There are many men and other people all around who claim they want to just be happy. Why can’t they be happy? Why can’t they find happiness or be happy more than they currently are? I hear many times, “ Why can’t I just be happy?”
It appears that many people want to be happy and they struggle with the fact that they aren’t happy all the time. I want to ask you do you really want to be happy all the time? Some people say yeah or maybe 80% of the time. Why? Do they want to be happy even that much?
Do you want to be happy all the time?
It sounds pleasant, doesn’t it? Wake up… Happy! Go to work? Happy! See friends? Happy! Get stuck in traffic? Happy! Go to your grandmother’s funeral? Happy?! Yeah, see there are times that you actually don’t want to be happy. It wouldn’t be proper to be sauntering into a church happy as a lark when your beloved grandmother just passed away.
Then think about how boring it would be if you were always happy. Our lives would be non-eventful. When we are talking to our spouse or best friend what do we talk about? Sometimes it is about something good thing. However many times it is about the negative things going on in our life. We want to have a place to bitch about this that and the other. How are you supposed to relate to a person’s troubles if you don’t have any?
Look at people with wealth. Not the new money wealth but the ones with money that was created several generations ago. You often see them doing some rather dumb things with that money right? That is because they are supposed to be happier than the lowly proletariats. Yet often they aren’t. They are looking for causes they can stand up for and these causes are often in direct opposition to their standing. Why? Because they are avoiding the 50/50 principle.
Now, look at the poor people they are often cited as being happier than the rich. This is where the saying money doesn’t buy happiness. Yes, that saying is true, however, money can be used to do things that make you happy. As the people who made their wealth can attest to. So why is this?
That is because many people who think they should be happy all the time find themselves not happy. While the poor understand that there are times that are going to suck and they just roll with it.
When you are OK with your life being 50% pain and 50% pleasure, the pleasure is much sweeter when it comes along. The poor are able to savor the good times because they simply went through the hard times. No resisting just powering through it because the air is sweeter on the other side.
The 50/50 Principle
You see there is this principle called the 50/50 principle. It is that your life will suck 50% of the time and it will be awesome 50% of the time. As I mentioned earlier, many people don’t like that life is going to have pain half of the time so they want to bargain. They say things like, “I don’t agree I think it’s more 80/20.” The answer is then why are you not happier more often? They struggle to answer that.
This is because every hour we have positive and negative emotions and when we avoid the negative emotions it is like depositing in a bank account. The feel-good moments in life are withdrawn from that same account. If we don’t allow for negative emotions to happen, we will eventually be overdrawn from the account. There are no reasons for us to have good feelings. So you have to go through your life and experience the not-so-fun times to really enjoy the good times. Because discomfort is the currency for all the great thin
Avoiding the pain
Many people who see the 50/50 principle as unacceptable also are the ones who resist the principle as a whole. They avoid negative emotions by buffering or avoiding the activity that might create negative feelings. In doing so they cause themselves to not beagle to grow.
That negative feeling is just a feeling it’s not going to kill you. Avoiding emotions is where the danger lies. It’s in avoiding and resisting that we get the build-up of stress and anxiety. Yeah, negative emotions don’t feel good. I understand that, but emotions only last about 90 seconds and then they fade.
Because the negative emotions aren’t pleasant our minds want us to avoid them. Our brains, being, do not get killed devices, come up with different thoughts so that you will want to avoid the uncomfortable. This is why we play small in life. Yet if we don’t play small we start to find our true potential and that always blows our hair back. Sadly though you can’t have the amazing exhilaration unless you are willing to go through the pain first.
Do I have to be miserable?
Well, that really depends on how you are viewing the pain. If you are seeing it as truly horrible then ya you are going to be miserable. Yet if you were to decide to look at the pain as if it was just something you have to do to get to the objective you won’t see it as pain. Yeah, it may be messy and you may fail a few times but in the end, the discomfort you’re experiencing is actually worth it.
You see the pain or joy and all other emotions you feel come from one place. That place isn’t your circumstance it is from your thoughts of that circumstance. Your thoughts create your feelings. those feelings create your actions. The actions create your results. So if you think it is going to suck then guess what it is. If you think it will be an interesting experience then it will.
So do you have to be miserable to go through the pains of life? No, you can have a thought that allows you to press through it.
Can you be happy all the time?
Well by everything I said, no. Yet as Jody Moore says you can be better than happy. You can be fulfilled and have a sense of accomplishment. You can grow and be excited about the process you are going through, or you can just sit and worry about why you aren’t happy and if you do, then know you won’t grow and will stay in the land of playing it small. Its Your Choice
