I often find myself feeling somewhat miserable. Well, to be truthful, I far too often carry around a sense of unhappiness. Lately, it caught my attention that it isn’t all because of my circumstances but simply a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I subconsciously sense that when I am eventually able to buy my own home after a lifetime of living in other people’s properties — I will be happy. I also envisage I will reach contentment when I have a wardrobe brimming with outfits after living with years of restricted finances and having to prioritize rent and bills.
These thoughts don’t stop there — I also see myself reaching happiness when I have an adequate income that will give me more choices, and perhaps even the idea of a notability for my writing (even though I have only been working on it for two years) which will also provide me with the constant happiness I crave for.
I even at times feel I am a failure for not reaching this reasonable income as of yet or any of these other ‘accomplishments’ I write about.
Holding on to these negative self-effacing thoughts these last few weeks left me suffering with a deeply painful emptiness. I exhausted myself by holding on too hard to feeling sorry for myself as I reflected over the last decade, an arduous long journey — one in which I searched tirelessly for a place of balance — to a now ‘gotten me nowhere’ stance; rather than the fact I took necessary steps to get me to where I am now — which is a big deal compared to where I was.
I have yearned forever for a home, an income, and a vocation that served myself and others. I wanted to reach a place of utopia. Nonetheless, it feels draining to vaguely attempt to reach a paradigm that was only in my head.
Thankfully, I was able to come to a place — a waking up — to shift my perspective with a simple mindset calibration and remind myself that I am not my thoughts and that the thoughts that play out in my mind are separate from who I truly am. I am doing okay — and I am aware that I have been here before — stuck in a headspace that just sucks.
So many of us tell ourselves when we have that new phone, that holiday, those followers, that partner, that success — we will reach this place called happiness. And yet, even though these scenarios can transpire for most of us, isn’t it strange how that feeling of utopia is short-lived. We then fall back to square one, as if we are living in a monotonous dream, where the rules are no rules. And yet life doesn’t work like that — happiness isn’t something that dreams and films are made of. Happiness is an inside job.
Happiness is an inside job.
A deep sense of happiness isn’t a place we can expect to be bathed in for every living hour of our day. We will find ourselves running through a wide range of emotions that are a fruition of our thoughts — being that emotions are driven by thoughts. We find throughout our lives we are faced with an array of difficult circumstances and important tough decisions to make. There will be a time when we can’t make ends meet or are at a crossroads, and the more painful times of saying goodbye to loved ones, whether the end of a relationship — or a passing over at the end of a life.
I feel we can meet peace when we honor what we are feeling in each particular situation. To either meet our tiredness or sadness with the respect it calls for. And at other times, when we sense we are challenged we can confront the challenge and ask what is truly expected of ourselves from ourselves and not the world.
When I dug deeper, I was able to see I was triggering a lack of self-esteem and the unkind comments in my psyche that family and teachers had given me. I was reacting to the ideology of the world and what I should have and be — to feel happy.
Nonetheless, happiness is an inside job in how I decide to feel when I wake up each day. Will I choose to be grateful for what I have, or will I feel terrible that I haven’t achieved the things for which I am aiming? Will I acknowledge and feel proud of what I am doing to work towards achieving my dreams and goals?
Gratitude is a powerful tool to help us feel content and happy, even in the littlest of circumstances. I know I’m more than thankful to the friends and clients who have truly blessed my life, not just with work but with their generosity and gifts given to enhance my life. I’m grateful for my health after suffering daily for some years with many painful and stressful issues. I feel so fortunate to have access to food and water, although costly — we still have more than others in the world. I am also extremely grateful for a roof over my head after becoming homeless earlier this year.
Positive Psychology says, “There is a direct link between happiness and gratitude. Expressing gratitude brings about happiness for the one giving thanks. The more someone is thankful or feels gratitude, the less there is time or room for negative thoughts.”
And there is also the science behind how our brain’s chemistry changes for the better with the practice of daily gratitude. Brain Balance says, “In short, gratitude can boost the neurotransmitter serotonin and activate the brain stem to produce dopamine. Dopamine is our brain’s pleasure chemical. The more we think positive, grateful thoughts, the healthier and happier we feel.”
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it” — Eckhart Tolle
I can spend hours of the day writing or thinking and don’t notice how the time speeds by. What I have realized is that unless I go to the gym, visit a client, or go to the shops, I will stay indoors all day even though I am fortunate to live close to the popular beachfront visited every day by tourists.
Just leaving my house today I realized how easily a short walk can shift my mindset dramatically, yet I forget this simple fact so easily.
Walking is completely natural, and I love lifting weights too, yet the meditation in walking in nature is a tonic. It’s uplifting and changes our thoughts to sensing gratitude for life — The blowing away of cobwebs — as the idiom goes.
If we don’t keep ourselves balanced with daily habits of gratitude, walking in nature, exercising, and serving others, we can so easily get deeply lost in an abyss of dark and deteriorating thoughts.
Thank you for connecting with me, I truly appreciate you.
© Chantal Weiss 2023