I remember being told as a child, “if we didn’t have rain, we wouldn’t have rainbows”. Not much of a comfort for a kid who watched the best cubby house in the world, the one I had spent days building, being destroyed by the rain. As children most of us experience a brief negative outburst of feeling, then we accept and understood this. We don’t dwell on it for days or years. We don’t look to blame someone. We don’t chastise ourselves for not doing a good enough job. We just find something else to do for fun. Then when the next opportunity arrives to build a cubby house, we produce an even better one. We enjoy the process.
If only life was that simple as an adult. Nope, we have to analyze it to death. There is nothing wrong with a little self-reflection if you can learn from it. In fact, it’s great. Sometimes though, we want to know why this happened to us. Why did it rain on my cardboard cubby house and destroy it? Followed closely by, why does this always happen to me? What did I do wrong to deserve this? Is God punishing me? Why does it never happen to them? Life is cruel and hard. Nothing ever works out for me. I’m hopeless. What is the government going to do about it? Why are we destroying the world?
We need to discuss our misfortune with our friends, partner, work colleagues and social media to check what their opinions are and hopefully get agreement on how awful it is. Someone should pay for this. Others need to understand how we are suffering because of what happened. We have a right to be sad, angry, resentful etc. We should warn others it could happen to them. Perhaps if we could just stop the rain? Yes! Let’s put all our energy and focus into feeling bad and get others to join us. If we try hard enough and for long enough, we can stop the rain. This can go on for years, for generations.
Knowing what we don’t want helps us to get clarity on what we do want. Life is full of things we do and don’t like. These things help us to refine, develop and evolve. For example, when we feel that someone disrespects us, we know and are reminded how important being respected is to us. We get more clarity on how we want to be respected and if we allow it, insight into how we may not have been respecting ourselves.
This is where we have two choices that lead to very different outcomes and lives. If we continue to think, feel and talk about the disrespect we will notice more and more situations of disrespect in our lives. We will keep it going. We may even drag others along with us. There won’t be much room for other points of view or perspectives. This might make us feel temporarily better as we draw energy from others, but eventually it will make us feel worse. It’s easy to get stuck in the contrast. We all do it at times. No need to beat up on yourself.
If we choose to see ‘feeling disrespected’, as an indication that we are simply clarifying what we do want, by knowing what we don’t want then it is much easier to just let it go before it gets a hold of us. Acknowledge how you feel and accept it, then decide that you are not going to dwell there. (You may need to remind yourself of this quite a few times if it is your habit to dwell. That’s okay practice will defiantly help). The focus then turns to, how do we feel happier now? How can I take responsibility for my feelings right now? Because our mind is not consumed by ‘feeling disrespected’ it is free to look for things we like to do, like listening to our favorite music. It’s also free to look for ways to respect ourselves more. The thought might occur to us that we could say ‘no’ more when this is what we want, instead of pleasing others and then expecting them to respect us. When we do this, we grow from the experience of feeling disrespected. We like ourselves more, feel more respected and happier.
If we can just remind ourselves and be thankful for the off feelings, and thankful for the contrast each time something happens to us that we don’t like, we free ourselves to grow. Growing makes us feel happy. You are not supposed to be happy all the time. We are here to grow. Taking responsibility for your feelings leads to being able to see contrast without letting go of your wellbeing. You are then able to value contrast and negative feelings for the clarity and expansion they bring. Instead of resisting it you welcome it. You don’t need or want to strive to be perfectly happy all the time. Your happiness grows and grows.
Michele Ableson
Doing The Happy Thing
www.micheleableson.com
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