Choosing Happiness
How To Stop Looking for Happiness, and Find It Within.
Several years ago, almost a decade ago, I was going through an existential crisis. I was confused about my life, my work, my career and my next steps. I can still vividly remember lying awake at night and wondering what I was going to do about my career and work. This was a time when I still worked as an engineer at sea and I had no idea what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. The only thing I knew is that I no longer wanted to work as an engineer.
If you’ve been in a similar situation then you know the internal questioning, and analysis paralysis that comes from trying to answer these questions. It was in this strange state of mind, that at some point I noticed that I wasn’t happy. I would find myself caught up in my existential thoughts, feeling lost and confused. And then one day, I remember walking down the streets and pausing in my tracks and thinking: ‘I can choose to be happy.’ It was the strangest feeling. Like all of my inner qualms had suddenly disappeared.
Somehow that day was the very first time that I realised that what had been bothering me and causing me so much unrest was within me, it came from my own thoughts. When I stopped, looked around me, and observed the outside world, without that negative inner dialogue, I felt calmer and at peace.
Happiness Within
The concept of happiness being 100% a choice and within us, often causes a lot of frustration to many of us. This is because, somewhere along the way, we have learned that certain set of circumstances ‘make’ us happy, and other circumstances ‘make’ us unhappy. We have been under the illusion, therefore, that happiness is external to us. Happiness, we falsely believe, can be found outside of us: in a given set of situations, with certain people, and certain experiences.
Yet, how often do we have everything to be happy and feel numb inside? Have you ever brought a new gimmicky fun thing, and thought this will bring you joy, only a few minutes later felt depleted?
Obviously, certain circumstances are more favourable to happier thoughts and for us to feel happier. And equally, other situations will most like lead us down a negative inner spiral and we will feel less happy. Yet, the answer to happiness is not to be found in the outside world.
The best explanation I head for happiness being within, and being a choice, comes from Mo Gawdat. On a recent podcast episode with Tony Robbins, Mo Gawdat states a few fundamental concepts around happiness:
Our default state is happiness. When we are born and we are younger, by default, we are happy. Happiness, therefore, is not something that we attain; but rather it is the abscence of ‘unhappiness’. Therefore, removing the causes of ‘unhappiness’ will makes us happy. As we get older, more and more things cause us to feel unhappy, so we lose touch with that natural happiness.
Events vs Expectations: We feel this unhappiness when our expectations of what life should be, of how things should turn out, of what we want to experience, are not being met. Unhappiness is unmet expectations. When the events in our life don’t fit our expectations, we feel unhappy (or a variation of unhappiness: frustration, dissapointment, anger, sadness, upset…).
Unhappiness is then a biological survival mechanism that is meant to alert us to what is not right around us. If we learn to adapt, shift our perception, change our thoughts and accept the situation as it is, the unhappiness melts away.LC = BP. Tony Robbins formulates this concept in a similar way. Happiness is when LC = BP, when your Life Conditions are equal to your Blue Print. Your Blueprint are your expectations for how your life should be, it is a set of beliefs, rules, and conditions that you have defined for how you want things to be.
When you are unhappy, you have two choices:
LC: Change your Life Conditions - aka DO something about your life conditions so that they match your blueprint.
BP: Change your Blueprint - aka change your expectations for what your life ‘should’ look like
If you are in a situation where you can do something, be proactive and create that transformation, then change your LC. If there is nothing that can be done or changed, readjust your BP.
One of the greatest spiritual teachers of our time, Michael Singer, explains where our BluePrint, or in other words, our expectations, come from. As we grow older, we go through trauma of different shapes and kinds. These traumas leave a mark on us, and we want to avoid that pain again.
In order to avoid that pain, we define rules, expectations, beliefs that need to be met, for us to feel safe and calm. If the outside world does not meet those expectations, we feel that pain again - because we are trying to protect ourselves from being hurt.
As Michael Singer beautifully explains in ‘Living Untethered’: The only way to move past this, to release these expectations of what life, or our life conditions, should be is to move through those traumas, to release that energy and hold that those past events have on us, and to let go.
