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"To be happy requires choosing a perspective that doesn't make you suffer."
By Ray Dodd Many books, magazine articles, and speakers purport to have the key to happiness. They hook our attention with the promise that we can be happy all the time. But is it really possible to be happy all the time? The truth is we don’t normally feel exuberant if our pet dies, we lose our job, we become ill, or a loved one passes away. Our natural response is: this doesn’t feel good. Our emotions can bring us the gift of growth and healing, but when we don't allow our feelings to run their course, and instead create a story that sustains the emotion long after the event, we can suffer for a very long time. Happiness isn’t always being in a joyful place. Happiness is not-suffering. We don’t always get what we want, but making up a poor-me story perpetuates the
emotion and causes suffering. If we are suffering it is because what we have agreed to believe is based on lies. To be happy requires choosing a perspective that doesn’t make you suffer. The expectation that everything is always going to go well is unrealistic. We can’t always affect the physical reality of what happens to us or around us, but we can agree what to believe about it. What we decide is true impacts the essence of every experience. As we age, the normal reasons to be happy are not always as plentiful. Common reasons to be happy—a romance, a new job, a raise in pay, or satisfaction brought on by achievement—are harder to come by as the body gets older. Many people are happy, but only for a particular reason. And if there is no reason, they aren’t necessarily happy or at peace. But that’s just an agreement that limits real freedom. The realization that almost everything you do and everything you believe results from your agreements is good news. It’s good news because it means you have all the power you need. For example, if we interpret what happens to us and fabricate a victim story, and believe it’s true . . . then change is impossible. But a victim story and the complaining that goes along with it are simply choices. We can always agree to choose something else to believe. Most of us are never forced against our will; we are not victims of anything except our own choices. Even when people really are victims of a crime, such as a break-in, what is true is: There was a break-in, something was stolen, and the emotion the moment the break-in was discovered was authentic. The rest is a made-up story. Even when people are victimized by circumstances far beyond their control, they still have the power to agree what to believe about what is happening to them and around them. Dr. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist from Vienna, Austria, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, was a prisoner at Auschwitz—a Nazi concentration camp in Poland during the Second World War. All the prisoners in the camp faced constant hunger, cold, unimaginable brutality, and the threat of death in almost every moment. While Dr. Frankl was fighting for his own survival, he made a startling discovery. In this very worst of circumstances, those who decided they had something to live for, a purpose to be accomplished, seemed to thrive, while those who had lost all hope quickly perished. Despite the awful surroundings they could not escape from, one thing could never be taken away—the ability to choose an attitude and agree to a point of view, despite what was happening, that supported life and hope. You create the life you experience every single day. Whether you are held back by an invisible or insignificant restraint, or motivated by investing all your faith in the belief, I Can! you are the creator of the dream of your life and the one with all the power. Only you have the power to agree what to believe.
Copyright everyday Wisdom 2006. All rights reserved. Reprint rights are granted to all venues so long as the article and by-line are reprinted intact.
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