We are looking for happiness in the wrong places
#Definition of happiness
Happiness it’s a feeling of freedom and the fullness in the present moment. Let’s begin with the fundamental question what is happiness in the first place.
The main component of happiness A. a sense of fullness B. feel anchored to the present C. sense of freedom
A. Fullness – we feel content
When we’re happy we don’t feel that we lack anything in our experience of the present moment. We feel complete. In other words we feel content we don’t wish for anything we don’t already have whether it’s a material object, experience or circumstance.
B. Presentness – feeling anchored to the present
This means we don’t drift away into thoughts about the past or future – we tend to get caught up in painful memories and anxiety – provoking uncertainties. Instead, we focus on the moment we’re experiencing.
C. Freedom
We don’t captivated by the negative emotions and disquieting desires that come with dredging up the past, anticipating the future or wishing the present were different. Instead we feel liberated from all of these sources of unhappiness.
Now let’s map out the mental prison from which we are trying break free and with this mapp in hand we’ll find an escape plan.
The mental prison we all try to escape…
Unhappiness involves a sense of incompleteness which arises from the desires and seeking happiness outside of ourselves
Unhappiness -incompleteness
Where does our sense of incompleteness come from? It’s basically the flip side of our desires. The desire is usually something that we lack but think we should have-we think once we get the thing we want we’d be happy that makes us feel complete. The thing we long for becomes one of the missing pieces of our happiness puzzle.
If we look beneath this way of think there is an underlying assumption-that happiness comes from outside ourselves we think we can achieve happiness by obtaining the thing we desire. Our happiness seems that contingent upon having these things while our unhappiness happen seems to be the result of not having them.
This way of thinking is deeply problematic for many reasons. To begin with, it puts our happiness at the mercy of outside forces which are often beyond our control. For instance you can work as hard as you can want but the promotion is ultimately up to your boss so you end up putting your happiness in your boss hands.
Second problem is a feeling of a satisfaction- is usually short-lived. Once you get satisfied from one thing you will be looking for the next-you will always feel dissatisfied until you get whatever even bigger you want. You just move on to another, another and another. It sounds like a never-ending loop.
Now let’s find a ways to get out of this never-ending loop of desire
If happiness is marked by a sense of a fullness presentness and the freedom.Then unhappiness is characterized by the opposite a sense of incompleteness, absentness and captivity.
Modern culture exacerbates the problem of insatiable desire and our sense of incompleteness. We are embedded in this materialistic culture. Advertising, social media even billboard when we walk down the street. They tell us we needed to buy this product to become more beautiful, respected or efficient.There adds hinge on implications that we are not already beautiful, respected or efficient enough.
Pictures posted on social media they all sending us the same message-you and your life are not enough, you need more to be happy. When we are in inundated with these messages. It’s difficult to feel satisfied with our lives the way they are. As if there is always something else we need.
Sensory overload
Contemporary movies, TV shows, music videos, commercials and songs deluge our eyes and ears with a flood of hyperactive images and sounds. Junk food and beverages pump our bodies full of sugar and caffeine. Social media feeds offer us a constant stream of fresh content – along with the possibility of getting feel-good likes if we contribute to them.
Each time we get a “hit” from one of these sources of overstimulation, we receive a little drug-like “high.” As soon as it wears off, we’re left wanting more, so we go looking for our next hit – turning us into pleasure addicts. Meanwhile, the more accustomed we become to sensory overload, the more easily we get bored and distracted, leading us to crave even more stimulation.
While advertising, social media and overstimulation certainly turbocharge the engine of insatiable desire
If we look for happiness outside ourselves, we’re headed for unhappiness.
Modern culture encourages us to adopt a misguided approach to happiness. But it’s not just our culture that’s to blame. It’s the very act of looking for happiness in external sources of pleasure that’s bound to provide only limited, short-term “hits” of pleasure at best.
This can be true of any external source of pleasure – even those that seem completely non-materialistic and wholesome, such as a romantic relationship or a beautiful sunset. Part of the problem is that nothing lasts forever. The relationship will eventually end, and the sun will set.
