"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is a
well-known phrase in the United States Declaration of Independence. It gives
the impression that happiness is outside of us, and that we need to spend our
lives pursuing it. The declaration in fact gives us permission to go in pursuit
of happiness. Whether we are successful or not in obtaining it is up to us.
People want to be happy more than any other thing; in recent
studies more than 70% of people choose to be happy over health, wealth,
success, even over having love. This was a surprise to me, as I felt that being
healthy, or wealthy, would bring happiness intrinsically. Of course, it does
not always do that. In a session recently, a client said she will be happy when
she gets her big house by the sea. It was gently pointed out to her that she
still could be miserable living in a big house by the sea. She acquiesced.
According to Hsieh, happiness is really about four things:
perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (number and depth of relationships),
and vision / meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself). So there
is a Spiritual aspect, an egoic aspect, and growth aspect. For all things to
happen at once, when the ego in us has a tendency for sabotage, makes reaching
the state of happiness a delicate one.
So we agree that happiness is not a thing, and it does not
necessarily come to us when we have what we think we need, in order to “reach”
it. It has been argued that happiness is not an emotion, nor a state of being. For
me this is something that is on my mind at the moment as the old, traditional
ways of getting happy are shifting away from material objects. I’m seeing it a
lot in my practice now.
So I’d like to put this to the floor – and as you, my good readers what your thoughts are. What is happiness? What makes you happy?
No comments:
Post a comment