What Makes You Happy?
Mascari, Brooke. March 20th, 2024
Every human being shares one thing in common. And that is the fundamental desire to be happy.
However, many of us often only find happiness from outside sources. This can lead to instability and heartache. So, what can be done to help us feel happy more consistently?
Let’s delve into this profound and enriching topic! Allow yourself to take a posture of openness/open-mindedness as this simple article can have a profound effect on your life (in the best way imaginable, of course). Feel free to save this article and return to it when you need a reminder. Just know that happiness, peace, joy, and a feeling of wholeness are your birthright. We want you to experience happiness as you are intended to… not just occasionally. Every day all day!
Your accomplishments, promotions, relationships, vacations, or acquired commodities may bring you a sense of happiness. When a child wants to be held, being picked up makes them happy. When they're not picked up, they're sad and may throw a fit. Sometimes adults grow up in this same manner and learn to associate happiness with outside sources. This is known as happiness for a reason, or object-referral, and it stems from your ego-identity/separate self.
Object-referral: When happiness is derived from external sources.
Your ego/ego-identity has a limited external sense of self-worth that is determined by outside factors.
This kind of happiness brings temporary pleasure, but that pleasure can fade quickly. When you rely on outside sources to make you happy, you'll experience sadness or disappointment when those things are inevitably lost.
However! What if I told you there's another kind of happiness that can last permanently?
Your spirit-identity brings happiness for no reason. An enduring source of happiness exists in the realm of our being, which is beyond form and circumstance.
Your spirit-identity is the real you—infinite, unbounded, and eternal. You are one with the universe. It's the idea that the true you are not influenced by external events.
Happiness for no reason is when you connect with your spirit-identity. Your place of reference comes from within and is called self-referral. It's an internal state that is independent of external circumstances, events, people, and things—when happiness doesn't come from possessions, accomplishments, relationships, or any external event.
Self-Referral: When happiness comes from within.
This happiness only comes from the realization that the true self, our essential nature, isn’t the body, thoughts, emotions, or personality. It is a field of pure consciousness and unlimited potential. When you move your sense of identity to the true self, you experience an unshakable, lasting state of happiness that no one can take from you. Emotional freedom is a natural part of the process of reconnecting with the true you.
Beyond emotions, your true self is unchanging.
And it's always in the silent space between your thoughts. Meditation is the practice of quieting your mind and body and sitting in the stillness of the present moment. During meditation, you discover that the silence is not empty. It's a field of infinite possibilities—of peace, joy, love, creativity, compassion, wisdom, timelessness, gratitude, and grace. That silence is always there underneath your fleeting thoughts and experiences.
Emotions, on the other hand, are changeable. Since they begin with a thought, emotions are temporary experiences in awareness. In the space between the thoughts—awareness—you can witness your thoughts and emotions, then use them to improve your life, instead of letting them use you.
Emotions are vehicles of transformation.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize what emotion you're feeling and to manage that emotion in a way that benefits you. It also includes your ability to accurately interpret and respond appropriately to the emotions of other people.
With greater emotional intelligence, you'll achieve:
A greater understanding and acceptance of your emotions.
Less time spent trying to manage emotions, and more time accepting, witnessing, and responding to the full range of emotions as they move through you.
An improved ability to accurately interpret and respond appropriately to the emotions of other people. Not trying to control the emotions of others, but allowing others to experience their emotions just as you allow yourself to experience emotions. Do not resist emotions! For what you resist, persists.
One wonderful way to manage your emotions is through meditation. Meditation allows you to slow down and stay present in a way that calms your physiology and sets the stage for emotional intelligence.
At their core, emotions are physical sensations associated with thoughts.
As complicated as they may feel at times, learning to interpret your emotions is fairly straightforward. Essentially, they inform you whether or not your needs have been met.
The quality of your emotions influences the health of the body. And the opposite is true: physical health in the body influences mental and emotional states. Emotional well-being is mind-body-spirit integration.
The mind-body connection.
Your thoughts, emotions, memories, beliefs, and habits influence you at a genetic level. Every thought and feeling has a physical consequence. Chemical messages from the brain circulate to every cell in the body—your liver, heart, digestive tract, and immune system. Every decision you make has a ripple effect and affects trillions of cells. Even a cell can be happy or sad, agitated or content, worried or calm. Every cell responds to our thoughts and perceptions.
When you feel fear, anxiety, or other negative emotions, your body responds with the fight-flight-freeze response. This impacts your body by raising your heart rate and increasing the production of cortisol, adrenaline, and other stress hormones. This information continues to communicate back to the emotional parts of the brain and other systems in the body.
Repressed pain and negative emotions can build up in the body.
All people experience pain at some point or another in their lives. It's unavoidable. But when you experience pain, you can either acknowledge it and move on, or hold on to the pain and try to address it at a later time. Unfortunately, we aren't always taught or encouraged to experience and express our emotions. Over time, that suppressed pain builds up emotional ama, leading to suffering (Ama is the toxic buildup in the body that is not being digested/processed well. Ama can build up in our bodies from poor food choices but also when we don’t process our emotions effectively or suppress them altogether).
All of these different forms of emotional Ama have one thing in common—they're brought on by avoiding pain at the moment when it occurs.
If you use some of these skills and through mindful awareness and meditation, acknowledge the pain and let it process through you, it doesn't become suffering. By releasing yourself from unresolved emotions and old traumas, you can lighten your load and emotional burdens. Your Agni (the body’s ability to process/digest information in a healthy, balanced, and productive way), processes emotional pain more efficiently and you're able to move on more quickly. With a strong agni, you connect to the inner joy that's already within you.
“Suffering is pain that we hold on to. It comes from the mind’s mysterious instinct to believe that pain is good, or that it cannot be escaped, or that the person deserves it.”—DEEPAK CHOPRA
By coming out of the “Outside Source” way of happiness which is always dependent on what is going on around us, we can reach higher ways to live in this life. We do not have to be victims of the outside circumstances happening around us. We can transcend the things going on and reach a state of happiness; because we have happiness within us! But we must foster and help this happiness come into our reality by taking care of ourselves, using self-referral, quieting the low vibrational part of our mind called the “Ego-Mind” (EGO can be thought of as Edging God Out), and allowing ourselves a space where we can flourish. Meditation is certainly the technology to help this be the reality in your life.
So what makes you happy? Do you only experience happiness when you feel like happy things are going on around you or when things are going your way? Or can you also experience happiness in some not-so-happy environments by stilling and expanding yourself from the inside out? It takes some self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and discipline. But it can be done and it certainly can change your present reality. Give it a try!
Sending love, health, and happiness to all,
Havah Holistic Health
Work Cited:
Credit: Some of this wisdom and advice has been learned from Chopra.com and from the teachers at Chopra TM