Getting Clear About What YOU Are Choosing

On February 20th (See 'Happiness Is An Inside Job') I suggested contemplating the question: “What am I willing to have get in the way of my experience of happiness?”

20 years of coaching people has given me a clear answer to this question.  These are the things that people choose over happiness: petty grievances, annoyance, frustration, complaint, anger, resentment, judgment, blame, worry, and fear.  Sounds crazy, right?  Why would anyone choose any of these over happiness?

The reason is simple - We don't realize that choosing the emotions/mind states on that list obscures the experience of our innate happiness.  We have been conditioned to believe that everything on that list is a normal part of everyday life.  And believing makes it so.  That list is a virtual table of contents for your day to day experience of life.  Please do NOT take my word for it.  It is far more powerful to discover this for yourself.

I encourage you to keep a mind/emotion journal for a few days.  Write or print out the above list of emotions/mind states on a piece of paper and keep it with your journal/list.  Read the list in the morning to remind yourself of the thoughts and feelings you are going to record, and then - at the end of your day do a mental review  and write down a brief notation of any that show up.  If you can review more than once per day, you will get a lot more out of this because we all quickly forget what occurs during our days.  And because we are so accustomed to running these emotions and mind states, and accepting them as natural, it takes practice to notice when they are happening.  

Am I suggesting that one can live life without regularly running the above list? Yes.  Absolutely.  And the first step is becoming aware of their presence and impact.  In future posts I will discuss the exact nature of petty grievances, annoyance, frustration, complaint, anger, resentment, judgment, blame, worry, and fear; as well as how one can limit the presence of these emotions and mind states in daily life.

Happiness is an Inside Job

•  Yesterday I wrote about choosing happiness.  There are numerous aspects to choosing happiness, and the most important is realizing that you and only you are responsible for your happiness.  This may seem self evident, but it bears taking a second look.  Even people who easily agree with this statement about happiness, live their life as if people, places, things, and events outside them are the source of happiness.  Never has been true, never will be.

This is actually good news.  It means you have the power to launch happiness in your life.  You have the power.  Which also means you have the responsibility.  Choosing happiness is about taking full personal responsibility in every moment for choosing happiness.

What does this look like?  Let’s imagine that you already are living from a consistent state of happiness.  You get up each and every day happy to be alive and eager to engage with life throughout the day. You make your way to the kitchen where your spouse is drinking coffee and finishing breakfast with the kids.  The school bus is due in 5 minutes and the kid’s lunches are not made.  What happened?  It was your turn to sleep in, and your spouse’s turn to handle the morning routine of getting the kid’s off to school.

This is where you get to choose.  This is where you get to take responsibility.  The question to ask is “What am I willing to have get in the way of my experience of happiness?”

The most common reaction I get to this scenario is, “Don’t I have a right to be pissed off that my spouse didn’t fulfill the morning duties?  I always get it done on my mornings!”

Sure, (in the commonly accepted behavioral code of our culture) you have a right to be mad any time you want to be.  You also have a right to the consequences of your frustration, upset, anger, etc.  And one of those is that you cannot experience happiness and anger simultaneously.

Your life is made up of these moment to moment interactions.  And the choices you make in these moments add up to your overall experience of life.

Although this kitchen scenario is relatively innocent and simple, it is also representative of the millions of moments throughout our daily lives during which we choose something other than happiness – whether it be complaint, anger, resentment, judgment, worry or fear.

Begin to be aware of the choices you are afforded in the many moments of your day.  And as your awareness grows, see if you can create the space – in those moments – to ask yourself, “What am I willing to have get in the way of my experience of happiness?”

p.s.  The kitchen scenario above was related to me by one of my coaching clients.  It turned out that the lunches did not get made because the children were upset about something that was happening at school and the spouse had taken the time to sort it thru with them.  The kids ended up running to the bus with lunch money in their pockets – a rare treat.