The Four Fundamental Ways We Can Control Our Happiness From Within
“True happiness is not out there. True happiness lies within” - David Lynch
In these tumultuous times it can be pretty hard to be happy. I mean, there is stress, uncertainty, illness, fear, worry, layoffs, delays, boredom, panic, cancelations, distractions, and death almost everywhere you look. It’s bloody madness. It’s literal chaos. But just because the whole world is in chaos, doesn’t mean you have to be. I’m going to deep dive into the fundamental mechanics which most powerfully control our happiness levels in the hope that they can help some of you better manage your own happiness through this pandemic business and into our eventual return to everyday normal life. I would like to make a disclaimer however. This discussion is focused on ways the average person can manipulate their day to day happiness to help themselves from within. This limited scope will likely not be not be sufficient for people suffering from depression or mental illness, who may also require external help from medical professionals. Look after yourselves people.
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” - Aristotle
For some reason we all want to be happy. It is what we all strive for. We don’t know why exactly, but we know that it makes us feel good and it makes us feel connected to others and the world. Science is also teaching us that it goes beyond just feeling and has the power to affect our physiology and those around us. Our desire for happiness is seemingly by design. Some strive to obtain it through their careers and material wealth, others through the pursuit of love and relationships, but few manage to hold onto happiness after reaching that salary or finding that partner. This is because happiness is not based on outcome and there is no formula for it. Perfect job plus perfect partner does not equal happiness. A single mother struggling to raise her child in a third world country can be happier than a western man who has everything. You see, happiness is completely, 100% about your perception; how you are evaluating the world and how you are acting in it. You can have nothing and be happy. You can be happy right now.
1. Our perception is the gateway to happiness. Gratitude is the path.
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer
A glass is filled up 50% with water. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? You’ve heard this question before, and you’re well aware of the connotations; if you’re a glass half full person you’ve likely got a positive outlook and if you're a glass half empty person you’ve likely got a negative outlook. A simple example of how to show the differing perspectives we humans can have about the same thing. Simple, but not trivial. Whether you realise it or not, your answer to this question determines your entire outlook to the external universe, and even determines how it will present itself to you. Let’s go deeper…
“Both happiness and unhappiness depend on perception.” - Marcus Aurelius
Let’s analyse what the glass half-full people are looking at. They are seeing a glass filled halfway up with water; acknowledging 50% is liquid, ignoring the other 50% that is empty. Ok, fair enough, this view feels pretty accurate to what we are looking at. Now let’s analyse what the glass half-empty people are looking at. They are seeing a glass half empty; acknowledging 50% is empty nothingness, ignoring the 50% liquid. Beyond the glass itself, this perspective doesn’t say a whole lot about what actually is. We get a much less clear picture of what we are looking at when we describe something as “half-empty”. By focusing attention on nothing, on something that is not there; something that is not real, we do so at the expense of what is really there; at the expense of what is real. It is a less accurate picture of reality. We never actually experience reality, we only ever experience our perception of reality. Everything that we see and experience is coloured by our perception. Now imagine, if you can, if the glass half-empty glass outlook didn’t just apply to the half-empty glass, but it applied to their relationships, to their job and to their entire life. See, not so trivial.
“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.'” – Tony Robbins
Most people are not half-full or half-empty people all the time, but shift their perspective between both depending on their mood and life circumstances. Some days it's easy to be half-full, other days it is near impossible, but the key to consistent and lasting happiness is to be grateful for the glass itself i.e. be grateful for all experiences, good or bad. Gratefulness is the most powerful expression of love in the universe and is the gateway to the concept of abundance, where you see no lack, and always have exactly what you truly want, when you truly want it. In spirituality the universe is made from love (light), so expressions that are aligned with that universal truth, bear the fruit of the universe. This is why gratitude stands at the centre of all religion and spirituality. Being truly grateful for what we have forces us from our survival mind perspective; analysing what’s wrong or missing in our lives and into our heartspace perspective where we can be more loving, present and appreciative of what’s in our lives. It is known that the heart has its own intelligence and neural network just like the brain, and some believe that the heart’s intelligence is actually closer in frequency to reality than that of the mind - without an Ego, it certainly has less distractions and conflict than the mind does.
