The pursuit of happYness

“I apologize for spamming you all with this. This is something that's been churning around my head for a while now, and I needed to write it. This little rant is not really intended to make big differences to you, instead its just an introduction to happiness”

[1] Stop assigning blame.

This is the first step. Stop assigning blame and leave the past behind you. You know whose fault it is that your life isn't perfect. Your boss. Your professor. Your lover. The ones who hurt you, the ones who abused you, the ones who left you bleeding. Or even yourself. You know whose fault it is — you've been telling yourself your whole life. Knowing whose fault it is that your life sucks is an excellent way to absolve yourself of any reponsibility for taking your life into your own hands.

Forget about it. Let it go. The past isn't real. If we're not talking about something that is real and present and in your life right now, then it doesn't matter. Nothing can be done about it. If nothing can be done about it, then don't spend your energy dwelling on it — you have other things to do.

I may sound cruel, I may sound simplistic, I may sound like I'm saying you should just “get over it”, by suggesting that you should let go off your past. I'm sorry for that. But life won't hold still and wait for you to lick your wounds. The race is still being run. Get up and keep moving. You can't do anything about yesterday. You can do something about tomorrow. And about the next day. Focus your energies there.

[2] Surprise yourself. No — amaze yourself.

“I don't have time to write.” “I can't dance.” “I can't talk to new people.” “I'm not attractive.” I hear this all the time. I always hear the people around me sabotaging themselves, drawing lines and borders and boxes around themselves. To which I say, make the time; dance; just talk to people; be attractive!

Yes, again, it's simplistic of me to say that. But it's simplistic of you to so easily say what you cannot do!

We're excellent pattern-matchers. That's what the human mind does — it's a pattern-matching engine. So we look at ourselves, at our history, at our behaviors, and we draw straight lines between the points — we assume that just because we've done things a certain way in the past, we'll always do them that way in the future. If we've failed before, we'll always fail.

Screw that!

You don't have to keep doing the things you hate. Why go home and beat yourself up for, say, not going over and saying a few words to someone you find really attractive? Can any damage they could do to you by rejecting you possibly be any worse than the damage you're going to do to yourself for missing the chance?

[3] Find the demon.

Do you know what I'm talking about? It's the little voice in the back of your head that's always whispering, “You can't”. You know the demon. You may think you hate the demon, but you don't. You love it. You let it own you. You do everything it says. Everytime there's something you want, you consult the demon first, to see if it will say, “You can't have that."

What you don't realize is that your demon doesn't know anything. It's an idiot. It's nothing but a parrot, repeating back to you anything negative that it's ever heard, anything that makes you hurt, makes you squirm. If a teacher once told you “You'll never accomplish anything,” it was listening; it hoards words like that and repeats them back to you to watch you jump. It doesn't know what it's saying. It doesn't care.

[4] Exorcise yourself.

You can take me literally or not, as suits you. But do, please, the next time you hear that voice in your head, imagine it, visualize it, as something physical that you can get hold of; tear it out of you, feel its fingers weaken and lose their grip on your spine, and grind it to dust, to nothing, under your boot heel on your way out to dance in the streets.

You can. You think you can't; but it's telling you that. You can.

[5] You don't exist. You just think you do.

We're nothing but the stories we tell ourselves. We know in our hearts what kind of people we are, what we're capable of, because we've told ourselves what kind of people we are. You're a carefully-rehearsed list of weaknesses and strengths you've told yourself you have.

(Self-confidence, for example, is a particularly nebulous quality you can easily talk yourself out of having.) You owe no allegiance to that self-image if it harms you. If you don't like the story your life has become — tell yourself a better one.

Think about the person you want to be and do what that person would do. Act the way that person would act. Amazingly enough, once you start acting like that person, people will start treating you like that person. And you'll start to believe it. And then it will be true.

Welcome to your new self!

Despite everything I've just said, self-examination can be paralysis. Don't “remember to breathe” — just breathe. It's a Tao thing. It's the paradox at the center of all this — remember that, “Am I living up to being the person I want to be?”, is not a question the person you want to be would ask.

If I can leave you with just one thought, it's this:

Stop wasting your time fretting over not being happy. Just be happy!