Essentially, don’t we all just want to be happy? Being happy with ourselves and the lives we live, isn’t that our absolute goal? But what are the obstacles to overcome to acquire happiness? Why are we not completely happy right now?
As long we are not radically accepting reality, there will always be a certain level of unhappiness within us. We are unhappy because we don’t accept who we are and the situation we are in. We would like to get everything our way and this is of course not often possible. But is it so radical to have the acceptance to follow the right path and is it even realistic?
Let’s find out more about our pursuit of happiness and the nature of our struggle!
The problem with happiness
If we are able to accept everything the way it is, happiness would be the logical result. Imagine that there is a pill for ultimate happiness, How would your life be right now?
If people would be absolutely content, wouldn’t they stop doing or trying to do anything? We wouldn’t be bothered by poverty, loss, hunger, injustice, and sickness…
We wouldn’t have any ambitions to create or change something. We wouldn’t care why we are here and who we want to be.
Why would we even care about having children or being alive at all?
The necessity of unhappiness
I think we can agree a certain level of unhappiness is necessary, it’s part of being human. Unhappiness is the driving force behind our ambition to grow, create, heal, change, evolve as a species and individually. Without being a little unhappy, life would be boring, nihilistic, and probably fade away fast.
There are many opinions about what could be the purpose of life, but I think the answer is very simple. The purpose of life is happiness because after its accomplishment there is nothing else to do anymore. But it’s unhappiness that is maintaining our lives.
The purpose of life is ‘HAPPINESS’,
Because what else is there to pursue after being totally content?
Finding the sweet spot
A good life is not one hundred percent a happy life, because such a life is doomed to destroy itself. Living in absolute misery and with severe suffering is of course also not a good life. There is enough proof from all around the world people in very tough conditions are more eager to get caught in depression, turn to crime, or even end their lives.
We need to be in a certain sweet spot between being unhappy and happy, where we feel the greatest sense of purpose and maximize our potential. This is very subjective of course. Some people thrive in more miserable situations and other people get the best out of themselves in easier circumstances.
What is a good life?
Naturally, I might be all wrong with what I write here. But I believe a good life is a life where we can live a rich human experience. When we are situated in our subjective sweet spot between unhappiness and happiness, we are able to live the richest life. In this sweet spot, we both struggle and enjoy. But most of all, we are hopeful and the strong positive energy of hope triggers us to employ our full potential, talents, and creativity to get the best out of ourselves.
When we become old and comes the time to leave this world, we would probably conclude that we were not always happy, but life was exactly right in order to give us an amazing experience. A good movie or a great ride should be exciting, with ups and downs and a happy ending. Furthermore, the realization of being on a ride and knowing that your adversity is helping you to create the most exciting and rich life will create already a lot of joy in itself. Like the quotes, you often see on the internet or in magazines state: ‘happiness is a journey, not a destination’.
Choosing our battles
When we are not happy with ourselves or our situation, it causes a whole range of feelings, emotions, and actions. Experiencing those things makes us struggle while fighting reality. This struggle is necessary to create a better life for ourselves. But too often, we also struggle without any possible improvement. We are struggling for the wrong reasons or we have given up on struggling at all because we lost our hope in ever being happy.
In order to get ourselves in the sweet spot and create the richest life for ourselves, we need the right perspective.
We need to realize what to struggle for and what to let go of. While certain physical causes of unhappiness like pain, cold, sickness have maybe a smaller psychological component, most of our struggles are mainly caused by our mental state. Our beliefs are causing our struggles and becoming conscious of our beliefs will help us to choose our struggles right. Being more aware and choosing our battles carefully will empower and enable us to find the sweet spot and create a good life for ourselves.
Struggling is a matter of perspective
It is our own belief that tells us we are not good enough, we are in the wrong job, our partner doesn’t love us enough, we are afraid to become poor, we need another car, God abandoned us, we have been treated wrongly, we will never find love, we are ugly, nobody cares about us, we can’t manage on our own, and so on and so on.
Whatever the reality might be, it’s what we believe that is causing the pain. It is what we believe that is making us struggle or even makes us give up struggling when we lose our hope.
Being unhappy is a mindset. Whether you struggle or not, depends on your perspective.
