Chasing happiness to gain happiness?

Have you ever thought that our ongoing quest to seek ways to become ‘happy’ may be fundamental to our unhappiness?

Often we envisage happiness associated with having or an expectation of how something ‘should’ be.

When that does not eventuate we assume the antithesis of happiness – unhappiness.

We have come to see this as a dissatisfaction which often surges us to practices we believe more likely to make us ‘happy’.

This is often ridden with over doing things, doing with things that don’t align with our core values or do not contribute to our quality selves.

Um…  so let’s look at a different approach…

Perhaps connecting with some unconditional fundamentals such as a ‘joy’ for and privilege just for living in a physical body and then see how and where living takes us!

Doing the ‘living thing’ in a way and with choices that look after and respect ourselves (body, mind and spirit) and relationships – may in the long term serve us so much better.

Our happiness then more a consequence of, rather than something we seek and plan to get when…

Let’s face it, we can choose where and how we give attention to our moments, so it is possible to shift things in life.

This reminds me of my own example last week of choosing to place attention elsewhere;

While waiting for an appointment I could hear the dialogue between two people projecting loudly from a room nearby.

At first my attention was fully on the content of the conversation until I realised how easy and unnecessary it was to expend energy and focus on things outside of my own business – hence shifted my attention elsewhere.

I searched for other sounds and noises to move my attention from the volume of the conversation.

After a while the singing of the birds in between the traffic sounds seemed so much louder.

I recognised this as training – consciously placing my attention to what worked better for me at that moment.

Sometimes we can get caught up in content that is non serving, so this ‘training’ could be another useful tool to draw on when we need to switch off and not get involved.

Try it out and see…