We all want to be happy and we all strive for happiness but sometimes it can seem elusive. Some people say that money makes you happy but most people say that things like family make you happy. Interestingly enough science has now shown that, up to a certain point at least, people with more money score higher when it comes to happiness tests than people with family. I know that can be controversial so I’m not going to get into that here, but that’s what the evidence suggests anyway.
But I’m a firm believer that happiness is your “Natural State”. I think that human beings were designed to be happy and it’s only when outside forces intervene that we become unhappy. Of course most of that comes down to our psychology and how we think of things, our mental approach to life. If you think that life is a struggle, life will prove you right. If you think life is blissful then life will prove you right.
So if we’re naturally designed to be happy, then it stands to reason that if we can eliminate the things that make us unhappy then we would logically be more happy. I’ve certainly had my share of hard times, which is actually the only reason that I’m a Life Coach and doing what I do. It was certainly never an ambition of mine to become a Life Coach. But I went through a lot of struggle in my life, a lot of bad things happened to me, it seemed like life was a constant struggle and it was only through going deeply into Personal Development that I was able to make it through all that and come out on the other side. It was because I had done so much Personal Development work on myself that I was able to help my friends who suggest I become a Life Coach because I had helped them so much!
Throughout all of my experiences, what I’ve discovered is that happiness seems to follow a familiar pattern that seems to apply to so many things in life. That is the Law of Contradictions. That is, in order for us to experience something we must do the opposite. In order to receive we must give. It reminds me of the song “The Rose” by Bette Midler.
"It's the heart afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking
That never takes the chance.
It's the one who won't be taken,
Who cannot seem to give,
And the soul afraid of dyin'
That never learns to live."
I have discovered that in order for us to be truly happy, we must embrace that which makes us unhappy. Only then can we be truly happy. Let me explain…
As human beings we will all inevitably experience negative emotions in our lives from time to time. Things like sadness, depression, anger frustration will all cross our paths. In order to release them, we must give them voice and allow them to he heard. That is usually not what happens, we try to resist these feelings. It is said that what we resist, persists!
When we experience these negative emotions, they are crying out to be heard. When we ignore them, we are actually saying to The Universe, I’m going to ignore these cues that you’re sending me. The Universe says well in that case, if that doesn’t get your attention, I’m going to have to send you something worse that WILL get your attention. So the more we try to repress these emotions the worse things seem to get in our lives. But if we embrace these negative emotions and allow them to have voice and to be heard, then they will leave us peacefully because we have acknowledged them.
Let me explain how the concept works…
When something bad happens to us, there is an internal tug of war that goes on in our minds. Our conscious selves are saying this is bad, I feel hurt or I feel anger or whatever. But on another level our subconscious minds think that we shouldn’t feel bad. We feel as though we don’t have the right to feel this way because there are, after all, plenty of people in the world who are worse off than us right? On a subconscious level, even though we may not be consciously aware of it, we feel guilty about feeling sad or angry or whatever emotion we feel. We even joke about it sometimes and use terminology like “First World Problems”.
An argument breaks out between our conscious and sub-conscious minds. On one hand our sub-conscious mind is telling us that we don’t have the right to feel this way. On the other hand our conscious mind responds by highlighting just how “Bad” or “Terrible” the situation really is, so as to make the argument that we have every right to feel this way. The more this internal battle continues the more our conscious minds give us justifications for feeling bad. And guess what, the worse we feel!
If on the other hand, we embrace those negative feelings as they come up, we give them voice, they feel as though they have been heard and acknowledged and peacefully leave us. What I have found is the more unhappy thoughts I have, the more time I spend being happy! That’s because when we acknowledge these negative thoughts they leave us QUICKLY. When we resist, the persist and linger on.
Here’s an example…
Say your mobile phone dies. I don’t mean out of battery, I mean COMPLETELY. Not working anymore! Out natural tendency is to feel negative emotions. We might at first feel sad, then we may feel angry. The battle begins, we’re consciously feeling bad about this but then out sub-conscious mind feels guilty about having these negative emotions. So it cries out “First World Problems”. There’s children dying in Africa don’t you know! Our conscious mind re-acts by listing all of the problems we’re now going to experience as a result of our phone not working. We lose our contacts, can’t keep up with Facebook, what will happen to all my txt messages ect. The more we think about it, the worse it seems to get, and the longer these feeling will persist.
You owe it to yourself to experience Self Love and you must show Self Love to yourself. Every time you deny yourself the right to feel bad, you are cutting yourself off from Self Love. You’re saying that it’s OK for these things to happen to you, that you’re not important. The worst thing that you can ever do is to compare yourself to others. If ever you can find an example of someone who is worse off than you, there is also someone who is better off than you. Your phone just died, and yes there are people who are starving in Africa but there’s also people who are billionaires!
Your phone just DIED! That’s NOT OK! You have every right to feel bad about that. To say that it is OK is to deny yourself the Self Love that you deserve. Instead, embrace those feelings. Allow yourself to just melt into and be absorbed by the feelings of sadness, despair and anger. By doing that, you’re giving voice to those feelings and allowing them to be heard. Once they have been acknowledged, they don’t hang around! Half an hour from now, you’ll feel fine!
If however you try to resist these feeling and try to guilt yourself into repressing those feelings, they will feel as though they’re not being heard and will persist. Try to resist these feeling and “think happy thoughts” and you’ll be pissed off about your phone for the next week!
For me personally, I found that this was a real breakthrough. The more times when I allowed myself to experience negative emotions, the less time I spent experiencing them. If I tried to “be positive” all the time and repress any negative emotions, I might only experience 2 negative emotions per day. But I’d spend ALL DAY feeling them because they would persist. Now I probably experience 20 negative emotions per day, because as soon as they come I embrace them, I give them voice and allow myself to really melt into the moment of feeling that way. And guess what, they don’t last very long! Easy come, easy go. When you embrace these feelings they’re usually gone in a matter of minutes as opposed to half the day. As a result, I experience a lot more negative emotions, but they last for such a short time that I spend 80% of my day feeling emotions like happiness, joyfulness and abundance. As opposed to trying to resist these feelings. You might only feel 2 negative emotions but you’ll spend 80% of your day stuck on those 2 emotions and you’ll feel miserable.
"It’s only by embracing unhappiness that we can be truly free of it and live happy lives."
Here’s your homework.
Now I want you to think about how this applies to your life. Think of all the things that are currently causing you to be unhappy. How long do you allow these feelings to persist? When something bad happens, what is your natural reaction? Do you try to supress these feelings? Have you noticed that when you do they seem to persist?
I want you to make a commitment to yourself that for at least the next week, you are going to practice showing Self Love to yourself by saying that you love yourself enough that you are worthy of feeling some negative emotions when bad things happen. Allow yourself to fully embrace those feelings and see how long they last for.
Leave me a comment below to tell me about your experiences...