A friend posed a question today. A question I’ve asked myself. I believe we’ve all asked this question or eventually we will. “How do you go about being happy?”
But is this question really based on a true premise? Maybe not. Maybe the right question to ask is “How do you go about being happier?” That questions assumes a process and a continuum which you can move up and down on and seems more practical. The former question assumes an end point if not an ultimate state which easily seems to be defeated by anyone or anything I could bump into while living in my practical everyday, material world.
Introspection: Where am I now? If I could make a happiness scale for myself what would it entail and where am I on that scale right now. I was happier when I loved my job. I was less happy when I heard news of how it would change. I was listening to my son once when he told me how happy he was when he was 12. I completely understood. I had a similar memory. As he described that memory of age 12, I took myself back to my own innocent moment of bliss. I felt it and I noticed that for a few seconds I could travel in my imagination to that time and hold that feeling.
- I know I’ve felt happier.
- I know I could feel happier than I am right now.
- I accept that an ultimate destination of happiness is not immediately within my grasp.
- I can exercise some control and move in feelings from less to slightly more happiness.
- This makes me feel different, more powerful.
- I know that anything might come along and tip my little boat upon the sea.
- BUT, I’ve been able to right that boat before, I can do it again.
Most people can find “training wheels” for feeling happier by interacting with their pets, or loved ones, I’ve heard. Spend 17 seconds with kittens puppies or babies and you have an excellent demonstration of how to shift up the emotional scale to a place where you feel a little better. Then you’ll notice that the holding of that emotional state for that long changes your ability to feel better.
It feels like a muscle growing stronger, or a magnet being strengthened by the stroking of another magnet. Try this visual image: an iron core wrapped in spirals of wire carrying electric current, charging your attractive power to bring other thoughts slightly more positive, increasingly more positive.
Something breaks the current and it drains your power? Yes, life happens but repeat the process, have faith in your ability to exercise and learn this shifting skill. The core retains some power each time and grows in strength.
Happier is a journey. Happiness is a destination. While traveling by car at night I can only see so far ahead in the beam of the headlights, but by focusing on the road immediately ahead I am able to get somewhere. I’ll never know my final destination until I arrive where ever that will be.