How to be happy – Clue: It’s not about being happy

Ever wondered about ‘How to be happy’? 

How many of us think about what happiness actually is? 

How do we know when happiness is with us, is us?  

Ever pondered what the shape, texture, complexion of happiness is?  How long will it last?

So many people get to the top of their game and wish they were in another game.  So many people at the top of their game can’t enjoy being there.  How can this be, in these times of privilege, cleaner, safer working conditions?

I believe it’s because we have forced the sickness ‘underground’ and there is now an ‘inner ghost’, an inner brutality, and a very real fear that the new sophisticated conditions are failing us.

These new sophisticated conditions are just as brutal but it’s not so easy to see, and we’re all too afraid to admit that work is often filled with dread.

Unspoken dread turns into despair and unattended despair breaks us down, even kills us.

What’s the answer for how to be happy?

Well I don’t know what the answer is, but I know what my answer is!

How to be happy I believe is how to accept being fully human, coupled with a commitment to displace all inner brutality towards self, with companionship.

Same old conversation going round in your head????

‘I will be happy when…………………………………………….’

‘I can be happy if…………………………………………………..’

‘I would be happy if only…………………………………………’

You can be happy if you decide to develop a companionable relationship with yourself now and forever.

How can that make me happy?

Well I believe that happiness is NOT about being happy.  I believe happiness is embracing all that it is to be human.  Being open and allowing yourself to be fully human is creating happiness

Being happy is not about smiling and skipping down the street.  I believe that happiness is about being able to live with the ‘full range of feelings’ we were born to have.  Have the full range of feelings without any hierarchy at all.

If all feelings are ok, then we are not fighting and battling the original template we were born with.

Just to be clear I do mean allowing all feelings NOT acting upon them necessarily.  It is action that is what causes feelings to not be ok, not the feeling itself.

A perfect example: Envy

Oh how terrible envy is purported to be.  Why?  Who said?

If one envies another it will only because they feel a lack within themselves or their world.  How is that so bad?

If it simply was seen for what it was then it would have no judgement and no weight heavier than apprehension, or sadness, or excitement.

Of course ENVY has become disallowed only because of behaviours that are attached to it.

Envy is the emotion when you want a possession someone else has.  What’s so bad about that UNLESS it drives you to behave in a way that can hurt someone.

Of course jealousy is usually based around a feeling about a person, that has sentiment already.

Allow yourself to be fully human and so fully feeling

Leaning in and immersing ourselves and revelling in the myriad of feelings, tumbling and wrestling with all the feelings is good mental healthiness.  What if that is happiness?

What if being happy is just about feeling, not even being happy.

What if it’s don’t ‘do’ happy, we be it, and being is our only route to all contentment.

Key to Happiness:

Be real, be full of feeling, be unfailingly companionable with yourself, with your sadness, your grief, your rage, your envy, your joy, your vulnerability, your annoyance, your fears, your pride, your everything and happiness will show up in multiple forms.

Having spent so many years with people who have ‘fallen out with themselves’  I see this journey to contentment via a full range of feelings being ‘a fabulous opportunity to heal thy self.

It’s free, it’s private and it’s gently life changing.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on how to be happy and the full range of feelings. Leave your comments below.