You Can Be Happy No Matter What. Richard Carlson

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СКАЧАТЬ The present moment is where we find happiness and inner peace.

      Learning how your mind operates and functions allows you access to happiness — a magnificent feeling — which enables you to freely enjoy your life and your relationships. Most approaches to happiness advocate doing or changing something in your life. But experience shows us this is a temporary cure at best. The mind-set that tells us that to be happy, we must do something differently doesn’t go away when the change has taken place. It then starts all over again looking for flaws and conditions that must be met and corrected before we can feel happy. When you understand the five principles of healthy psychological functioning, you can reverse this dynamic and feel happy right now, even if you and your life aren’t perfect! Once you are feeling content, and no longer distracted by your false negativity, better access to your true wisdom and common sense will allow you to see solutions and alternatives that had been buried under weighty concerns and busy internal dialogue.

      Contentment is the foundation to a fulfilling life. It brings with it good relationships, job satisfaction, parenting skills (for those of us who are parents), and the wisdom and common sense it takes to move through life in a graceful manner. Without contentment, life can seem like a battleground where we are too busy struggling with problems to enjoy life’s beauty. Consumed by concerns, hoping that someday things will be better, we postpone satisfaction while life slips away. With a happy feeling, we can enjoy life fully — right now. Obviously, your problems are very “real” and significant, but once you learn how to be contented, problems won’t stop you from enjoying your life. A contented feeling brings with it childlike enjoyment — a lighthearted way of being in the world that opens a channel of appreciation for simple things, to feel grateful for the magnificent gift of life itself.

      This new understanding can be applied to all of life’s challenges. You’ll learn no sophisticated techniques or “coping mechanisms” to deal with each specific problem; you will just learn to live in a more contented state of mind: a state of love. The beautiful part of this knowledge — once you understand healthy psychological functioning — is that this knowledge lasts. It’s not that you’ll never again lose hold of the feeling of love — you will — but when you do, you’ll understand how you got off-course, and know exactly how to point yourself back in a better direction.

      The Key To Happiness: Your Mind

      Your mind essentially serves you in two ways. It is a storage vault for information and past experience, and is also a transmitter for wisdom and common sense. The storage vault, or “computer,” part of your brain is used to analyze, compare, relate facts, and make computations. The value of this component is clear: without it, we couldn’t survive. The other part of the brain, the “transmitter” that we each have access to, is the part that deals with matters of the heart — where computer information is insufficient. It is our transmitter mind, not our computer mind, that is the source of our contentment, joy, and wisdom.

      Part of the process of obtaining access to this other part of ourselves is to recognize how necessary and practical it is. How inappropriate it would be to use a computer to solve a marriage or career problem, or to decide how to talk to your teenager about drugs or to your toddler about discipline. Most people wouldn’t use a computer for these personal, heartfelt problems; they require softness and wisdom. Unless we understand and value the “transmitter” part of ourselves (healthy psychological functioning), we have no alternative but to call on the “computer” to deal with our personal issues. New answers don’t come from what you already know in the computer part of your brain. They come from a change of heart, from seeing life differently, from the unknown, quieter part of yourself.

      Let’s illustrate this point with the familiar story of someone who has lost his keys. He thinks and thinks (computer thinking) about where they could be, but to no avail. He simply can’t remember. Then, just when he has given up thinking to gaze out the window instead, the answer suddenly pops into his head and he remembers exactly where he left them. The answer came when he cleared his head, and not from the excessive thinking which would not allow the answer to surface. All of us have had similar experiences, but few have learned the valuable lesson of “not knowing” in order to know. Instead, we continue to think that the answer comes from racking our brains, from using our “computer.”

      You can learn to access and trust this healthy psychological functioning — the quiet part of your mind that is the source of inherent positive feelings, the wise part of you that knows the answers. And when it doesn’t know, it knows that it doesn’t. You can learn the difference between computer thinking and creative thinking — when to trust your computer, and when it’s appropriate to back off and quiet down.

      The goal of this book is to help you experience this nicer state of mind (contentment) more often in your life. When people learn to live in this peaceful state of mind, they discover that happiness and contentment are, in fact, independent from their circumstances. It’s not that things shouldn’t go “right,” — of course that’s best — but things don’t always have to go right before we can be happy. We don’t always have power over other people and/or events, but we do have tremendous power to feel happy and contented with our life. One nice by-product of feeling happy “for no reason” is that troubling details begin to work themselves out. We actually think better, more clearly, and more intelligently when our minds are not full of boggling concerns.

      Our minds can work for us or against us at any given moment. We can learn to accept and live with the natural psychological laws that govern us, understanding how to flow with life rather than struggle against it. We can return to our natural state of contentment.

      The five principles will teach you to live in a positive feeling state more of the time. Use them as a navigational tool to guide you through life and point you toward happiness.

      * Rick Suarez, Roger C. Mills, and Darlene Stewart, Sanity, Insanity, and Common Sense: The Groundbreaking New Approach to Happiness (New York: Fawcett, Columbine, 1987).

Chapter 1 The Principle Of Thought

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      All that you achieve and all that you fail to achieve is the direct result of your own thoughts.

      — James Allen

      HUMAN BEINGS ARE THINKING CREATURES. Every moment of every day, our minds are working to make sense out of what we see and experience. While this may seem obvious, it is one of the least understood principles in our psychological makeup. Yet understanding the nature of thought is the foundation to living a fully functional and happy life.

      Thinking is an ability — a function of human consciousness. No one knows exactly where thought comes from, but it can be said that thought comes from the same place as whatever it is that beats our heart — it comes from being alive. As is true with other human functions, thinking goes on whether we want it to or not. In this sense, “thought” is an impersonal element of our existence.

      The Relationship Between Thought And Feeling

      Every negative (and positive) feeling is a direct result of thought. It’s impossible to have jealous feelings without first having jealous thoughts, to have sad feelings without first having sad thoughts, to feel angry without having angry thoughts. And it’s impossible to be depressed without having depressing thoughts. This seems obvious, but if it were better understood, we would all be happier and live in a happier world!

      Virtually СКАЧАТЬ