When you ask people what they want out of life, most people say, “To be happy.” Most of us hold happiness as the ultimate goal for life. We want it, strive for it and get up every morning hoping to feel it. We look for it in every decision we make from choosing a job to getting divorced; from losing weight to buying a new car. Yet, most of us fail to ever feel consistently happy. We get the “thing” or achieve the goal and we are happy….but then the happiness fades and we move on to wanting something else. We are all “happy high” junkies looking for just the right “something” that we believe will bring us a consistent state of happy…yet, it never happens (and it never will.)
The feeling most of us think of as “happy” is a feeling directly linked to external events. You get a promotion or a raise and you feel “happy.” You go on vacation or the Broncos win the super bowl (YEA!) and you feel EXTREMELY happy. However, “happy” feelings spike and then wear off. You aren’t “happy” about your promotion 6 months later or when your vacation tan wears off. Contrary to what most people believe, happy isn’t a feeling that is designed to stick around.
Sadly, we are raised to believe that “if we have…. we will be happy.” “If we get…. we will be happy.” For 40 years I thought “happy” could be found in the “next;” a thinner body, a new relationship, a new career, a higher paying job, etc. Each time my “happy high” would fade, I would again focus on the “next” whatever that may be. My entire life I believed that there was a formula for obtaining a constant state of happy. If I was married to the right person, had the family, job, friends and possessions I wanted, I would obtain a constant state of happiness.
Then, at 40 there wasn’t anything more I wanted. When I looked at everything in my life separately, my marriage, my son, my job, my home, etc., I loved everything. Yet, when I put it together, it didn’t generate consistent feelings of happy. At first I thought something was physically wrong with me so I started taking an antidepressant. When that didn’t bring me the feeling of happy I thought was normal. I started questioning everything in my life. Even though I loved my husband was I in the wrong marriage? Even though I thoroughly enjoyed my job, did I need to get more clients so I was busier and make more money? Did I need thinner thighs or a different house or car. It took a while for me to realize that I was seeking the impossible in all the wrong places.
Instead of external based “happy,” I think what most of us crave are deeper and richer feelings that we “own.” We want to feel a level of peace that is resistant to the swirling changes of life. We want to feel joy in the little things. We want feelings based on who we are and not what we have or do. We want feelings we own instead of searching for the next external, “big” event to bring us a “happy high.”
We all are born with that deep level of joy, peace, contentment and love. But, all of those feelings are buried beneath layers and layers of all the years of uncomfortable, unwanted and hurtful feelings we didn’t want to feel. We bury the bad feelings deep inside of us. Sadly, then these feelings bury all feelings we own….and crave. “The remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not fully faced, accepted and then let go of join together to form an energy field that lives in the very cells of your body.” Eckhert Tollee in a New Earth.
If we continue to do this year after year, burying layer after layer of unwanted feelings, we forget about the peace, joy and contentment that lives inside of us and how to reach it. We spend so much emotional energy keeping down all the buried emotions that only the really BIG emotion of “happy” can cut through our numbness; and we think this is normal. So, we look for “happy” instead of unpacking the feelings we own and truly crave.
To find what I believe we all really are looking for, we need to stop looking externally. Everything we could ever want is all already inside of us. We need to crack open the shell of protective layers and strip away each past hurt, each past disappointment and hurt. …and as we start to shed them, we will find ourselves getting more and more glimmers of what we have wanted all along.
“Peace should be our goal in every situation.” Marianne Williamson in a Return to Love.
***the next few blogs will discuss this topic further giving actionable things you can start to do to unpack all the buried crap inside of us.
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