How to be happy
Learning how to be happy is a natural continuation from last weeks post : Mind, Body and Soul.
By understanding how the three essential elements of our human condition integrate and function together, we are able to restore the balance and live more harmonious lives, however our real challenge only begins there. Learning how to be happy is learning how to identify and override our past conditioning to transform our thought patterns, beliefs and behaviors in alignment to our own values, hopes and dreams and in alignment to the opportunities we have available to us in our modern day world. Learning how to be happy is about breaking free from the negative and limiting thoughts and behaviors that have been conditioned into us by society.
The natural behavioral development of human beings is to learn by copying. We have learned how to walk and talk by observing and copying our parents, grandparents and siblings walk and talk. In this example, walking and talking, are essential skills for our life, but clearly that is not all we learn. The collective behaviors and thought processes of everyone we are exposed to as children until we are young adults is observed, stored in our minds and replicated. Our entire understanding of right and wrong, acceptable and not-acceptable, expected of us and not-expected of us has been learned and retained and conditioned into our brains. The problem is that we have learned and retained the collective values of a society that reflects an outdated capitalist lifestyle model, and collective thought patterns and behaviors that really surmount to nothing more than schoolyard bullying, for adults.
Rather than loving and accepting the differences that make each of us unique, and encouraging and inspiring each other to live the life of our own choosing, our culture criticizes, judges and condemns, and pushes us to adhere to the default lifestyle. Our society loves drama and scandals for the excitement it provides to otherwise unstimulating lives. Good people are victimized and bullied just so people can feel important and righteous when slandering their perceived misdeeds. This culture of paranoia and mistrust is conditioned into our brains through observing the beliefs, behaviors and thoughts, retaining these patterns and then replicating them in our own lives.
The way our minds are conditioned come to serve as the backdrop to our entire lives. Every wish and desire is filtered through our minds conditioning of what is right and wrong, accepted and not accepted, expected and not expected of us and others. Regardless of our best efforts to embrace a more balanced state of being by living in harmony with our three essential elements, mind, body and soul, our minds are so accustomed to operating on autopilot that these old thought patterns, beliefs and behaviors continue to surface and be replayed. We can run and hide, but we can never escape these recurring patterns. They will follow us to every corner of the globe and back and permeate every wonderful moment we could ever conceive having. Our only hope is to change and transform our brains conditioned patterns. This is the key to learning how to be happy.
We override and recondition our minds by being vigilant with our own thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. Literally bringing our awareness to each thought and action and identifying and stopping unhealthy, destructive and unnecessary thought patterns or behaviors as they arise and replacing them with healthy and constructive thought patterns instead. It sounds easy in theory, but in practice it takes patience and persistence to maintain this level of self vigilance and it may even be difficult to discern between what is ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’.
As a general rule of thumb any belief, behavior, thought or feeling that does not empower, encourage or inspire you or others, is unhealthy and needs to be reconditioned. For example, if you begin to feel overwhelmed and discouraged and contemplate quitting, you may have just identified an underlining conditioned belief that you are not capable of achieving your goal (because if you did believe that you are capable of achieving your goal, then you would never contemplate quitting). This conditioned belief may have been learned from family members who never encouraged you, but instead told you you were not good enough, or by societies collective acceptance of what is possible and what is not possible, with your goal, by majority consensus, falling into the ‘not possible’ department. These conditioned beliefs of your family that you are not good enough, or the majority consensus of society that your dream is not possible, replays over and over again in your subconscious mind, while simultaneously you are consciously wanting to achieve your goal. Your subconscious conditioning sabotages your conscious wishes. Once you have recognized that an underlining belief and thought conditioning is circulating, you can focus your thoughts on stopping and transforming the conditioned beliefs. Imagining a big red stop sign actually helps! Once you have stopped the conditioned thought and belief in its tracks, you then replace it with a positive and healthy thought and belief e.g. I am good enough, I can achieve my goals and my goals are possible!
As far as conditioned behaviors go, some things to watch for are disrespecting yourself and others, partaking in slanderous conversations, general unkind and uncaring actions, physical fighting, screaming and shouting. These are all manifestations of a conditioned mind that has learned these behaviors as acceptable social skills and methods of dealing with conflict, but these behaviors are destructive and detrimental to healthy relations and are definitely not conducive to being genuinely happy. Whenever you catch yourself in the midst of one of these behaviors, imagining that big red stop sign will help to halt the behavior dead in its tracks, then consciously transforming that behavior to one based on kind, caring, respectful and thoughtful actions will teach your brain new conditioned behavioral responses. Of course, a huge amount of Self Discipline and Self Control (and a high Emotional Quotient) is needed to divert these behaviors mid assault, but it is possible and a skill worthy of developing. However, if in the early days you miss the opportunities and the conditioned behaviors happen and pass before you realize they were an instigating factor, you can still acknowledge the conditioned behavior and imagine the situation replaying again but with a healthy behavioral response that would encourage good relations and a positive outcome. By using visualization techniques as a tool to help override your conditioned behavior you will be quicker to identify and stop it next time.
Of course, learning how to override and breakfree of limiting and negative thoughts is just one element to learning how to be happy, but it is a major factor. When we have learned how to identify beliefs, thoughts and behaviors that have been learned from greater society, rather than from our own personal experiences, we are able to override them with healthy and positive beliefs, thoughts and behaviors that are aligned with our personal values and greater goals and dreams. By learning how to be happy and developing these skills our subconscious and conscious mind work in harmony together, fostering an environment that allows us to become truly happy and content.
What is your view on this? Share your thoughts and experiences below in the comments section.
If you are interested in Free Life Coaching, then please feel free to contact me, I will be delighted to support and encourage you to create and live the life of your dreams.
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“The purpose of the life is to experience and be happy”
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