Happiness is captured moment by moment, especially when the world weighs us down.
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Some of us struggle to be happy; we have the weight of the world on our shoulders, a past that won’t go away, anxiety, depression, separation, family illness or death, job loss, abuse and a whole host of other reasons why we shouldn’t be happy. We have so much on our minds that our brains just won’t shut the hell up, everything is doom and gloom and nothing will ever change or get better and no matter what we do we are stuck on this feedback loop. Some of us turn to alcohol, drugs or food. Some of us will turn to withdrawal from the world and it’s physically hard to even just get out of bed. Some of us will even turn to risky behavior trying to get one extra little bit of adrenaline trying to capture something you know you’re missing out on but don’t know how to achieve.
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It’s something you can grab and say, “OK for this next 30 minutes I am going to enjoy myself,” and at the end of 30 minutes you can pick the world back up and put it back on your shoulders.
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So I have some good news. Happiness isn’t a lifestyle, it isn’t a plateau you reach and go, “There, my life is perfectly happy now.”
Happiness is won moment by moment, it can be accessed while you are sad, or depressed, or grieving, or stressed, or any of the other things that suck the joy out of life. It’s something you can grab and say, “OK for this next 30 minutes I am going to enjoy myself,” and at the end of 30 minutes you can pick the world back up and put it back on your shoulders. Happiness won’t make your problems disappear but having memories of recent happiness can certainly lighten the load.
The second piece of good news is that happiness is inbuilt within us so the excuse, “I can’t,” is a load of manure — even your cat or dog has this ability. There are two things you need for happiness, something you may have heard termed as “Presence”, “Grounding” or entering the “Now”. I will get to this in a second, but the second thing you need is an enjoyable activity. This could be anything from knitting, coffee with a friend or a walk through a forest. You know what you find enjoyable so I am not going to dwell on this side of things.
Presence, Grounding, or Being in the Now
When I did some research on this to say I was disappointed in the result is an understatement. There is a lot of spirituality, Zen and other forms of mysticism put around Presence or being in the Now as if this is some state you have to meditate too. It’s not mystic, so I am going to try and put it into my own words. Have you ever experienced these things?
- Read a book and been so engrossed you lost track of hours.
- Forgotten about the outside world while talking to a friend.
- Been on the edge of your seat watching a sporting event.
- Not heard someone talking to you while solving a problem at work
- Being at a concert going crazy and it feels like the concert ended so quickly.
This is presence. It is nothing more than focusing on what is going on in front of you at the time you are doing it. You focus intently to the point where not only the outside world, but also your inner thoughts, simply cease to exist. We can all do it, have done and will do it in the future.
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These moments of presence and enjoyment show me there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
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It might sound hard; I have anxiety so I know exactly how undermining having a bunch of negative thoughts running around your head can be. Lately though I have been practicing this to some success, I don’t always win, but I am getting better at it. When I am at Latin dancing I concentrate solely on the dance, when I am out with friends I concentrate solely on the conversation at hand and when I am with my children I focus solely on the game we are playing at the moment.
Do you know what? It works. I have had more happy moments in the last month than I have had in the last 10 years. They don’t change my problems or make them go away, but they make them bearable. These moments of presence and enjoyment show me there is a light at the end of the tunnel. My friends have noticed and commented that I have been more together and with it, that I am happier and I smile more.
One final word of warning, I had two beers the other night while practicing this. A good friend of mine suggested I should perhaps only have one beer next time. I’m going to have two again though, because having childlike exuberance is simply sublime.
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Photo credit: (altered) Flickr/Moyan Brenn