So Much Happier Blog
The Functional Value of Compassion
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
Every major world religion upholds the importance of extending compassion to others. Usually, this is presented as the right and virtuous thing to do, to be done for its own sake. There's much to be said for that, but there's an additional argument to be made for the importance of compassion that is more mechanical, more specifically practical: Without coming to a place of compassion for another person, it's not possible to fully forgive them for wrongs they've done—and without forgiveness, we remain both bound to and continually irritated by that person and their wrongs. In this state, we can never be free.
Compassion, then, becomes a way in which we give to ourselves, paying into our own freedom from the burdens of the past. If you want to lead a happy life, you can't dig in your heels and hold onto resentment against everyone and everything that ever contributed to your discomfort. In fact, that's pretty much the recipe for a very unhappy life. On the other hand, it's usually not enough to decide with your conscious mind to let someone off the hook. If you want to do a thorough job of it, you need to get your subconscious on board, and its job is first and foremost to protect you. Legitimately finding compassion for someone else requires that you heal sufficiently from the ill effects of their actions to be released from the hold of your own trauma enough to see beyond it. From a more whole perspective, you can see that this person is flawed, like every other human you know, including you. It becomes possible to understand, at least a little, what might have possessed them to behave in the way they did. This willingness tends to build momentum if we let it, reminding us of episodes precipitated by our own less-than-fabulous life choices, which in turn reminds us of how similar we all are, and primes us to let go of the past and want what's best for everyone in the future.
This is a very natural cycle, and becoming efficient at moving through it is one of the greatest keys to happiness you could ever find. The tough part is the personal healing. Frankly, emotional technologies have lagged so far behind physical, mental, and spiritual ones in modern society that there isn't a lot of guidance on the specific hows of accomplishing such healing. This is why I find EFT/meridian tapping techniques to be so exciting—they simplify the processing of events with emotional impact, facilitating rapid broadening of perspective in ways that are gentle, , and organic, and appropriate for the individual. This is what true emotional healing looks like, and most of us have been taught to struggle toward it by attempting to will it into being by sheer force. Sometimes people get there by persistence, through clear intent and continuing to stumble toward the goal, but this is a long and painful way toward forgiveness. When better ways are available, I want to make them available to others, and this is why I do what I do. The personal empowerment that results when you can step yourself forward at will through such a process is so freeing, and the world would be a vastly better place if no one felt stuck and alone with their most difficult emotions. Tapping can help to spring us all from the old, outdated ties that mold us into the shapes born of past trauma.
Compassion and forgiveness are certainly virtuous on their own merits, and thinking of them as always the goal is a good way to keep ourselves on track to avoid the regrets that can result from our own actions. However, we cannot avoid the importance of emotional healing, and the self-serving bonus to our own happiness that accrues when do the work to facilitate it. It feels so much better to have the wherewithal, the resources, to extend generosity to others than to remain stuck in the tension and misery of trauma and resentment. The more you practice moving through the cycle, the more of your own energy you free up to spend on the things that bring joy and meaning to your life.
The Dark Side of Hidden Emotions
“Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.”
I notice as a running theme in my work with clients that we often don't understand the emotional (and even physical) significance and implications of everyday experiences. It often happens that we remember an event, but think little of it when we do, and yet the effects of it ripple out in ways that are mostly invisible. Only when we do some conscious digging do we find the hidden layers that affect the way we function in our lives today. Sometimes, we can experience a revelation in an instant that makes apparent all the far-reaching effects of a memory we thought was just mundane. For instance, a client recently said that s/he thought of an event as just "a funny little story I tell," when we later found it to be the root of numerous difficulties s/he has been encountering in the pursuit of important goals. By following where that memory led and allowing ourselves to focus on the underlying discomfort it revealed, powerful significance was unlocked. As we worked through various aspects of the new information, s/he was able to put the experience into context and release the emotion behind what s/he had decided the experience meant all those years ago. New enthusiasm and energy powerfully emerged.
Unfortunately for our health and happiness, most of us are taught that when something difficult or even traumatic happens, we should sprint to get back to "normal" as quickly as possible. I think that's partly because previous generations have come to the conclusion, with access to only minimal resources, that trauma is a bummer for everyone and acting like everything is fine, including trying your damndest to laugh these things off, is better. Why "dwell" on what's difficult? What good does that do you? If you don't know what to do to make something better, it kind of makes sense to just move on and pretend it didn't happen. The problem, somewhat obviously, is that ignoring and denying an issue doesn't solve it. In the case of traumas, their effects actually tend to compound and amplify over time. And to make matters even trickier, something that seems like nothing at all to one person can be felt as a life-shaking trauma to another, which is yet another reason why traumas often go unnoticed on a conscious level. Someone who is told that the reason for their suffering isn't "real" may avoid admitting their struggles for fear of being labeled crazy, and even hide any dissonance from their own conscious awareness.
