Why is it so hard to “get happy?” If there is one common trait that all humans share, it is the desire to feel good, not bad. We seek contentment, fulfillment, satisfaction and peace. For many of us, it is our primary pursuit. So, why do we rarely obtain it? And when we finally get it, why doesn’t it last?
In his book, The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris explains that it is often our efforts to get happy that backfire and lead us instead to feel frustrated, depressed, or even guilty. Why is this?
Why can’t we just decide to have joy or happiness and keep it forever? Why can’t we just make ourselves happy when we are sad, mad or scared?
The science behind Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers us some clues. We tend to think of thoughts as being brain-based but we feel our emotions in our body. We use our mind to perceive and make sense of what is happening in and around us and this in turn triggers specific emotions related to our interpretation of what we “think” is real or true.
Our emotions have a purpose. They prepare us for action. Our mental perceptions help determine our emotional experience and these emotions help move us to act or behave in a particular way.
We can’t always control our emotions and thoughts but we are in charge of how we respond to our mental and emotional activity. It is perhaps the one thing we can control: what we attend to, how we attend to it and what we choose to do in response.
Emotions do not just happen. They are triggered by internal and external events. In the process of engaging with the world, we add our stuff to it and it in turn has an impact on us. We do not really see the world as it is but as we are. Like mixing paint, we cannot fully separate our sense of self from our environment. All of us exist in a context that, like a kaleidoscope, is continually evolving and transforming. Just as the flow of events around us reflects a process of constant change, a cascade of “events” is also occurring within us. Internally, the show never ends as we experience memories, thoughts, images, and sensations in response to the external movie in which each of us is the star.
Meanwhile, something within us is constantly judging our experience. Is this good or bad? Do I like or dislike what is happening around and within me? Does it pull me in or does it push me away? Is it welcome or is it a threat?
At a very basic level we know our survival depends on our ability to discriminate between helpful and harmful, right and wrong, dangerous and safe. We have all descended from human beings who made the right choice and survived long enough to reproduce. We seek the good, avoid the bad and then we “win.”
However, when the “bad” thing is inside us, what then? What do we do when we experience unwelcome thoughts or unpleasant feelings or unwanted or unacceptable physical sensations? What then? How do we “get rid of” thoughts and feelings? And what happens when we try to avoid the unavoidable?
Sababu, my spiritual master when I lived in an ashram for a couple years in the 1970s used to say, “Run, run, run but you can’t hide; that which you run from is inside.”
As we struggle with our internal experience as an unwanted problem, we will usually find we are unsuccessful. We feel ineffective. And not just that. Whatever “it” is that we hope to eliminate or avoid, we find that attacking it or running from it does not work. In fact, it gets worse. Our struggle makes it worse and yet it’s all we know to do. So we keep doing what doesn’t work.
There is another way. We don’t have to struggle. We have a choice. We can accept that which we cannot control, change, avoid, beat, defeat or get rid of. We can let it be. We can allow it. We can give it room. We can refuse to make it a problem.
“Clean discomfort” is one way to describe life. To be a human means we sometimes have what we don’t want or want what we don’t have. The gap between wanting and having is painful but it’s “clean” until we “dirty” it up with our thoughts and emotions. When we resist, struggle, fight, flee, whine, worry, catastrophize, or blame the gap, we take natural, normal pain and turn it into deep, intractable suffering. But then what?
Many of us turn to food, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, gambling, television, computer games or spending money as we seek to numb our feelings or avoid them. If we rely on these distractions excessively or inappropriately, or become addicted to them, or avoid relating to friends and loved ones, or harm our health or avoid constructive, healthy behaviors and solutions, we make our problems much worse. Our discomfort gets dirtier and our emotional pain is amplified as we continue to judge, blame and criticize ourselves.
The more we struggle, the more we feel stuck. The less we struggle, the freer we become. The more we struggle, the more we waste time and energy. The less we struggle, the more time and energy we have to devote to more productive pursuits. The more we struggle against our discomfort, the darker it gets and the more discomfort we have. The less we struggle against our discomfort, the smaller, cleaner and lighter it becomes.
As we become more present, step back and defuse from our thoughts and embrace our emotional experience, we discover that we have increased psychological flexibility. We aren’t changing the world and we aren’t “fixing” ourselves but we are altering our relationship with our thoughts and feelings. When we notice and accept our internal experience, we stop judging, struggling and blaming. The less we try to control, the more in control we feel. And as we stop chasing happy and running from fear, we find our peace where it always was: right here in abundance.
