Like so many of us I started off my life being very happy but as I grew older I became unhappy. I became unhappy because I started believing the lies people were telling me about myself.
Worse yet, there were so many different people telling me so many different and conflicting lies about myself that by the time I reached twenty-one I was so screwed up that it took the next thirty years of my life to get my head screwed back on straight..
The truth be told, for the longest time I was the most insecure, shy, person you could ever possibly know. Fortunately I was able to turn my greatest weaknesses into my greatest strengths.
My SECRET for turning my weaknesses into strengths has been to accept and love myself exactly as I am, one moment at a time.. We all have a private side and a public side. The private side is usually the abused side of us that we hide from view from other people out of shame and guilt. None of us escaped our childhood without being abused in some way (mentally, emotionally or physically) by someone.
You Teach Best What You Most Need To Learn - Rich Bach
I'll be your didn't know this but the people who have been abused the most, often times, become psychiatrists, psychologists. counselors or self-help teachers like myself. This allows us to help others and at the same time safely work out our own issues of shame and guilt without being a problem to society or others.
Self-love has been the most important 'healing agent' in successfully dealing with my insecure self image. It has allowed me to accept myself at my worst and absolutely adore myself at my best. Without self-love, I would have continued to unconsciously abuse myself by thoughtlessly criticizing myself when things weren't going my way.
Today I take full responsibility for everything that happens to me. I no longer blame anyone for anything. When I occasionally catch myself wanting to blame someone for my pain, I remind myself that blame is the way I allow all of my personal power to bleed out of me.
By taking full responsibility for everything that happens to me my authentic power is fully restored to me and I am free to become as magnificent and as powerful as I want to be.
Answer: You are not the first person who asked me that question and I doubt you will be the last. If you got into the habit, during your growing up years, of surviving by being unhappy, the thought of being happy threatens your survival. It doesn't threaten it on the physical level but it does on the emotional and psychological levels.
Another way of saying this is if your parents were unhappy people, and they were your role models, chances are you will be unhappy too. For people who have not experienced genuine happiness, as an adult, happiness can feel like something outside their comfort zone.
The normal way to be is to feel happy most of the time but most people aren't normal. I would suggest trying being happy for 30 minutes a day and see how that works out for you.
Happiness is your natural state. There is nothing you have to do or have to be happy, you just have to allow yourself to be happy and you will.
Many people are afraid to be happy because they blame happiness as the reason they get hurt unexpectedly or as the reason something bad happens in their lives when they least expect it.
The fact is bad things happen in the world whether you are happy or not so you might as well be happy. For some people being unhappy is the way they protect themselves from being hurt worse. Their logic for protecting themselves by being unhappy goes something like this:
'If I am unhappy and someone hurts me or something bad happens unexpectedly, it won't feel as bad as it would if I was happy and someone hurts me or something bad happened.'
Being unhappy is a vicious circle because being unhappy naturally attracts more unhappiness to you. The fact is, you are used to being unhappy just as some people are used to smoking cigarettes.
You give up unhappiness the same way you give up cigarettes, you just stop. It takes practice to stop one habit of thought and replace it with another. As I suggested earlier, practice being happy for 30 minutes at a time and see how that works out for you.
If you have any questions about your happiness issue, leave a comment and I will respond to it as soon as I can. - Frederick Zappone
The good news about feeling sad, blue or depressed when it seems outside your control is that it is in your control. However, there are some things you must know before you can have control over those feelings.
First off, any time you are feeling negative in a way that you seem to have no control over, that is partly true. That is because what you are experiencing are feelings being produced by thoughts, running on automatic pilot, living in your subconscious mind outside your 'current' conscious control..
The best way to deal with those feelings is to simply FEEL WHAT YOU FEEL....and they will harmlessly pass you by like clouds in the sky. Resisting, debating, wrestling with or arguing with feelings you do not like will only make them stronger... Feeling what you feel will make them dissolve naturally...