Nothing lasts forever…
As we’re aware of the impermanence of external sources of pleasure, we tend to engage in various forms of self-defeating behavior. We might fear or lament the inevitability of losing them, which spoils our fleeting pleasure with anxiety or sadness. Or, even worse, we might try in vain to keep hold of them, which can lead to even more self-defeating behaviors. For example, we may become controlling to prevent our partners from leaving us, thereby ruining our relationships.
Furthermore, when we seek happiness outside of ourselves, this becomes entrenched as a mental habit, setting us up for continual dissatisfaction. Even when we get what we want, our mind is so accustomed to looking outward that we keep scanning the world around us for something to latch onto as a source of happiness.
We end up like the guy at the party who constantly looks for another person to talk to. Always thinking about his next conversation, he’s never completely engaged or satisfied with the one he’s having. He simply jumps from one disappointing exchange to the next.
Driven by this compulsive habit, we always seek some other thing in some other moment to come. As a result, we constantly try to grasp onto something just out of reach. This habit of grasping is one fundamental cause of unhappiness.
Unhappiness ultimately arises from trying to grasp and push away our experiences.
Rather grasping things that we want the opposite habbit we do is trying to push away things we don’t want-this ‘pushing away’ habit also sabotages our chance of finding happiness.
These come in many shapes and forms – from particular people, places and situations we’d rather avoid to thoughts, emotions and physical sensations we’d rather not experience. When they confront us, we want to get rid of them and try to push them away.
For example, imagine you’re suffering from a headache. There’s the painful sensation in your temples – but there’s more to your suffering than that. There’s also the mental resistance that you feel toward your pain.
Imagine you stop pushing against the headache for a moment. You still have the sensation of pain in your temples, but you no longer feel the agonizing tension that comes from resisting it. Instead, you feel a sense of neutrality toward it, and with that neutrality comes a sense of peace. The headache no longer disturbs you so much, and your happiness is largely restored.
The same is true of all undesirable things we push away in life. And a similar principle applies to all the things we try to grasp. If we stopped trying to grasp them, we’d stop feeling the discontent and strain that comes with grasping.
Just let it be…
Our suffering isn’t caused by the things we want to push away or grasp, but rather by doing these very actions! This suggests a pretty straightforward solution to liberating ourselves from our unhappiness: Stop pushing away. Stop grasping. Just let it be.
It takes a lot of mental training to stand back and regard things with neutrality. Let’s now look at how to do this.
Meditation
If you want to train your body’s muscles, you start working out. By doing certain strength-training exercises, you can target the specific muscles you want to develop.
The same is true when you want to strengthen your mind’s capabilities – your “mental muscles,” so to speak. And when it comes to your mind’s ability to stand back and regard anything that comes its way with a sense of tranquil neutrality, there’s a very powerful mental strength-training that you can start practicing right away.
Now you’re in a better position to understand the whole point of meditation, which is lost on many people. In popular culture, meditation is often misunderstood as simply a method of stress release. For 15 minutes a day, we tune out our hectic modern lives and tune into ourselves by focusing on our minds, bodies and sensations. Then, when the 15 minutes are over, we emerge from this ultra-focused tranquility feeling magically refreshed and ready to tackle the world again.
Not only is this approach to meditation inaccurate, but it also reproduces the problems we’re trying to solve! If we try to meditate in this frame of mind, we start grasping for that state of tranquility and rejecting anything that seems to disturb it.
The resulting state of tension and inner-conflict is pretty much the opposite of the tranquility we’re seeking, so we end up disappointed. That leads many people to conclude that meditation doesn’t work, so they give up on it. But the point of meditation isn’t to feel good while we’re meditating. Rather, it’s to develop the ability to be happy when we’re not meditating.
Turn daily meditation as a habit
Generally speaking, meditation exercises consist of three steps. In step one, we focus our minds on an anchor in the present moment. For beginners, this is usually the breath, the body, a visual object or the sounds around us. The objective here is to be fully and non-judgmentally focused on whatever we’re experiencing in the present moment. In this state of mindfulness, we’re neither pushing nor grabbing at anything in our field of awareness. We’re simply accepting it and experiencing it as it is.
