Right now, my husband is giving me silent treatment, my son has completely stopped communicating with me, and a war is raging in my home country. How can one feel happy under such circumstances?
It is easy to feel good when everything works out, and life flows smoothly. But what do you do when all you hear is negative news slamming you from every direction? How do you still not succumb to that gloom?
Life is not worth living if you spend it in a bad mood, even when dealing with negativity. How you address your problems will tip your scale in the direction of negative or positive. Disappointing things happening to you do not automatically equal unhappiness. Even if your day seems mediocre, how you decide to get through it will define your day as good or bad. You can still feel balanced, content, and in harmony with the Universe even though everything around you shows no cause for celebration. You can still choose a sunny disposition against the backdrop of thick, dark clouds. Just let yourself go with the rhythm of that day’s energy. Embrace it as is. Life always consists of a mixture of sweet and sour. One day, we experience the sweetness of our successes; other days, we wince when life delivers us sour lemons.
Just like the gliding movement of a stream, your energy will float smoothly if you don’t resist. The natural forces will be moving the stream until it enters a new opening and follows a new path. In the same way, your state of mind and your experience of the day will evolve into something more promising if you allow the natural processes to unfold. On the surface, the flowing stream seems calm, and we don’t know what is swirling inside. The inner fluctuations are not visible. And your face may not show what’s raging inside of you. It may not reveal the calamities of your soul. But you don’t want to only hide your genuine emotions. You can also find real peace on the inside. Just wait the storm out without intensifying the lousy energy you already feel with your bleak thoughts. Breathe, stay calm, and try to change your focus deliberately.
We don’t need to feel like a toy played by some mean-spirited creature. We have a say when life puts us in a tough spot. There are two ways to respond to agitation caused by adversity. An active one is to express an emotion of anger, and the other is to stay passive. The latter state resembles numbness, but it doesn’t always mean negativity. I feel numb but not unhappy, a condition that permits me to enjoy my life, though it may not represent a euphoric type of joy. I am merely staying calm, holding hope, and appreciating other great things in my life. I don’t have to force myself to smile if I don’t want to. But at the same time, I am not angry. I do not want to fight. I am just peacefully waiting for the dark cloud to pass.
Treating life like a game can also help us not get swept away by our problems. It means taking a lighter perspective on life to help us see things in a nuanced, more hopeful way. We should treat life like a game we play also because it is temporary. In this case, the Earth is our playground, where we live and experience things over the span of our fleeting lives. For a period of time, we have our time on Earth, and then we don’t. It is as simple as that. If we pretend to be kids on the playground, maybe we will not take everything seriously, even our problems. Playing should be a happy experience. So, let’s try to look at things differently and choose what makes us happy.
Recently, I also realized that if you wish to be happy, you may have to be ready to lose something. In my case, my son disappeared on me, but now I don’t have to put up with his bizarre behavior constantly. Out of sight, out of mind. Certainly, I think about him every day of my life, many times per day, but I don’t have to directly deal with what I don’t approve of in him. Thus, I stop myself from deeply worrying that he doesn’t have a job and a regular place to live and lacks friends and goals – the usual stuff. It’s as if I am standing at the top of the mountain and watching from above what’s happening in his life. I am not climbing the steep mountain, painstakingly enduring the challenges every step of the way. Instead, I am staying out of his life’s journey, though his choices bother me. While still aware of his problems, I view them somewhat with indifference. What I see does hurt, but I am not ascending against gravity. I am merely observing.
Happiness is a state and not a separate occurrence in our lives. Even when you consider certain events and label them as happy, the time in between those events may not qualify as joy. But you don’t want to be selectively happy, where one day you feel this way and another you don’t. Instead, try to make it a continuous phenomenon in your life. Of course, it takes constant and conscious practice. When you secure your mind in a state of contentment, even the upsetting things that will happen to you won’t dismay you. In his online article, “Your Thoughts are the Key to Happiness,” Wayne Dyer says, “Happiness is an inner belief that you bring to everyone and everything you undertake, rather than expecting your happiness to come to you from others or your accomplishments and acquisitions.” Thus, use the power of intention to be happy, summon your personal persuasion, switch focus to what is good in your life, and remind yourself what you should still be thankful for – the magic of appreciation goes a long way. Make it a habit to be happy.
We are born having to learn many skills. Among them is happiness. Practice creating it in your life on purpose and progress with time in your ability to maintain it. Just like we exercise to maintain physical shape, we apply a consistent effort to get desirable results in every area of our lives, including our mental state of mind. Citing Wayne Dyer’s wise words, “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.”
