Be Realistic? Happiness Is Real

Some of us come to the idea of improving our lives with a measured degree of skepticism. “Is it realistic to think that I can help myself become happier?” The question has some merit.

Everyone has an intrinsic sense of the immovability of circumstance. Surely we can’t just snap a finger or rub a magical lamp and wish everything to be great. This is has been known for millenia to positive and negative thinkers alike.

So, when we see people who are always smiling, we tend to view them as a little contrived. If we can’t snap a finger, why do they seem to be able to? Life is up and down, which we all come to know through experience, so how is it that some people never seem to get dragged down? They must be faking it, and they certainly aren’t being realistic.

Not so fast. Sure, there is no key to turning everything into peaches. There are going to be down times. Even those ever-smiling people out there have them. But just because we can’t turn everything into pure bliss doesn’t mean that we can’t benefit from some transformation.

So what can we do?

1. Pay Attention, Be Smart

Whether we consider ourselves realists or optimists, one thing we tend to do is attempt to recycle joyous times. When we find ourselves unsatisfied or frustrated, naturally we think back to good times looking for the key: “How did I feel so good back then?”

Make sure you are aware of this happening. Lots of us can be pretty oblivious to what’s going on in our thoughts, most often because we assume that it is the world that causes our emotional states. But we should be open to the possibility that this is not a metaphysical law. It may be that our thoughts have more impact on our moods than we think.

So pay attention to your thinking, and be smart about what’s going on. We can all benefit from a little more information about ourselves.

Another thing we like to do is become distasteful toward unhappiness. We remind ourselves that we are not happy, and it wears. This voice may be telling the truth, but that’s no reason to listen to it. If you keep listening to your “truth”, soon you will be convinced.

So don’t listen, but don’t ignore it either. What I mean is, make a note when you think you might be doing this. Chances are you are doing it every time you aren’t feeling so hot. You can easily stop pointing out to yourself that life must suck.

2. Drop Your Everything/Nothing Filter

It seems like we are born polarized. No, not paralyzed, but something similar. We think that if we can’t have everything, then we are left with nothing, and in so doing we eradicate the whole gray area of life. That’s a lot of area (arguably, all of it).

Similarly, sometimes when we set out to enjoy ourselves, we can get in the way by donning polarizing glasses. The day can be getting along fine until something jams up our trajectory. Maybe you fall and break your knee, and suddenly your, “whole day goes to shit,” or maybe you see someone having a better time, and you conclude that you must not be having such a great time after all.

If you drop your glasses, you might see that just because something goes terribly wrong doesn’t mean everything goes terribly wrong. This is tricky to remember since our language employs a lot of hyperbole usage: “Everything just fell into place”, or, “I did nothing this weekend.”

So just because it is unrealistic to be happy all the time, that says nothing (okay, something ) about just how much happiness it is realistic to achieve.

3. Cool Your “Between The Lines” Presence

We are all analysts of our own state. I myself feel like I often over-analyze my emotional placement. This can be harmful because when we ask questions like, “Am I happy?” we invite the implications of the question – namely, that you only asked the question because you suspect that no, you are not happy.

If you want to be realistic, you need to take hidden interpretations as possibilities, not high probabilities.

Try these simple things next time you are wondering about all-encompassing happiness. If you pay good attention to your mind, you might be surprised at how obvious it’s workings are. If you start looking for the shades in life, you may realize that personal happiness has little to do with the elimination of unhappiness. And if you stop paying interpretations of life lip-service, many interpretations will arise, lessening the impact of the single one before.

***

Featured at Pinkblocks on August 24, 2009