“I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.” - Brene Brown
Being grateful for what life gives you is a practice and it comes more easily to some than others, but science is now telling us that it is definitely a practice worth getting better at. Practicing gratitude has been proven to have powerful physiological effects, boosting the neurotransmitters; dopamine and serotonin and the hormone oxytocin, all associated with wellbeing and having a positive outlook on life. With sustained practice it will have powerful long lasting effects on our mental, physical and relational well-being; positively impacting our overall experience of happiness.
“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”- Einstein
Like the glass half-full or half-empty question, your answer to Einstein’s question will dictate how you view the world, day to day, moment to moment. Your answer to this question is a choice between love and fear and will dictate your life experience. You see, the answer comes loaded with an expectation of how the universe will act upon you, and the universe being your mirror will act accordingly. It is a reliable mirror after all; always reflecting your inner state of being back to you. Law of attraction dictates that positive attracts positive and negative attracts negative. It dictates that glass half-empty people will see half-empty glasses everywhere they go, sometimes more than half empty and sometimes completely empty. They see lack and hostility. Their perception will always show them fear and what they believe they do not have. Conversely it dictates that glass half-full people will be seeing half-full glasses everywhere they go, sometimes more than half-full and sometimes overflowing. They see abundance and friendliness. Their perception will always show them love and what they believe they have. Now, most of us have not chosen our perception. It is likely the outlook we were predisposed to at a young age and so have stuck with it throughout our life because we didn’t think we had a choice. However, we do have a choice. We do have the power to change our perception.
2. Happiness is a choice. Choose happiness.
“Happiness is not by chance, but by choice” - Jim Rohn
Happiness is a choice. Every moment, we have the power to choose happiness and keep choosing it every moment after. However, you can’t control how you react to certain situations that come up and your reactions won’t always be positive. This is natural. But the conclusion you eventually come to can and should be positive. This is not to say you ignore or repress the negative emotions as they come up. These negative emotions must be understood, respected and accepted before you continue on your inner journey toward a happier perspective. When something bad happens it can be hard to see a positive, but it needs to be searched for. It needs to be worked for. Imagine and analyse all the different perspectives until you find a positive one that resonates with you. In every problem or difficult situation you face there is a positive lesson to be learned and so perhaps that’s something you can become at peace with. Perhaps that is something you can choose instead of the negative. The more you choose happiness, the more naturally it will occur in you. Eventually you won’t have to work for it, it will be second nature.
“I know my life is better when I work from the assumption that everyone is doing the best they can.” – Brené Brown
With myself, I have often wondered why I was so predisposed to happiness and I now equate it to my predisposition to diplomacy. No matter how hard or painful a situation for myself, I could always see the opposite pole where a more positive understanding of the situation lay. I would always choose this pole, because it brought me peace, as opposed to anxiety or hurt. For example, my dad died 6 years ago, but rather than wallow in the tragedy of his death, I focused on the positive aspects of his life. By focusing on what he achieved, I could see no tragedy, only a life well lived as my dad intended. If someone hurt me, it was better to take the perspective of them, the perpetrator, and try and understand what led them to act that way rather than be their victim. Perhaps from a different perspective I could see that the reason they hurt me is because they are hurting themselves, and for that, I can be sympathetic.
“What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity.” – J. Sidlow Baxter
Being a diplomat really helped me, but not everyone wants to be a diplomat. Sometimes I would point out a more positive position out to a friend or partner, but they would not want it, as it would rob them of their resentment for the person who had done them wrong. Sometimes people don’t want to see another person’s point of view. Sometimes people just want to be angry, and that’s ok, for a while. But holding onto anger is unproductive and if left to grow and fester, it can manifest in ugly ways that negatively impact your life further, including your health. The damage it can do to your personal happiness and relationships with others can’t be overstated; it’s akin to self-harm. Much better to; feel and release the negative emotions; find a more positive perspective that resonates; and move on. But be sure to adjust your expectations, boundaries and relationship with the perpetrator accordingly so it doesn’t happen again.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” - Marcus Aurelius
So, perhaps next time you are having one of those bad days where nothing seems to be going right and everyone is being an asshole, you can try being present to any emerging feelings of anger or resentment. When they arise, see if you can feel those things, figure out where they are coming from and why they might be coming up. Is it entirely because of this situation and what another has done to you? Or is it because of something else that has happened to you in the past? Nine times out of ten it will be something within you at the root cause of the emotion as opposed to something outside of you. Once you understand this, perhaps you can replace the naturally emerging negative perspective with a new perspective that makes you feel more positive about the situation. Perhaps you are getting frustrated again at work because no-one is agreeing with your point of view, even though you think you are right, but this time you step back from the frustration and decide to be grateful for it; “Isn’t it fucking amazing that I am getting so passionately frustrated with my work. It’s so cool to have a job I actually care about”. You see, one perspective is not necessarily truer than the other, but one certainly feels better.
