How to be happy
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 with our own values, hopes, and dreams and in alignment with 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.
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 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 so that people can feel vital 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.
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 consciously want 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!
Of course, learning how to override and break free of limiting and negative thoughts are 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.
You must be logged in to post a comment.