How many unhappy people did you see today? How much bitching, moaning, whining, and complaining did you hear –or even participate in yourself?
If we are all so unhappy, why don’t we do something about it? It’s not that hard to change what you think.
But it is hard to STOP.
Here’s the rub. Feeling happy is uncomfortable. The happy vibration clashes with the vibration we have, like fingernails on a chalk board–or listening to Pachelbel’s Canon when you are expecting Radiohead. Imagine an old-school rapper being forced to listen to Saint Saens, or vice versa.
It’s like a new pair of Birkenstocks. You have to wear them a while before they take on the shape of your feet. It takes a few days to break them in. If you just jump on them and go on a ten-mile hike, you won’t make it.
Changing an emotional state is the same way. It takes effort to think new thoughts with positive messages and then NOT to follow them with cynical or sarcastic humor that just slaps us us back down where we are used to being.
You think, “I could win the lottery,” raising your vibration to hope. But then you add, “I’d just have to hide out from everyone who wanted to get my money.”
That CLUNK sound is your vibration hitting bottom.
You dutifully write your affirmations: I am debt free. I am healthy. I am thin…but with each stroke of the pen, you think about how much shorter than the month your paycheck is, or how thin people have to watch what they eat, or how hard it would be to exercise.
CLUNK.
Being unhappy is only comfortable because you are used to it. You practice it very hard every day.
If you worked at anything as hard as you work at being unhappy, you’d be the world’s leading expert. That big weight that holds you down and makes you tired when you get up in the morning is the chain of unhappiness you forged yesterday, and that you are forging every minute that you aren’t working to be postive.
Try for fifteen minutes, five minutes even, to think a positive thought whenever you hear something unhappy. Do you get stopped by the traffic light? Admire the glow of the red light. Congratulate yourself for driving safely. Take a deep breath and say, “I’m doing well today.” Anything positive.
Every time you start to say “Yes, But…”, STOP.
Start
Talking
Only
Positive.
Hmmmm, very interesting. I’d never considered that before!
I really enjoyed reading this, and it makes so much sense! I truly think my last boss is the most miserable person on the planet given the way she treats her staff (she’s one short now), those from other departments, and her colleagues. Short tempered, foul mouthed, and never one to say anything nice about anything or anyone…I can’t imagine living my life that way, and she lives hers that way every day. I never saw her smile when I worked for her, and I often wondered if her life was truly so miserable that she had forgotten how to find the “happy” in her life. Great article!
It’s easy to get into the habit of being snarky and mean, of always seeing the empty part of the glass, and bitching, groaning and moaning. The problem with that is that the more of that one says, the more one only looks at lack and slack, the more of that one gets. Even if a good moment comes along, the person is suspicious, projecting his or her own intentions onto the other person.
The other side of that is when one is grouchy and irritated, the most irritating thing is to have a happy, cheerful person come along. It’s like a sober when you are drunk, or a drunk when you are sober. So working to keep the spirits up helps keep us from sliding down into irritation and isolation.