Articles Written by Dr. Ken Best Los Angeles Chiropractor
Happiness -- With Rewriting Your Life Dr. Ken Best Sheds Some Light on the Elusiveness of Being Happy
By Dr. Kenneth Best, D.C.,
Community Contributor --
Published: September 02, 2009
What Is Happiness?
What is happiness,
and why does it make people so miserable? Because we live in a dualistic
world of good and evil, right and wrong, the have and have-nots, we tend to
look at our feelings and emotions from this same perspective. If we are
not happy, then we are miserable in varying shades of gray.
"Happiness
is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human
existence.”
— Aristotle
Happiness is often associated with an
exalted uplifting feeling, which comes and goes leaving us feeling less than
happy. However, happiness can be a state of being that doesn’t
necessarily mean you have to be jumping for joy every second.
Happiness is probably
one of the biggest reasons people are so miserable.
People constantly
chase happiness and seldom find it, which leaves them feeling miserable.
The idolization of material goods as a source of happiness is usually the
culprit. Happiness brought on by the attainment of things is fleeting and
leaves us wanting more. It is no different from an addiction to drugs for
a contrived sense of happiness.
Feelings should come
and go with grace and ease throughout your day. Feelings are your
experience of life around you and comprise your internal barometer of how you
respond to the world around you. You respond to life by feeling.
Emotions, on the other hand, are feelings that get stuck. We tend
to hold on to feelings because of thoughts we have about a person or situation.
Because we hold on to these feelings, they become distorted and we twist
them into different emotions that begin to take hold on us. We can be
emotional about something for hours or even days even though the original
feeling passed in seconds.
The body responds to
feelings by producing chemicals in the hypothalamus. The
hypothalamus is an area of the brain that when stimulated produces chemical
messengers that travel throughout the body causing it to respond to certain
stimulation. These chemicals are a translation of the feeling and
stimulate the body to respond to the feeling in an appropriate way. A
feeling of fear, for example, stimulates the body to be prepared to run, hide
or fight. Holding on to emotions generates more chemicals from the brain,
prolonging the feelings and reactions in the body, which can become
self-destructive. The body becomes so reactive to these chemicals that
normal body chemistry becomes upset and affects our mood and immune system.
The body basically becomes toxic from all these negative emotions that
generate chemicals in our body. We need to be able to move out of this
over-reactive emotional state and experience our feelings without creating an
avalanche of chemicals in our body.
It is possible to
maintain a state of happiness while being open to feelings as they come and go;
it is possible to feel sadness at the loss of a loved one, without going into
despair, by being in a state of happiness.
This is not to say
that we ignore or cover up feelings by any means. It is actually being
more available to our feelings and being able to respond to any situation.
In this ability to respond and connect with life, we are in a state of
happiness even if we are having feelings of grief, sadness or anger, if those
feelings are appropriate to the situation; if we haven’t distorted those
feelings into emotions. Once our feelings become emotions, our thoughts
take us into the past or the future and we are no longer responding to life in
the moment. That’s when we step outside our state of happiness. And
when we do, we allow ourselves to feel alone, isolated or enraged, and we fall
into depression or despair.
Joy and happiness are
always right here within us.
Happiness seems
illusive because we are always looking outside ourselves to find things to make
us happy. It is our belief that happiness is derived from an external
source that drives us to look for things to make us happy. We allow
things such as money, gifts, events and other people to bring out our happiness
and joy temporarily, but soon we are cut off from being happy because we start
worrying about the past or future, or something gets in the way. If we
shift our perspective and understand that we already have all we need to be
happy within us, then everything else is icing on the cake. We are able
to remain in a state of happiness no matter what is going on in the world
around us.
While it may not seem
so obvious to you in this moment, you can choose to be happy right now, despite
whatever you may be suffering in your life. We give so much attention to
our suffering that it gains a certain amount of power over us.
Living in the present
moment means being able to respond to life right now.
We feel so unhappy
most of the time because we are never really alive and living in the present moment.
If you stop to think
about the past or the future, you are no longer experiencing and responding to
the present moment. You are feeling and responding to something your mind
is creating about the past or future — which may be real, but most often is
not. We often create these very elaborate stories in our head and even
foresee the outcome, which often creates an emotional response to something
that isn’t even real.
We seem to find
things to complain about in order to be unhappy. Sometimes we expect so
much from ourselves and others that we feel disappointed in ourselves or them.
Why do we focus so much on the negative? Because we are taught to
find what is wrong, not what is right in life. We are taught that if
things are going too well, it is probably going to disappear, or be taken away.
As you become aware of these patterns in yourself, you will be able to
rewire yourself to think differently.
All of the techniques
discussed in Rewriting Your Life™ are effective at changing these old, negative
pathways. Each technique works on a different pathway in the brain.
When we focus on and
think about the past we may miss the way things were, feel ashamed for the way
we reacted, feel guilty for having done something, wonder how we could have
done something differently, have regrets, resent someone or something, hold on
to feelings of anger, hatred, unrequited love and the dreaded “What my life
could have been like if only I had done this differently?”
I say this with
compassion but with fortitude: Let it go. Otherwise you will carry
it around for the rest of your life. How long do you want to carry around
the burden of your misery and suffering? Is it making your life any
better right now? No! We sometimes carry our suffering like a badge
of honor that says to the world, “Look how much I have suffered.”
The only way to let
go of all these thoughts and feelings that plague our mind is to see it from
another perspective — to forgive the thought or feeling, forgive yourself,
release the energy and embrace life right now, in the moment.
For some people
letting go is scary. You may have been holding on to something for so
long that it feels safe because you know what it is, but it keeps you from
welcoming in a better life. I have people who say I know, I just can’t
let it go. And, as long as they keep saying that, they won’t. They
will carry it around with them till they day they die. Life becomes a
burden when we carry around all of our old hurts and fears. Ask yourself, what is the worst
thing that would happen if I let it go? Most people respond, “I’d be
happy.” This is when we need to find and change whatever beliefs that are
stopping you from being happy.
It is impossible to
be in a state of happiness when we are stuck in the past or the future.
Most of us spend our
entire day thinking about something that happened in the past or something
that we expect to happen in the future. Even when we are in the present,
we evaluate or compare it to something in the past with a dualistic view of
whether it’s better or worse. Accepting the moment for what it is and not
making it better or worse than another moment allows you to respond to the
moment and move forward.
Being in a state of
happiness implies being alive and responding to life in the moment.
To move from feeling
happy into an ongoing state of happiness we have to retrain the way our brain
has been wired since childhood. We have been taught to worry about the
past and future and have allowed our mind to create so much fear and illusions
about the world that we get trapped in it. I call this “Going Down The
Rabbit Hole.”
In Rewriting Your
Life™ we teach you a simple process of training yourself to be present in order
to experience more happiness and create more of what you want in your life.
Kenneth Best, D.C.