Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

Jane labels herself ‘fat’. She thinks, sees and refers to herself as fat, mentally curling her lip as she does so, just to ram home how distasteful she finds it. Although it’s perfectly true that she has more body fat than she wants, labeling herself as fat reduces everything about her to the extra weight. All the complexity of her personality, relationships, accomplishments and future potential get subsumed under this blanket description.

If Jane wanted to slim down, this label would undermine her, since she probably wouldn’t associate eating well and exercising regularly with a fat person. The label may even sub-consciously drive her to self-sabotaging choices, like filling her shopping trolley with industrial-sized chocolate bars or ditching her scheduled walk for a CSI: Bermuda Triangle marathon, because in her mind that’s what fat people do. The label doesn’t serve her.

Likewise for Tom, who repeatedly calls himself ‘stupid’. Like all of us, he sometimes finds his mouth thundering ahead while his brain remains back at the gate, but using the label creates a sense that stupidity is all he’s capable of. He comes up with many smart ideas but rejects them on the premise that they must be lame if he came up with them.

Some parts of us make us happy and others - not so much. But none of us can be abstracted into a label. If you have a moniker for yourself that motivates or empowers you – like genius, geek or glamazon - then more power to you. But if you’re letting a small, unloved part of you sum up who you are, you’re denying yourself greater possibilities and limiting your chances of positive change.

Now that is stupid.

Technorati Tags: Happiness , labels

Image by cambodia4kidsorg under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Stories are great. They neatly explain why the same old crap keeps coming our way or why we just can’t catch a break, while completely letting us off the hook. If we trot out our story, we don’t have to look at ourselves – at what we might be doing to create or contribute to the recurring patterns in our lives.

The downside is that as long as we have our story, we stay stuck. We get to avoid the dreaded soul search, sure, but we also get more of the same. Usually much more.

If you hear yourself spinning the same old yarn about how you overeat and smoke a carton a day because you weren’t breastfed, or how your three marriages failed because your exes were all crapweasels, you might be wondering if there isn’t just the slightest possibility that beneath your carefully constructed saga there lies a teeny nugget of truth about you. This nugget is gold, because it can open up new ways of thinking and behaving that set you free from the old patterns.

Of course it’s possible that your story is true, but let’s face it - it probably isn’t.

Here are some classic stories and possible underlying truth nuggets:

Story: I smoke a carton a day because I wasn’t breastfed
Truth nugget: I smoke compulsively to create a diversion from the emptiness of my career

Story: My three marriages failed because my exes were all crapweasels
Truth nugget: My unwillingness to meet any of my own emotional needs exhausts all my loved ones and sends them running

Story: I don’t get on with other women because they’re always jealous of me
Truth nugget: I cultivate the attention of men and then feign hurt when women invariably get pissed off

Story: I keep getting fired because nice guys finish last
Truth nugget: I make nice with the secretaries and mailroom to cover up for doing a completely half-assed job

Story: I eat like a bird but I can’t lose weight because of my slow metabolism
Truth nugget: I do eat like a bird – a giant, ravenous vulture

Think you might have some stories of your own? Look out for this telltale syntax:

I [insert unpleasant life pattern here]
because [insert plausible explanation located in the past, other people, or quirk of quantum physics which no one could reasonably expect you to change]

Once you recognize it, consider abandoning your story, facing the nuggety reality and extricating yourself from your old pattern. You might find that surrendering your story breaks you free, so you can finally live happily ever after. THE END

Technorati Tags: happiness , life coaching , personal development , self-help

Image by Lall  under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.