CREATING YOUR LIFE: THE HAPPINESS MYTH Part 1 : CHASING THE SURFBOARD OF HAPPINESS

In our pursuit of happiness, our lives, relationships, experiences and almost everything else are constanted sorted into opposing categories: good/bad, happy/unhappy, like/dislike. Or - to put it more clearly - go forward/run away. We think we’re chasing happiness but mostly we’re engaged in pain avoidance.

Constantly seeking happiness as a life goal reminds me of a childhood experience. I was at the beach, happy as a clam, when my nifty Styrofoam surfboard began sailed away, all on its lonesome, out to sea.

Desperately I splashed in to retrieve it. But each time I went to grab it; the board floated just out of my reach. I continued to paddle towards my object of desire, tiring rapidly, yet idiotically determined (A trait I have retained unfortunately.) until an observant stranger plunged in and saved both me and it from a watery demise.

In your pursuit of happiness are you too headed out to sea and tiring rapidly? In other words, are you always trying to get somewhere/something else instead of enjoying where you are and what you have? Is ‘feeling good’ perpetually just around the corner?

Are you overly focused on becoming, achieving and attaining? Do you believe that if you acquire more stuff, you’ll feel better - somehow more fulfilled, good enough or finally complete? Or is it another person - a lover or children - who will bring happiness to you?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you, my friend, are swimming after that Styrofoam surf board of happiness and are in danger of going under.

This blind pursuit of happiness and avoidance-at-all-costs of unhappiness is part of how we... to use a much overworked phrase... “create our own reality.”

The happiness obsession and its crazy making offspring - worry, resistance, denial and anxiety - unconsciously condense our lives into blocks of frozen possibilities. Can’t do this, THAT might happen. Can’t go for that, THIS might happen. Can’t think about anything unless THAT’S solved. Before we know it, we’re not very happy at all.

One thing that help is- instead of worrying, fretting, resisting or denying (which only multiplies both your feelings of doom and the time the problem will hang around) start to notice how your emotional heaviness/numbness/nervousness changes. Sometimes it’s more. Sometimes less. Sometimes it disappears altogether.

If you focus on these shifts, not seeking them but noticing them, then your oppressive state and whatever is causing it will be less heavy, less constant. Then you can begin to move with how things are in the present. Not reacting as you did yesterday or how you think you will tomorrow. This technique is, in essence, a way of staying in the moment.

And, once you let a little space into the situation, you may find solutions and help arrive much more readily. Why? We rarely view our current conundrum as a passage leading to a better place than we were before. Yet this is often the case.

Now, by prying your fingers off the control stick and surrendering, you’ve created a more receptive environment and a more receptive you. You’re more likely to see and respond to new opportunities and they are more likely to arrive. It’s a win win situation. Let me give you a personal example.

I used to be in advertising, may that life rest in peace. For a long time I was very unhappy in my job and spent my days loathing it and my nights grinding my teeth about it. After making myself miserable and mounting up astronomical dental bills, I began to notice that I didn’t always hate the job, it went in cycles.

I realized I could stop holding on to how much I hated my job and, remarkably, did. With all my new free time and emotional energy, I found myself entertaining what else I might do. As I was musing, I scheduled a shiatsu massage. I not only loved it, I was fascinated. Two years later I was out of advertising, severance package and unemployment in hand, and into massage. This led to studying, traveling, teaching, writing and my much more satisfying current life.

So begin notice the lighter moments within trying times that relieve the seemingly constant pressure. From this you will have a greater belief that change is possible because you see that it is happening all the time.

And you have created a space into which insights, intuition and new possibilities can now enter. It is not the events in our lives that create pain, it is how we deal with them that turns or loosens the screws on our thumbs.

Another marvelous technique is called ‘handing it over’. Whether it is an emotional state or situation I find difficult, I ask the Greater Source (Substitute your divinity of choice - God, Goddess, Allah, Buddha, Jesus, Krishna etc.) to lift it from me. It is really remarkable how many times I feel much better after twenty minutes or so, sort of like a spiritual Tylenol.

While the ‘hand it over’ approach works well with the minor daily angst we all suffer from; deeper, more long term problems are not so easily dispelled. For these, I still call on the Greater Source, but ask for transformation and guidance that will lead me to what the pain/discomfort/difficulty is trying to teach me and what the possibilities beyond it are.

Then, on my end, I try not to push the pain away by numbing myself (CHOCOLATE!!!), denying (it’s a river right?) or, my all time favorite, repressing. (Feelings? I gave them up ages ago.) I ask for help without expectation of the result so as not to limit the way the answers and solace might come to me. Tricky for me to do because I LOVE to take control, but ultimately it is much more fruitful.

So try some of this out and see how much better you feel.