Happiness vs Excitement
The first misconception of happiness then, is that it is to be found outside of us, when in fact, happiness comes from letting go of our inner traumas, shifting our perceptions, going with the flow of life, and releasing that need to control life to suit us.
The seond misconception of happiness is that happiness is this feeling of great excitement. When we feel elated, excited and having fun, we believe that this is happiness. We are having ‘the time of our life’, it is such a rush of joy, and that’s when we think and we say: ‘I feel so happy’.
That fleeting rush is not happiness but excitement. Here’s why the difference matters:
Happiness = Contentment. Happiness is that calm, grounding, inner peace that we often feel when we are in nature, or walking by the sea, or reading a book by the fire. It is calming, and our brain is then flooded with Serotonin.
Happiness is not Excitement. That rush of joy, excitement, comes with a cocktail of hormones (adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine…). And though we feel great on the moment, and that’s fantastic! The flipside is that activites that generate high dopamine is HIGHLY addictive. Not only are they addictive, but we want to do more of them, and in greater quantities. That fun experience is no longer enough, and we want more (and more and more!)
As a society, we are feeling less and less genuine happiness, because we are too caught up in that dopamine wheel and with chasing dopamine, we no longer leave room for the activities that generate high levels of Serotonine.Balancing Excitement. Fun, and exciting adventures are wonderful. The idea here is not to ‘ban’ excitement from our life, but rather to check in with ourselves:
Are you seeking excitement as a way to escape the pain in your life?
Or do you alread feeling content and happy, and are you spicing things up by adding a bit of fun & excitement?
You can generally tell which of these this is, because the escapism comes from a greater pull and a greater need! If you are already feeling content and happy, then the fun & excitement is more of a ‘why not?’ feeling, than a ‘I must have this/ do this/ go there’ feeling. There is a lightness that comes when you are already content and at peace.
Dopamine Detox. Though the concept of ‘Dopamine Detox’ is not always the best approach. One thing is for sure, if you start to monitor your ‘high dopamine activities’ (TV, Phone, Multitasking, Food, Alcohol, etc.) and notice when you are indulging in them; you will then be able to see if these habits are pure escapism and not giving you the happiness you are longing for.
From there, you can choose higher serotonin - generating activities: walking (without being plugged in), reading a book, drinking a cup of tea, listening to calming music, and overall slowing down This comes from greater simplicity and will promote greater inner happiness.
Happy Body, Happy Mind
As happiness is within, what could be better than insuring that your inner world is in a great shape?
Instead of putting all of our attention on what’s outside of us: the weather, work, colleagues, other people, material possessions - what would then happen if we shifted our attention to what is going on within?
This is a three-fold process:
Mind: Analysing your own thoughts, thinking patterns, to learn to be a jedi at changing your perspective, letting go of clinging, and training your brain to think useful & joyful thoughts. One question I often ask myself, upon observing my own thoughts is: ‘How is this useful?’ And if it isn’t of any use (random complaining, judging, victim mindset, etc.), then I drop it.
Emotions: Noticing your own emotions in your body, so that you can catch the bird early and let go of the emotions through acceptance and breathing. The biggest mistake is to try to talk ourselves out of our emotions. How about pausing and breathing through them instead? Emotions are process in the Limbic part of our brain. That part is closer to our physical body than to the thinking part of our brain (PFC).
Body: The best our body feels, the easiest it is for us to think happy and useful thoughts. Covering the basics of: high quality sleep, nutrition, and exercise, goes a long way to support us with feeling our best.
Mens sana in corpore sano.
Choosing Happiness
When I get caught in my own struggles and problems, I often forget that happiness is within and that it is a choice. In those moments, where my brain is rambling on about one problem or another, I forget that I can pause and choose how to process these thoughts, and what actions to take next.
This is an invitation to all of us: Let us remember that we can choose happiness, that we can train our brain to feel happy inspite of circumstances, and that we can take action to change our Life Conditions, or our Blue Print (Expectations).
Wishing you happiness and joy,
Thank you for reading,
Enjoy the journey,
Katie.