By Coach Shawn
Have you ever realized this…
Most of us have ‘rules’ that have to happen in order for us to achieve happiness.
That we have all these things that have to happen for us to feel happy.
Most of which being outside of our control.
Or
We believe (key word) that the source of our happiness are things like:
Events, other people, making other people happy, kids, our career.
These things make us happy of course but we condition ourselves to believe they are THE SOURCE of our happiness.
We create the narrative that happiness is achieved through something external, outside of ourselves.
Yet have you ever wondered,
When we feel happy from those things, where did that happiness come from?
It came from allowing ourselves to feel happiness that we possess, in those very moments.
Something met one of our “rules” and we can believe that’s real happiness.
Yet we possess the potential to tap into our happiness whenever we want.
RESERVOIR OF HAPPINESS
We must not hold ourselves hostage to the false belief that anything outside us will give us our only and real joy.
Happiness is not a reward.
We have a reservoir of happiness inside of us.
When we feel happy from those external things they simply just tapped into it. Magnified it.
We always have this reservoir.
And we don’t need to create rules or allow others to be the only reason we allow ourselves to tap into it.
Instead we must develop the insatiable curiosity for digging deeper inside of ourselves.
Allowing ourselves to feel happier more often and more regular.
When we feel good asking ourselves,
Where did that come from?
How can I feel that even more?
Feeling good is a state of mind and emotion. Happiness is a state.
We can have it at any moment, we must claim it.
Especially when our brains are programmed and conditioned to find what’s wrong.
To protect us and prevent perceived pain.
Here are 3 easy ways to condition ourselves to create our own happiness (reguarly):
#1 – Change The Way We Use Our Bodies.
From our breathing patterns, to facial expressions to the way our shoulders are either pulled back or slumped forward.
How easy would it be if I asked you to describe the body language of a depressed person?
Try this little exercise….
In a moment,
make a big smile, a cheesy grin on your face and hold it there for :10 seconds.
Go ahead.
How did you feel?
You didn’t need a reason to smile.
And smiling alone and changing your facial expression has the power to change how we feel.
There are 80 muscles in our face, let’s use them for good.
#2 – Change Our FOCUS
We either train ourselves what to focus on
or
our external environment at every opportunity takes our focus over.
For good or bad.
We can EASILY feel bad by focusing on things that don’t make us feel good.
When we focus there, live there, we can feel it again in an instant.
We can focus on how people have..
wronged us in the past,
wrote us a nasty email,
were rude over the phone,
forgot our birthday,
what we’re missing out on
etc.
How does that all feel?
Ever get so caught up in a emotion of the past or a disempowering focus it literally changes your entire emotional state?
If you’re unhappy right now…
It’s because you’re not controlling the focus of your mind.
You’re likely focusing on something lousy.
Remember this:
There is no meaning to the things of life except the meaning you give it.
The meaning you give is what you focus on.
“Everyday stand guard at the door of your own mind.”
#3 – Ask Empowering Questions
So many of us ask disempowering questions.
And what we label our experience becomes our experience.
“Why does this always happen to me!?”
“I gave it my all and it didn’t work.”
“Why is everyone so much better than me?”
Lousy questions = lousy feelings.
Now to understand this, our brains do this because it’s designed to avoid pain and try to seek pleasure.
It’s aiming to avoid the uncertainty (to protect us) yet we will always ultimately face what we don’t know (aka uncertainty.)
We have to be careful about the meaning we give things through the habitual questions we ask ourselves.
We need to begin to condition ourselves to ask BETTER QUESTIONS.
“How can I use this?”
“What can I learn from this?”
“How can my best self show up here?”
“What am I being called to learn here?”
These questions will make us feel better.
We all seek a higher quality life, more happiness and fulfilment.
Yet most of us don’t realize our own untapped potential, possibility and the power we possess is within us.
To break out of it we first need to be aware and then second need to take consistent daily action.
We need to ask questions that support us.
Ask ourselves,
“Will this matter 10 years from now?”
“What’s actually funny about this?”
“What could be great about this?”
When we ask ourselves better questions, we take back control of our mind and put ourselves on the path to feeling better, happier and achieving a higher quality of life.
The not so hidden treasure, we all seek.