3. Our happiness depends on the stories we tell ourselves, so tell good stories.
“We become the stories we tell ourselves” - Michael Cunningham
Who are we without our stories? Our stories are everything to us. They are our entire identity. “I’m this person, who likes these things and doesn’t like these things, who has this job and had these things happen to me in the past.” This is how we all think of ourselves; a collection of stories. When we think about the stories of happy times and achievement from our past we feel good, and when we think about the stories of painful times and failure we feel bad. If a story in our past makes us feel we can’t do something, we may never do that thing again. Our stories have great power over our thoughts, feelings and actions. They are what makes us us. But what if we could change the stories. Would we still be us or would we change too?
“The stories we tell ourselves shape our lives. They shape who we believe we are, and this belief translates into who we become.” - John Asseraf
Well, it turns out we can revise the stories we tell ourselves. We can do it now and the effects can be instantaneous, and here’s the thing, it doesn’t change who we are. It only changes our perception of who we are. I’m not talking about fabricating fake stories, I’m talking about retelling our stories from a new perspective. For example, we don’t have to be the person suffering daily from a past trauma. We don’t have to see ourselves as that person. We can change that sad story to a story about strength; "I am no longer suffering. Every day I am healing my past trauma." We often degrade and undervalue ourselves by continually telling ourselves stories about how we are not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, fit enough and the more we tell ourselves these things, the more we believe it and the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Start telling yourself I am good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, fit enough, and so too will these things become true. Of course, you can’t just tell yourself this without any conviction. You have to believe it. Live it. Breath it. Remember thoughts affect feelings and actions. The more you believe this new story you're telling yourself, the more you become it. This is how you rewire your brain.
“Happiness is a present attitude and not a future condition.” - Hugh Prather
It’s pretty simple. If you keep telling yourself a negative story about yourself, you’re going to feel negative feelings, but if you are telling yourself a positive story about yourself you are going to feel positive feelings. And this is not trivial, this affects you in almost everything you do throughout your day. There is now plenty of science in the realms of positive psychology that backs this up. They call it the “happiness advantage”. Your brain performs better at positive levels than it does at negative, neutral or stressed levels. Your intelligence, creativity and energy levels rise significantly when you’re feeling positive emotions. Dopamine is one of the chemicals released when experiencing positive emotion and it not only makes you feel happier, but it turns on all the learning centres in your brain so you can learn better. The “happiness advantage” is really something we should all be taking advantage of and there are many practices to help us get there. Regular exercise, meditation, acts of compassion to others, practicing gratitude and journaling; writing down stories about good things that have happened that day and things you are happy for allows your brain to relive those experiences. These are all powerful ways to help rewire your brain to feel happier by default.
“Comparison is an act of violence against the self.” - Iyanla Vanzant
Aside from the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, we must also be careful with the stories we tell ourselves about others. With our lives all over social media, it’s all too easy to judge and compare ourselves to others these days, whether it be appearance, social standing, career success or relationships. This is insecurity and it’s unflattering, unforgiving and just plain unhelpful. It’s like a star, jealous of how brightly all the other stars are shining, expending precious energy looking out that could be used to look within and make itself shine brighter. After all, the star has no knowledge of what the other stars had to go through to get their shine, nor any understanding that they may only look brighter from a distance but are really the same, or that they are only bright on the outside and perhaps not so bright on the inside. Looking at other stars does nothing for our own shine. The only fair comparison a star can make is to itself and to how brightly it was shining yesterday.
“Every minute you spend wishing you had someone else's life is a minute spent wasting yours”
So instead of looking outside yourself, look inside, observe the collection of stories that you are and realise you have the power to rewrite them if you would like. You are a story in the book of life, but you are also the storyteller, so make sure you tell a good one.
