Yes, you read correctly, it is likely that many of our ancestors died in their attempt to be happy. When you are happy there is no anxiety, you are confident and relaxed, and this in the jungle where we come from meant a disadvantage in the face of very real threats from both predators and enemies. You and I come from those ancestors who knew how to survive by maintaining an alert attitude in a hostile world.
So when you are not happy, it is not because something bad happens to you, on the contrary, you are here thanks to a bunch of scared and unhappy but surviving great-great-grandparents. Therefore, Happiness is not something that is in our instinct or our genes. Happiness is a vital attitude that can and should be trained Can you learn to be happy. And this article is going to be about this.
Surely you are tired of the “cheap living philosophy” where they cheerfully advise you that when you are not happy you just have to repeat these self-affirmations to yourself like a mantra that will reprogram your poor distorted and sick thinking:
And, although these premises are very true, you feel even more frustrated because it doesn’t work. You don’t feel happy. And it’s not your fault But there is a trick here: it is true that happy people think this way, but because it is the product of a basal emotional state that they have cultivated by developing a way of being and being in the world. They have transformed his mind from a hominid concerned with survival into that of a human being who aspires to his personal growth.
When your mind goes from being in victim mode to focusing on being the creator of your own life, it becomes the happiness machine. And when the machine is at full capacity, its own inertia moves it. If there are small imbalances due to the vicissitudes of life, it will naturally return to its homeostasis, to readjust itself to continue functioning. The entire philosophy above has gone from mere knowledge to embodied vital wisdom. So, in the happiness formula, the order of the factors does alter the product: do/feel/think and not think/feel/do.
PERMA: the 5 great pillars of life
And all of the above leads us to talk about what the instruction manual is like for that happiness machine that you can turn your mind into. Seligman, the father of positive psychology, studied what differentiated happy people from those who were not He found out that the vast majority had been educated in environments that emphasized 5 great pillars of life and coined the acronym Perma:
As you can see, the 5 areas are complementary and combinable with each other, for example, I can set myself the challenge of doing a sport (A), which like all sports generates endorphins (P), which I also like (E), with which I can interact with my friends (R) and dedicate myself to training others by vocation or profession (M). Furthermore, the ideal is that we cultivate all of them, so that if, for example, you lose a very important person (R), the rest of the pillars will help you in the grieving process.
So, in conclusion, your happiness depends on you and only you. Nothing and no one has that power over you. This is a very personal and non-transferable path. I hope you enjoy it and are very happy.
