Continuing Education
Apr. 25th, 2011 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteWe tend to think about happiness as a state of being - just something that you are or aren't, based on outside circumstances and internal factors, but it's interesting to realize that, in a lot of ways, it's a learned skill.
I'm a fairly positive person. I tend to be optimistic, at least when it comes to things other than myself. My default assumption is to generally think the best of people. I'm easy to please; I generally like stuff. People, stories, things, the world. I never developed the trendy cynicism that seems to make so many people generally unsatisfied with life. But, all that said, happiness has never been easy for me. It was something that I had to ponder for a long time before I even recognized it, and I spent a lot of time both consciously and unconsciously working towards learning to be happy. And it's something, apparently, that can be easily forgotten.
Objectively speaking, things are going well for me right now.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
umbran has a new job, a good one - it starts as a contract, but will hopefully parlay into a full-time position. This is years of worry taken off our plates, right now. I have enough work, at the moment, and cases are going well. There are blossoms on my lilacs, and the daffodils and tulips I planted last fall are coming up. The sun has made a few appearances; yesterday it was bright and warm enough that I wound up walking to my brunch date instead of driving. I have a whole lot of love and friendship in my life, and I'm doing my best to remember to make time with friends instead of hiding by myself or narrowing my life down to one or two people.
And yet, I've spent so much of the past month or two - of the past year or two - scared and sad and overwhelmed and exhausted that it has become a mental and emotional habit that it's almost impossible to break. I look at my life, and the world, and how good it is... and if I don't pay attention, and work at holding that mood and that thought in my head, it starts to fade. The tension crawls back into my shoulders, and the doubts and worries start to repeat, and my brain starts digging up reminders of everything bad that has happened, or could happen - and once that starts, it's easy to fall back into familiar mindsets, like familiar postures, or the space on the sofa that after years of sitting there has shaped itself to my body.
The solution is as simple as it is challenging. Make happiness the habit, instead of misery. Relearn the skill, rebuild the thought patterns. The thought of doing emotional isometric exercises sounds kind of stupid when I put it like that, but it's exactly what I need. Find the bits and pieces that make me happy, seek them out, and then hold onto that feeling and frame of mind as long as I can. It'll mean shouting inside as hard as I can to drown out the negative influences that want to take over, and there will be habits of automatic responses that I need to break, but I can do this. I've done it before.
I just wonder sometimes why trying to be happy, why seeking out little things that make you feel good, feels shameful and embarrassing and immature, and why we put such a disproportionate value on being hard to please, or jaded, or pessimistic. I wonder what, as a culture, we gain from that frame of mind....
I'm a fairly positive person. I tend to be optimistic, at least when it comes to things other than myself. My default assumption is to generally think the best of people. I'm easy to please; I generally like stuff. People, stories, things, the world. I never developed the trendy cynicism that seems to make so many people generally unsatisfied with life. But, all that said, happiness has never been easy for me. It was something that I had to ponder for a long time before I even recognized it, and I spent a lot of time both consciously and unconsciously working towards learning to be happy. And it's something, apparently, that can be easily forgotten.
Objectively speaking, things are going well for me right now.
umbran has a new job, a good one - it starts as a contract, but will hopefully parlay into a full-time position. This is years of worry taken off our plates, right now. I have enough work, at the moment, and cases are going well. There are blossoms on my lilacs, and the daffodils and tulips I planted last fall are coming up. The sun has made a few appearances; yesterday it was bright and warm enough that I wound up walking to my brunch date instead of driving. I have a whole lot of love and friendship in my life, and I'm doing my best to remember to make time with friends instead of hiding by myself or narrowing my life down to one or two people.And yet, I've spent so much of the past month or two - of the past year or two - scared and sad and overwhelmed and exhausted that it has become a mental and emotional habit that it's almost impossible to break. I look at my life, and the world, and how good it is... and if I don't pay attention, and work at holding that mood and that thought in my head, it starts to fade. The tension crawls back into my shoulders, and the doubts and worries start to repeat, and my brain starts digging up reminders of everything bad that has happened, or could happen - and once that starts, it's easy to fall back into familiar mindsets, like familiar postures, or the space on the sofa that after years of sitting there has shaped itself to my body.
The solution is as simple as it is challenging. Make happiness the habit, instead of misery. Relearn the skill, rebuild the thought patterns. The thought of doing emotional isometric exercises sounds kind of stupid when I put it like that, but it's exactly what I need. Find the bits and pieces that make me happy, seek them out, and then hold onto that feeling and frame of mind as long as I can. It'll mean shouting inside as hard as I can to drown out the negative influences that want to take over, and there will be habits of automatic responses that I need to break, but I can do this. I've done it before.
I just wonder sometimes why trying to be happy, why seeking out little things that make you feel good, feels shameful and embarrassing and immature, and why we put such a disproportionate value on being hard to please, or jaded, or pessimistic. I wonder what, as a culture, we gain from that frame of mind....