4. Get better at directing your attention, get better at happiness.
“Where attention goes energy flows.” - James Redfield
The news, an uncertain future, the surrounding chaos in the world. It’s easy to get drawn into these things and feel as if they are affecting you directly, as they are powerful attention grabbers. But generally, these types of things are not affecting you personally in the moment. They are in the vague distance, seemingly of threat to you, but not yet real. All that is really real, is what is with you in the moment; what you can see, touch, taste, smell, hear in the room with you. Everything beyond the room, out there in the physical material world cannot be controlled and so shouldn’t be of real concern. The further a thing is from your person, the less control you have over it. Conversely, the deeper you go within your person, the more control you can obtain over yourself; overcoming fears, developing strengths and good habits so you can grow.
“Where we choose to put our attention changes our brain, which in time can change how we see and interact with the world.” - Margaret Mead
This doesn’t mean we should be blind or ignorant to what is happening in the world, as what is going on may eventually ripple to us, but it should hopefully indicate how proportionally we should divide our limited energy. If you put your attention into the news, the problems in the world or what is wrong or missing in your life, you are likely going to feel unhappy, worried, frustrated or angry. You know fine well if you put the news on it's probably going to make you feel shit and if you put on a cute puppy montage it's probably going to make you feel happy, albeit for a short while. Where you put your attention moment to moment, day to day, week to week is vital for our sustained happiness, health and wellbeing. Remember every thought, feeling and action requires energy and we humans only have a limited amount of it every day, so best be resourceful with it and put it into places where you are actually going to see a return on your investment i.e. what energy you put in is energy you get back out in some way, shape or form. Getting back the energy you put in is equivalent to fulfillment. That’s why putting your energy into a passion or job you love is fulfilling, or putting energy into your friends or family is fulfilling, but also why putting energy into worrying is not fulfilling. This is always energy you never get back. So, shouldn’t we spend most of our precious energy on growing our passions and relationships, and taking control over ourselves; improving how we think, feel and act in the world, as opposed to trying to control what is happening outside of us and what is ultimately out of our control?
“Whatever you focus your attention on will become important to you even if it's unimportant.” - Sonya Parker
Your environment is an audio visual mish mash of a tonne of different things happening all at once. It can be incredibly distracting and hard to focus on what you like and what makes you happy. Your mind is like a radio, but it can only really focus its attention on one thing at a time, so you must use it to tune into frequencies you want to vibe with, filtering out what you don't. If you find yourself in a group of people that you don't really like chatting shit, trying to be part of it but feeling excluded, it’s easy to fall into the trap of being in your head, judging and comparing yourself to others, but there is no happiness to be found there. Instead look around your environment, see if there is something else you can tune into that you can vibe with, perhaps there is live music or someone new you can introduce yourself to. People feel the need to stay in situations that make them feel uncomfortable out of some social expectation, but you really shouldn't. You shouldn't stay somewhere a moment longer than you want to. Of course this doesn't mean causing offence to anyone, you can leave any situation with politeness and grace.
“Two things prevent us from happiness; living in the past and observing others.” - Shaykh Assim Alhakeem
Some people attach their happiness to the future or to some material thing they do not have yet, but that type of happiness is time-stamped, conditional and prevents you from being happy right now. Other people prefer to think back on the ‘the good ol times’ to make them feel good, but that sweet nostalgia is short-lived and also prevents you from being happy with the current moment. Real happiness is unconditional and available right now. Don’t tell yourself you’ll be happy when you get the new house or when you go on holiday, tell yourself you are happy right now, because you already have everything that you want in life. Draw your attention from the future or past, back to the present moment and you will find that here is where everything and everyone exists. The future doesn’t exist, it's just a figment of your imagination and the past doesn’t exist, it’s just a fading memory. The past and the future are like a vacuum, where any energy you put into them is lost. Conversely, any energy you put into this moment will return to you.
“Instead of focusing on circumstances that you cannot change – focus strongly and powerfully on the circumstances that you can.” - Joy Page
There are many powerful dynamics at work within us that affect everything in our physical, mental and spiritual state and if we can get a handle on them we can overcome any difficulties we may face from the outside world, including pandemics. Exercise will improve our physical health and strength, meditation will improve our mental strength and cognitive capacities, and practicing gratitude, compassion and self reflection will improve our spiritual and emotional states. Most of us have no idea of who we might become if we were to direct all of our attention onto ourselves so that we may grow physically, emotionally and spiritually, but we know that we humans are capable of almost everything if we put our mind to it. Our sustained happiness is not easy. It's work. Inner work to be specific. So, let's work on it shall we? Instead of trying to change the world, perhaps we change ourselves first and then who knows, maybe the world will change with us.
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” - Aristotle
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