Fortunately for our futures, we now have better technology for processing old emotion and releasing it in ways that don't retraumatize people. When this is accomplished skillfully, huge stores of energy can be freed up for current and future use. It takes a lot of energy to suppress traumatic memories and keep those pivotal moments stuck in time, encased in the body so that they don't immobilize us. When all that effort and energy is no longer needed for the lockdown, life can, quite suddenly, feel dramatically different such that the change is surprising in its scope and more liberating than one might have thought possible. I've experienced this process and the joyful, cathartic effect of freeing up stuck energy over and over in my own personal work with EFT, and in my work with clients. It's pretty amazing what happens when you do this work consistently. Take it from me that you can be much happier than you think when you learn to shed the collected detritus of a life lived over decades on planet Earth, which inevitably includes numerous difficulties. To me, happiness is worth doing some consistent work! If I can affect my own level of happiness through an enlightening and enjoyable process, to me that's real empowerment. That's what I want to make possible for everyone I come into contact with, and I very much hope these blogs help you to move in that direction. A lot of people find December to be a very busy month, but as you envision the year ahead, I recommend finding a place for a practice of working with your emotions constructively. There are other ways, but you know I'm going to recommend using EFT, so I might as well get to it! I've never encountered anything else that works as quickly, as thoroughly, and can be accessed as efficiently as a self-help technique. Set aside a few minutes a day to use it, and I think you'll quickly come to appreciate its brilliance.
No Part of You Left Behind
“Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.”
There's a great deal of scientific evidence showing that unhappy emotions like anger and grief block healthy bodily functions, whereas emotions like joy, love, and gratitude enhance health and healing. In addition, rather obviously, feeling good is more fun than feeling bad, as well as more energizing and more enjoyable for others to be around. And yet, though most of us would rather feel great much more of the time, being happier isn't just about deciding to be. It's true that we can do quit a bit by intending to and choosing to focus on happiness with the conscious mind. But if you've been through traumas that your body and your subconscious are holding onto, releasing them is not about willpower—the conscious mind is the wrong tool for this job. What's required is a safe way to process the trauma that involves the body, emotions, mind, and spirit all at once. This is why I'm a passionate proponent of EFT, which is a superhero of a toolbox that is made precisely for this jobs well as for the processing of less difficult, but still not ideal, emotions. Through using it, we can take back our power to let go of the old and outdated and live squarely and freely in the moment.
Now let's get back to the subject of feeling good. With the power of the conscious mind, you can absolutely choose to spend time every day, even just in odd moments like while you're sitting in traffic or in line at the grocery store, consciously bringing to mind happy, fulfilling experiences you've had and making an effort to feel joy and gratitude for these experiences. By the way, these don't have to be grandiose, world-transforming memories, just those of times when you enjoyed something beautiful or the company of someone you like. We often spend a lot of time obsessing over what we want to change and fix in our lives; why not balance this out with thoughts of happiness and zest for the good things in life? Doing this for even a couple of minutes a day will give you a physical boost of happiness chemistry that can color your whole day with good mojo. It also builds better mental habits so that over time the balance of your thoughts will start to skew more positively, and you'll start to get out of vicious circles and into more productive ones. Habit is powerful, and when a habit is enjoyable, it's easier to solidify it. Just be sure to go about this exercise with a relaxed attitude and focus on the enjoyment of your happy memories. You're not looking to force anything, just have a good time and appreciate the good times you've had in your life.
Now, while the mind is powerful, I want to point out that this kind mental focus won't work as well if you're not clearing out old traumas, because you'll find that it's hard to concentrate on what's good in the presence of the negative beliefs that arise from those. It's also easier to do this if you've learned the basics of meditation, and know how to get back to a neutral place in your mind if more difficult memories or current concerns do interrupt your happiness and gratitude practice. And they will! Even the most practiced person alive never achieves lasting perfection. There's a concept in Buddhism that tells us that after achieving enlightenment, which is sometimes referred to as the dropping of burdens, we must eventually pick them up again and keep walking (go on with the business of living)—we should just do our best not to pick up more of them. In this interpretation, even those who achieve enlightenment don't necessarily stay in a beatific state forever, so don't be surprised when you (a normal mortal, I presume) can't manage to keep all your thoughts happy and bright! Still, the more you can clear out the charge of anything in your past that was traumatic, the fewer internal hooks your worries and complaints will have to hang onto.
One definition of trauma that I think is useful is: Anything that causes us to feel that our survival is threatened while we are, at the same time, powerless. Knowing how overactive many people's fight/flight/freeze response is in the modern world because of its constant, overwhelming pace and endless sensory stimulation, plus unreasonable societal expectations, it's easy to see how often we may experience trauma, whether or not we're used to thinking of it this way. Animals in the wild will physically shake off trauma, and researchers now believe that this natural response holds a key to humans' ability to heal as well. When we can bring the body and its sensations into our healing work, sometimes even shaking as animals do as we let go of traumatic past experiences, we are better able to move forward without lasting effects continuing to limit us. For more on the nature of and recommendations on healing trauma, you may find Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine and Ann Frederick to be useful. Note that anyone who has big trauma in their past should seek the help of a qualified professional before attempting to work with it. Having appropriate support in this kind of work from both professionals and family and friends is a requirement of creating the safety necessary for success.
