Think -> Do
Happiness is something to do. Ever heard that? It's getting up in the morning with a sense of personal mission. If that personal mission is just about you, say trying to lose weight, or improving your appearance, that's fine. It might not be sustainable, but better to have a good idea of what you want than no idea at all. Of course if your sense of mission is more inclusive, say, if you're an evangelist for change, if you're trying to get people to use public transport, or get everyone to lose weight and live healthier, then your mission becomes bigger, and your feedback current will be stronger.
What factors inhibit us? Are we weak thinkers? For example, do we have great ideas but then fail to execute them? This was the case with me, and still is to some extent, and in my case, the solution is to: THINK then DO. It takes the emotional response to the thinking out of the equation. So it is not think - evaluate - do. It is think -> do.
Obviously this doesn't apply to teenagers or those suffering manic depression on the verge of suicide. In both those categories some degree of emotional evaluation is necessary. In fact the whole teenage process is geared toward some sort of logical and rational and reasonably congruent process going from the think aspect to the execution.
As adults, that process ought to be well developed. Our ideas make sense. Our thoughts have been purified through the burning, refining of time and experience. But then what happens. Secondary expectations interfere, past disappointments. Think of an athlete who is trying to make the Olympics but hasn't gotten there yet. How does a 'feeling' evaluation help? Well, potentially it can, but really there is no reference point. The imagination can be used to inspire effort, but when it comes down to it, it's a THINK/DO response. Effort is what is needed to get into the Olympics, not emotional evaluations of whether that effort will be rewarded. That is not your business. Life will decide that.
Now when one is struggling to motivate oneself to do something new or different, it is useful to be reminded that life is a gift, an adventure. When we are feeling unsure and frustrated life can seem like a burden rather than an adventure, like a chore, rather than a gift. At times like these it is useful to cultivate a Gratitude. An attitude of gratitude. You can be grateful, for example, for your health, that you have a car, that you are less than 40 years old [whatever the case may be]. Because here are a few flip sides to consider, that are almost certainly worse than your situation:
I was reminded recently by a schoolfriend who said he remembered identifying the body of his school friend in the morgue like it was yesterday. This guy, Julian, who died on matric holiday - after finishing school, on the cusp of life, was denied his entire adulthood. How frustrating is that?
On Ripley's Believe it or not they featured a young girl, about 8 years old, who suffered a viral infection in her brain. She had to have half of her brain cut out. She survived the procedure. She was able to walk afterwards, and since the emotional part of her brain had been removed, she was still able to function since the logic/rational side remained. She was able to speak without slurring. The only problems she experienced was controlling her left arm, and a slight limp from the left leg. She was a member of her school newspaper, and gave speeches to inspire fellow students. Now, do you think you have much to complain about?
Maybe you're worried you can't find a mate, that you're not married, that you want children?
On Ripley's Believe it or not they also showed a man with the largest hand in the world. Itwas truly huge. It looked like a balloon. It's froma disease known as elephantisis, when lymph glands get infected and swell up. By the time the man went to hospital his hand was huge, probably as large as his lower leg. The hospital was able to arrest the enlarging of it, but left the man with two options:
- learn to live with it
- amputate it
The man is married with six children. His wife says she doesn't care about his hand; that he's a good man and a good father [of course it helps that they live in the third world where appearances aren't fundamentally important].
I think if you are depressed or unhappy that you are allowed a certain limited period to mourn, to stew in your own juices. The point of this is to fully realise your pain, to acknowledge it, to let it take you over. This is without a doubt a process of decay. As I say, to allow yourself to go down that path is important, provided you don't go over into the deep end and become addicted to some substance. You should dwell in this prison of your own mind and making long enough to realise it's not what you want. Long enough to get sick of your self. And this self is not who you are or who you want to be.
That's the vital progression. Where you reach a bottom, based on some minimum set of internal standards, where you say - no more. It's a rejection, you see, of the false self, a self based on the ideas, expectations and opinions of others. It is the beginning of you being yourself on your own terms. Because you want to be you, you want to be happy, and you've finally begun to focus the core of who you are on what you say, what you feel, rather than on forces outside of yourself, the opinions, circumstances, thoughts and expectations of others.
From there happiness is only possible when you integrate yourself with the world, without losing yourself again. To do this, you have to find a personal sense of mission, and to do that, you must DO something. That DO is your own inner sense of your personal mission. You have a gift to give the world, please give it. Good luck.
Below is a formula for the above so you can remember it:
Think -> Do + Perspective + Gratitude = Performance = Happiness
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