Letting go of needless suffering
The more we can create a mental state with an open and positive perspective, the less we will suffer needlessly. We are completely able to see through our false beliefs and let go of the struggles that are not worth fighting for. For example, many people get very annoyed when the weather is bad, it really ruins their day. If we can’t accept the things we have absolutely no control over, we become slaves to our own environment. But maybe we could reconsider our judgment about this ‘bad’ weather. We can try to embrace the rain and be open to it. Let’s go out and get wet, it’s a free shower!
Of course, some adversity is more serious. Life can be very hard and put us in a position where we have to accept a great loss and struggling with it will not make things better. Imagine we lose our sight and there is no way to ever see again. In this case, we will need to process our loss and give up the fight, otherwise, we will suffer needlessly. But as humans, we have the flexibility to open our perspective and change our beliefs radically. We can accept our blindness, find opportunities hope to acquire new skills and become happier than ever before.
Can you pick up your arms again?
In some situations, our beliefs make us lose hope and make us stop struggling. We can define this as a state of depression. We are stuck in a perspective where we believe it’s meaningless to struggle for happiness, that we can’t possibly acquire what we want or be who we want to be.
Sometimes we also don’t see the opportunities we have or our fear of failure makes us not fight for them. A better life can be within our reach, but we decide not to act in order to spare ourselves from a possible failure or we simply don’t have enough energy and hope to struggle for what we want.
Sometimes we need to rediscover our courage and will and go through the pain in order to acquire a better situation for ourselves. It is again a matter of perspective. What we believe determines our courage and hope. When we believe we are not good enough or not worthy to get, for example, that dream job we always wanted, we will also never get it. If you are able to open your mind and use your intellectual flexibility, I’m sure you can find a reason why you deserve this job and take action in this direction.
Thriving through failure
If you fail in your endeavors, you are always able to see new opportunities in defeat. There is no limit on a person’s flexibility and openness. There are great examples of people who thrived even in prison and made more things happen in captivity than in freedom and claim it was the best thing to have ever happen for them. There are athletes who after losing their legs or getting paralyzed were able to accept their loss and had the mental flexibility to believe their disability was just another competitive challenge for them to overcome and won several championships despite being physically disabled.
The power of the mind
There is literally no limit as long we keep changing our minds and find purpose. Our mind is the perfect tool to keep us in our sweet spot, it is just a matter of using it right. Your mind can work for you or against you. You can make yourself believe in whatever you want. Whether what you believe is true or not, it doesn’t matter. The truth is only your subjective opinion anyway. One and one equals two, a car has four wheels and the earth goes around the sun. These are facts, but beliefs are beliefs, and don’t take them too seriously. Beliefs are there to help you, but not to restrict you.
It’s important for the creation of our ‘good life’ that we become aware of the subjective nature of our ‘truths’. In many cases of depression for example it’s the absolute certainty we claim for negative statements as ‘life is meaningless’, ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘all hope is lost’, or ‘God hates me’, and that makes it so hard to find our mental flexibility. The harder we hold on to our beliefs and the more we claim certain beliefs to be true, the more difficult it is for someone to get back on track. When we approach our beliefs as being tools instead of truths, we can help ourselves in creating a great and rich life.
There is no limit to the flexibility of your mind. As long you can change your mind, you can create a good life for yourself.
Let’s manage your struggles together
In our conversations, we can manage your struggles and find your personal sweet spot where you can experience a rich life and employing your strengths and talents fully.
- Together we can identify the beliefs that make you suffer needlessly and let go of them.
- We can regenerate your hope when it is lost and fight depression.
- We can discover new struggles that are worth fighting for to create a better life.
- We can create a mental perspective where you find hope and pleasure while facing adversity and learn to enjoy the ride.
- We can manage our feelings, emotions, and the process of loss.
- We can accept the battles we lose and find new opportunities instead.
- We can become conscious of the subjective nature of our beliefs and use them as a tool instead of accepting them as objective truths.
Whether you are struggling with your relationship, your job, loneliness, anxiety, pain, with your own yourself or you have given up on struggling and feel depressed, you are strong and flexible enough to find the way back to your sweet spot. It is in the sweet spot between happiness and unhappiness we can experience the most meaningful and exciting life. All you need is the willingness to acquire some mental flexibility and openness and this we can do together in conversation.
