We are all at times taken by that feeling of misfortune in which nothing reaches us completely. The question of “I have everything to be happy and I can’t be happy anyway? ” is one of the most frequent in psychology consultations.
We are not original when we raise this topic, although when we do we feel strange, guilty, and we make our words sound under our breath, ashamed of our own ingratitude towards our lives.
The underlying idea is that we are more prepared for attack than for pleasure and enjoyment. Neuroscience supports us in this idea. It could be true, since being well is an almost daily learning process.
Life puts us in check many times, almost inexorably To everyone, to each one on their own scale. We can’t help but think that our neighbor is always better off and happier, much more than us and for longer.
In a sense it is true, because when we look around us with our skewed view of life, it sounds like this: the best is for others. Finding a different way of seeing is the key to solving this painful dilemma of which we believe we are owners.
This article aims to contribute a different way of seeing reality our reality and to be empathetic with who we must first be, ourselves.
Have you ever stopped to think at some point in your past about what you would be like in the future? Did you know our own perception of future changes has a different connotation than changes that occurred in the past?
If you started to reflect today you would understand that at any point in your past you did not even imagine how you would be living today. How many things turned out and how many didn’t, that you had thought for yourself.
Between the present and the future
We live on assumptions, expectations and the future. We plan for ourselves, for our family, even for our children to whom we tell most of the time that we want them to be free. How can you be free, bathed in other people’s expectations?
We like surprises and we always try to guess them before they reach us We go around futurists and fortune tellers and then lose faith at the first disagreement with the oracle. We wait for Santa Claus looking for where the gifts are coming from.
Human contradictions have always defined us and even if we clarify them, we will continue between divination and the control of uncertainty and what we do not understand.
We are split between the present and the future or within the present itself. It is difficult for us to connect with what we are doing, with the current moment we are living in. Our body can be in one situation and our mind in anything else.
Our split mind does not allow us to connect with what we are experiencing. This means that our senses do not combine in such a way that they make that moment a pleasant memory, although small, but a place to evoke.
Wellbeing beyond stereotypes
It is difficult for us to enjoy because we have preconceptions of what this means, we believe that it is about laughter or laughter from moments of success, however, enjoying is much more than that, or much less.
Chained to advertising stereotypes, having fun makes you think about the company of beautiful people, thought within the same patterns, about New Year’s Eve parties with fireworks, about dream trips without rain or problems at airports. Sometimes it is related to a sunset breathing nature. All of that is true, but it is decidedly not the only expression of enjoyment. All these icons are posed from the outside and perhaps that is where the error begins.
Thinking that being well comes from outside is as fallacious and useless as continuing to insist on the issue; there is no way for the outside to complete us in such a way that it fills a void and a reality that is created deep within ourselves.
Most of the time we are looking beyond, into the future, into what will come, into the past that is gone, and our present is relegated to being a simple spectator of events that continue in a future altered by our own considerations..
Our good moments are written as on the seashore and are as ephemeral as the wave that carries it away. We want to save and remember instead of living today, with what there is. We desire more and more and that is not bad, unless it is for the wrong reason, the fear of not having later, of not being able to generate other moments again to remember as good.
When guilt weighs us down
If we did the exercise of focusing on those moments in which we were happy or remembered as such, we would find that what guided success at that time was that there, our interior was contained and loved, especially by ourselves.
We enjoyed the innocence of feeling Because when we are living a situation that pleases us, our gaze towards the external world becomes benevolent and pleasant. We discover the value of what is important and the facts are arranged like the pieces on a board, ready to continue playing.
Although it may seem like a paradox, when things go well for us, we also have a ghost that can be embodied, which is guilt. She appears in both good times and bad
Guilt carries a more expensive price than just feeling it and carrying it, which inexorably leads us to punishment, there is no one without the other. Guilt brings us the voices of the past and the anxiety of the future.
This not only happens to us in everyday life, or rather it does, if we consider work as part of our daily life… Isn’t that where we spend long hours of our lives?
We feel this feeling of anxiety about what is to come, about what today will be like, if all of yesterday’s pending issues will be resolved, if my boss’s gaze will be approving or he will only mark my mistakes. There, too, the construction of good memories will be impeded by the addition of catastrophic thoughts that create bad omens.
It is not only the responsibility of our superior or our leader to create a pleasant place, it is also ours. Happiness does not come from outside, it comes from a pleasant state where we create what we have a good moment with, a smaller one, coffee with my partner or the view of the sun coming through the window. Sometimes we have no choice but to postpone a new reality for a while, but we must never stop keeping in mind that the horizon is to be well, something as simple and as difficult as that.
There’s always an exit
Maybe not the one we expect, but that’s what life is, a sum of negotiations with ourselves. Elections that only with Monday’s newspaper will we know if they were more or less correct.
But that’s what it’s about, not imagining my future self, because this construction can miss the mark. It is valuable to know that When we made the decision for her to go, we believed that she was the best for that moment That way of looking, that small turn in observation, is what is going to change us inside, create and model self-esteem and, above all, our own vision of ourselves. Because if we are in the present, our future includes us, we do not need to guess or assume, we know that we are the protagonists of the story, although we also know that sometimes we can forget the lyrics.
Giving each part of our life a more or less equivalent percentage of attention is an option to consider; Make sure that all our attention is not taken up by work, children or our assets. Balance as much as possible.
It is our responsibility to decide which area of our life is most bothering us at this moment and operate on it. Do not ruminate on the problem, but think, decide and take action, to try for a solution.
It is not necessary to force ourselves to do it alone, there will always be someone to turn to for help. Omnipotence does not lead us to anything good, being independent is not the same as being omnipotent. Let us pay attention to that subtle limit between what does us good and what does us harm.
It’s good to do a little exercise: remember those successes we had in our lives against the unfortunate, and if you are reading this I am sure that the good ones are more. Because your curiosity to understand, know and solve is manifesting as you go through this reading.
Don’t wait for the weekend to do what you want or to be happy, organize your time; If the week is terrible, in those spaces talk with your friends, with loved ones, enjoy more with the family or whatever you like, use the weekend for those things that require more time, fixing something in the house or a day with nature or for the most demanding sport, since you have more hours to rest.
Plan your happiness as a purpose as if it were a long-awaited trip in which you do not want to miss out on seeing those wonderful places that you have never seen.
Don’t compare yourself, be grateful for what you have and who you are and never forget to give back something you received, a nice gesture, a birthday greeting, an invitation to dinner or whatever you can give to someone else. stop focusing only on yourself and your pain. The healing power of free giving is incredible.
Happiness depends more on your mental state than on the state you are in. Be you, your Self today, enjoy it, he knows much more about you than anyone.
