for more on that see post "Happiness vs. Pleasure" at http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7848938430226411031#editor/target=post;postID=8226060586603017057).

art by ~pandacub143

In defense of money, I believe that in some ways, it can buy happiness. More precisely, it can procure conditions that lead to happiness: it can give us a sense of financial security, of indulgence, of ability to help others, ability to be free to do what we choose and not toil at a job we do not enjoy. Money grants us opportunities to learn what makes us happy and the ability to do it.




But we do not need money to make ourselves happy, as long as we are content with what we have, even if we dream about something else, perhaps. We all heard recollections of our parents, older acquaintances, or historical figures about how they had two cents in their pockets and felt very much happy and alive.

So money can help us with our levels of happiness, but it does not guarantee it. For example, Prince Charming was quite wealthy but oh-so-unhappy in the beginning of the Cinderella fairytale. He was extremely unhappy, because he felt that nothing ever went his way, and on top of it, his parents were organizing a huge ball for all the maids of the kingdom, and they were forcing him into choosing a bride! That is just one fairy tale example about how lots of money does not guarantee happiness to its master. I am sure you can think of dozens more from the real life.

Moreover, similarly to having the ability to make us happy, or not affect our level of happiness, money has the ability to make us unhappy. Just think of  investing, managing money, fear of a mere potential of losing some because of our own mistakes or the market, the long hours and sleepless nights one may put into planning and worrying about competition, preserving capital, growing capital, etc. What a headache!

Money also has the ability to make us forget or disregard moderation and to grant us excessive permissiveness. And once there is no moderation, the many available bad habits turn into addictions and into broken lives. If not for lots of money, a lot of good people would not get into a lot of trouble.

art by ~Mephiles99

So the same powerful object - money - may make us happy, unhappy, or not relate to our happiness levels. That is because of the essence of happiness itself. Real happiness comes from inside, from our mind set, from whether we choose to feel happy without money, with money, because of having enough money, or despite of having it.