Weird question right? How does it feel to be happy?! Obviously I was scrapping the barrel of blog topics this week/ But seriously, if everyone experiences feelings differently, because ultimately everyone’s perception is unique, how do we really know what happiness feels like?
It probably isn’t something you’ve ever thought about before, but how do you define happiness? By physical things you have, or people in your life, or the way you feel?
Happiness can never really be defined by a certain status symbol, job, or partner because that places happiness firmly outside of yourself, which means it’s never really real.
What if you sat down and really thought about what happiness feels like for you. Is it a warm glow spreading from your stomach….is it butterflies….is it feeling light and weightless? It could be none of these things, or all of them, but until you define how it really does feel to be happy, you have little chance of achieving that feeling consistently.
When we know what it means to feel happy, the question then becomes, well, how do I get or sustain happiness, consistently, despite external factors?
This is the point at which you learn to consciously manipulate your feelings to match how you want to feel, rather than match your external environment. Remember the Zen monks who remain calm and serene no matter what is going on around them? That’s because they figured out the internal state they wanted and followed that feeling, instead of being so affected by what was going on around them.
Easier said than done though, right? I’m still trying to master this one myself and it will be a lifetime process, because otherwise I’d be some enlightened saint somewhere, which probably isn’t going to happen. But here’s what I figure: follow your joy. You know what makes you happy. You know what happiness is. Start by doing more of what makes you happy. After some time you will start to feel more that way even when you’re not doing the things on the original ‘makes me happy’ list. I will often, in the midst of a busy street, pause for a moment and check in with how I’m feeling. I look for the emotions I want to feel, I breathe, and I find them. I reconnect to that core peacefulness, the core happiness, that I’ve cultivated over the years from doing of what brings me happiness.
I know this is pretty heady stuff so I’d love to hear from you and if you have any questions I can help you with, leave them in the comments below and I’ll be sure to answer!