I hope you will consider both the importance of using your mind and that of involving your emotions, body, and spirit in your concept of constant self-improvement and in your journey toward greater happiness. Only in doing so will you find the most complete healing, the greatest reclamation of lost energy, and the most fulfilling empowerment you have sought. Everyone deserves to live with authenticity and freedom from past difficulties, and I wish you more of those in the week ahead.
Slings and Arrows
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
It’s normal to experience disappointments in the course of your daily life. These can stop you short many times each day, if we’re talking about small disappointments such as just missing a green light, finding that your grocery store is out of one of your favorite items, or having a friend cancel an outing you had planned together. Now, while they might be jarring, most of these don’t make much of an impact on your overall picture—but larger disappointments certainly can. In fact, they can be the genesis of negative beliefs that don’t serve you at all, and that may run your behavior for decades after they’re created. An event that may have seemed insignificant to others can start you down a path of fear and limited thinking, whittling the cornucopia of possible choices you have in any given moment down to a handful of uninspiring options.
Let’s look at a few ways in which this can play out:
· Most of us have a memory of a parent, even the most excellent one, overreacting to something we did when we were relatively small. Perhaps we were playing happily and decided to add a work of art to the wall of the family home. There was a sense of excitement in the idea of making something beautiful (at least to us) and sharing that with a parent. When it came time for the big reveal, we displayed the opus proudly only to be faced with the fury of someone who now had to find a way to clean it up, and thought we should have known better. That feels like a slap in the face when our intentions are innocent and happy. An unfortunate memory like this can impress us in ways that last a lifetime. We may come away from it with beliefs such as, “I can’t do anything right,” “No one wants what I have to give,” or “My family doesn’t understand or appreciate me.” And such beliefs can corrode one’s enthusiasm, creativity, and confidence in subconscious ways that are powerful, but can remain mysterious, because you may not even remember the event as you get older.
· The first few years of school usually hold some difficult social situations. Kids start relating to each other in more complex ways, and experience the results of others learning through trial and error. Most of us experience at least a betrayal or two, fights, resentments, and competitions for attention. While everyone learns, so many disappointments and hurt feelings proceed from these social experiments. If patterns emerge, we may come away with beliefs like, “No one likes me,” “Everyone is mean and it’s not even worth trying,” or even just “I hate school.” There’s often little formal instruction at educational institutions on general communication, conflict resolution, negotiation, sharing, and other essential skills, and these beliefs can remain ingrained if we don’t figure out better ways of relating and coping on our own.
· In high school, most kids experience life with a high degree of angst in the areas of identity, social acceptance, and achievement, whether academic, athletic, or artistic. Popularity is often the coin of the realm, so everyone jostles for position both through both attempting to prove their own worth and attempting to disprove others’ worth in order to seem more important. It’s normal for kids to play with dominance tactics, including those designed to provoke or humiliate others. Less competitive, more naturally cooperative kids can have a hard time dealing with these status games, and end up feeling stung and embittered by confrontations. Most of us rack up more experiences of betrayal, embarrassment, and disappointment during these years; these memories can remain particularly painful because we’re experiencing many things for the first time. We may assume that this is how all such situations will go in the future. We don’t realize that our peers will continue to grow and mature, as well as gain experience, confidence and clarity, and so will we. A humiliation experienced at this time of heightened hormones and emotions can seem like death and destruction on a scale that adults find hard to understand. We may begin to believe that, “I’ll never get what I want,” “I’m not attractive,” or something general like “People are horrible.”
· As we enter adulthood, we understand that we are now more responsible for our own choices. We start having to sink or swim, making decisions independently about relationships and leisure time, life direction, health, diet and fitness, and financial matters, and bear the consequences. Mistakes made here can quickly color our faith in our own abilities, since we’re “supposed” to be able to handle ourselves by now, but in reality may still have many gaps in understanding of basic mechanics, and a lack of supportive habits, which must be built over time. Beliefs like, “I can’t keep up with everything I need to do,” “I’ll never be able to support myself financially,” or “I’ll never be able to get where I want to go in life” may result from early failures.
· At any time, we can experience life-changing disappointments such as the death of a loved one, the failure of a relationship, or the sudden loss of a job. Unfortunate beliefs like, “I’ll never recover,” “I’ll never find love again,” or “I’m a loser” may spring into being.
Did any of those beliefs sound familiar to you? Disappointments affect all of us, and yet there isn’t much help available for actually processing the often overwhelming emotions and the negative beliefs that result from them in everyday life. Most people either talk things through with family or friends, or see a psychological professional to gain perspective on the situation, but usually neither of these addresses the trauma we may be holding in the physical body or the emotional patterns that keep us limited. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know what I’m going to say here—techniques with a somatic (meaning involving the body) element seem to be the most helpful for supporting rapid change in these areas. In my world, there’s just nothing like EFT/Tapping for shaking limitations loose and helping us to shift our understanding of past events and their role in shaping who we are. Using it helps us to gently but effectively let go of the adverse effects of painful events that are now part of the distant past. Once you have a chance to lighten the emotional load you’ve been carrying from past disappointments, a new world of possibility opens, and that, to me, is one of the most exhilarating experiences there is.