At some point, however, our minds inevitably wander into other sensations, thoughts or emotions. This leads to step two, which is simply noticing that we’ve drifted. The third step consists of gently bringing our attention back to our anchor. Then we repeat the cycle all over again – and again, and again.
Now, the reason that beginner-level meditation exercises start with anchors like the body and breath is that these are very immediate, noticeable things to focus on. But in theory, your anchor could be anything. With that in mind, you can start broadening your meditation practice by implementing mindful moments.
To do this, pick two or three ordinary actions that you usually do mindlessly, like brushing your teeth, eating lunch or climbing the stairs. Then, practice the three phases of meditation while you perform them each day. For example, if you’re brushing your teeth, focus on the physical sensations of the task, like the taste of the toothpaste suds that fill your mouth and the sound of the brush scrubbing against your teeth. Whenever your mind wanders, simply observe where it’s gone and gently bring it back to the experience.
The more you practice mindfulness, the more it will become your default state of mind – not just during mindful moments and meditation sessions, but also when you’re experiencing difficulties. You’ll then be able to tap into this internal source of inner peace whenever, and wherever you are.
But it takes practice to reach this level of mindfulness. Let’s take a look at some tips on how to get there.
Step one: focus your mind on an anchor. Step two: notice it’s drifted. Step three: bring it back to your anchor. Repeat. Put in this way, meditation sounds extremely simple – and in a way, it is. But as anyone who’s ever tried it knows, meditation can also be really difficult.
The second phase is the sticking point for many people. Their minds wander, and they think, “Oh no, I’ve messed up! I lost my focus. Quick – return to the breath!” But if we do that, we’re right back to pushing and grasping. We’re resisting thoughts, emotions or sensations, and we’re trying to grasp our anchor.
The key here is to realize that mental wandering isn’t a failure. In fact, it’s pivotal to the success of the whole endeavor. If our minds didn’t drift away from focusing on our anchor (step one), we wouldn’t have a chance to practice recognizing that they’ve wandered (step two) and bring them back (step three). And it’s in practicing all three steps together that we develop our ability to inhabit a state of mindfulness.
Final tip is not to close your eyes or play peaceful music when meditating. Sure, these things may help you concentrate, but remember that the objective isn’t to be mindful while we’re meditating. It’s to be mindful when we’re not meditating. After all, do you walk around with your eyes closed or listening to gentle piano arpeggios all day long?
Probably not – but when we meditate this way, we’re unintentionally training ourselves to rely on these methods of achieving mindfulness. We’re also sending ourselves an unconscious message – practicing mindfulness is something we do only under special circumstances.
But again, the point is to practice under any circumstances.Then we’ll be able to find a sense of inner peace anytime, anywhere, with our eyes wide open to the beautiful but often turbulent world around us.
Try out micro-moments of mindfulness-integrate it into your life even further.
One way you can do that is by practicing micro-moments of mindfulness. These are exactly like the mindful moments, just practiced for even shorter periods of time. Instead of picking two or three actions to focus on, tune into whatever you’re doing at random times throughout the day. Perhaps you’re sitting in a chair, or taking a walk. Whatever it is, simply be mindful of the sensations at hand. You can even do this while stuck in traffic or waiting at the doctor’s office. In fact, situations that are usually irksome can turn into fantastic opportunities to practice mindfulness in general, whether through micro-moments or longer, impromptu meditation sessions.
Final Summary
While happiness is characterized by a sense of fullness, presentness and freedom, unhappiness is marked by the opposite feelings. These include a sense of emptiness arising from desire and a tendency to look for happiness outside of ourselves. Our desires are stoked by advertising, social media and other aspects of our modern consumer culture, while the tendency to seek pleasure externally eventually becomes a mental habit. These habits lead us to grasp for what we want and push away what we don’t want. The resulting strain is our ultimate source of suffering. To escape it, we can learn to observe things neutrally. This is called mindfulness. Meditation exercises can help us develop this skill, but to fully tap into its power, we need to integrate it into our everyday lives.
Meandering leads to perfection 