Happy Thoughts, Happy Life

 

Life is not always consistent. There are times when it’s easy to make life go well for ourselves and as a result, we’re happy and content. But other times our lives can seem hard and difficult and we’re not sure what changed. Let’s discuss our dreams to explore this further. Sometimes my dreams are really intense, and when I wake up, it takes me a few moments to realize that it wasn’t real. For example, I’ve had dreams where someone important to me dies and it takes a couple of minutes for my thoughts to catch up to my feelings and remind myself that it was only a dream. 

 

These dreams can feel real to us, even if we understand that they’re not. That’s the true power of our emotions. The only way we can bring ourselves out of the emotions attached to our dreams sometimes is to adjust our thinking. Our thoughts have a lot of power over how we feel. In fact, oftentimes our thoughts shape the way we feel. Our happiness is dependent on the quality of our thoughts. We’re not happy because we’re happy, we’re happy because we interpret the things that happen to us as good. On the flip side, if we interpret the things that happen to us as bad, we tend to feel unhappy. Our thoughts interpret the things that happen in our lives and as a result, they have a strong influence over our happiness.

 

This is where things can get a little tricky. When reality happens, we think that there is one way of interpreting it and there is little room for negotiation. It feels black and white to us - x happened and as a result, I feel y. But, as we move through life and collect experiences, we may find holes in this way of thinking. In life, there are lots of bumps and things don’t always go the way we envisioned. Sometimes we handle these bumps with grace and we do what we can to find a resolution. Other times, it’s much harder to focus on a solution because we feel angry and miserable instead. When the latter happens, it’s usually because our thoughts are telling us “this shouldn’t be happening, this wasn’t in the plan!” But when we handle unexpected situations with ease, it’s because our thoughts are in solution mode. The situation may be the same, but our thoughts make us experience it differently. 

 

Let’s look at an example. You wake up with a headache one morning, and the average person will most likely try to fix it. They may try drinking water, taking an Advil, or stretching their body. The key here is that this person is searching for a solution rather than fixating on why they’ve found themselves in this situation. 

 

Another person who is more prone to negative thoughts may say “This is so annoying, I wish it would go away! Why did this have to happen to me?”

 

An even darker and more problematic train of thought may be “I wonder if something is wrong? What if I have a brain tumor and die? I should make a doctor’s appointment immediately to get this looked at.” This train of thought is the most dangerous because it jumps to the worst possible conclusion versus looking at the situation with objectivity. 

 

If you’re someone who relates most with the person in the first example, it can be hard to picture experiencing it any other way. However, each situation is true for the person experiencing it. Ideally, we’d always like to handle it like the person did in the first example, and the first step to achieving that is recognizing that our happiness depends on our thoughts. 

 

I want to take this one step further - it doesn’t matter what happens to us, what matters is how we interpret those things. In life, things will go wrong, this is inevitable. But we deem these things as “wrong” because we had expectations for them to go a certain way in the first place. For example, if we get in our car to drive somewhere, we are hopeful it will safely get us from point A to point B. So when our car breaks down, we may feel angry or annoyed, or we could choose to view it as something that happens sometimes and we’ll just have to get it fixed. The way we view situations has a lot of power over our reactions to them.

 

Another minor situation you may experience is getting stuck in traffic. Most drivers in this situation may not be thrilled, but they are still polite to their surrounding drivers. But there are always a few people who are angry and filled with rage, beeping their horns incessantly even though there is nothing anyone can do about the situation. We may have even been these people at one point! But, we must remember that they are the exception, not the rule. Those who get upset over the little bumps usually have challenging lives because their thoughts are focused on being upset over things rather than finding solutions and letting things go. 

 

When big things happen, we tend to think “I have a right to be upset.” And it’s true, terrible things that happen to us will most likely make us upset, but at the same time our thoughts create our reality. If we associate experiencing something upsetting with needing to feel unhappy now, perhaps for longer, then this is going to be our reality. No matter the situation, I can almost guarantee you that someone else has gone the same thing and they are doing absolutely fine. They may not have liked what they were going through, but they adjusted and life is still good.

 

Let’s look at divorce as an example. There’s a 50% chance of getting divorced when you marry someone. This doesn’t mean we should automatically assume we’re going to divorce the person we choose to marry, but we shouldn’t assume that recovering and moving on is impossible if divorce was to happen. Iif you and your partner were to divorce, it’s important to make space to grieve and mourn. But we should also make space for recovery and positive thoughts too. The most helpful thing we can do is take a step back and ask if our thoughts are helping us move on or keeping us stuck. 

 

Our thoughts create our happiness or unhappiness. When we stop creating expectations around experiences, it may become easier to feel more positive. You know the saying “bad things happen to good people?” We cannot assume that bad things won’t happen to us, but we can remind ourselves that we have control over our response to those bad things. 

 

As humans, we will find ourselves in tough situations - some minor and some big - throughout our lives. It’s important that we provide space to feel our feelings and to grieve, and once we’ve done that we must adjust our lives and learn to live with our new reality. This is how people ultimately overcome adversity and live beautiful lives. They understand the power they have over their emotions ultimately lies in their thoughts. Good, positive thoughts can encourage us to overcome anything and ultimately live a happy, fulfilling life.