I Want to Feel Better; Finding My Happy, Part II

"Some days it's just harder than others to find my happy.."  I've blogged those words before, and yesterday was one of those days.  I awoke to greet the day with a bland outlook, a disinterested point of view, and nothing even resembling excitement awaiting me on the horizon.  Truly all I wanted to do was stay curled in a warm little ball in the safety of my bed.  But again, I've been here before. I know what this place looks like, and I know too how to get out of it  So armed with affirmations, techniques and wonderfully positive thoughts and images, I began the process of pulling myself up from this place.  The problem was, none of the affirmations felt right.  None of the visualizations or positive thoughts felt good to me, leaving me feeling frustrated and grouchy.  Even worse, thoughts of being a failure or not being good enough were beginning to multiply as well.   "This is what I do!  I should be able to turn this around by now!" I admonished myself. (I mean I DID write a blog about it a few months back...  come on Kim, find your happy already!) But rather than letting this black cloud overtake me and ruin my day, I decided to get to the bottom of it.  Why didn't my tried and true affirmations feel good to me today?  Why did it feel fake and a little invalidating to visualize having a good day?  Why, when I tried to see myself as happy, did that make me feel even worse?  It only took me a few minutes to realize it's becuase I wasn't ready to let go of what was bothering me.  I was still feeling it, rolling around in it, and in short, I didn't want to be happy.  What?  How could that be??  How could I possibly not want to be happy?  But the truth was that in that moment I didn't.  I wasn't quite ready. What I did want, though, was to feel better.  I couldn't buy into Happy, but I really wanted to feel Better, so I stopped using the very, very positive affirmations that have generally feel good to me, and backed off a bit.  Instead of reaching for birds-singing-rainbows-butterflies-and-hearts-dancing-around-my-head happy, I tried to simply feel better.  To go from angry to blame...  Ok, that felt better, so then I worked up from blame to frustration, and from there I landed on indifference.  That was where I'd say I hung out most of the day, until I'd let go of enough to say that yes, now I wanted to feel happy.  And amazingly enough, then I could.

There are 2 points I hope to make with this story.  The first is to say that in order to Find Your Happy, you must want to be happy.  If you don't want it, all the techniques, books, theories and workshops in the world will not help.  You have to want it, and that probably means you must also be willing to let go of the hurt, anger, sadness, frustration or whatever else you're feeling, so you can move up to Happy.  But secondly, if Happy feels to big, too intangible, fake or too far away, then let that go!  Unfortunately as a society we tend to place all the negative emotions under one umbrella and believe they are all bad, that feeling any of them makes us bad too.  That is simply not true.  I assure you to move up from anger to blame is a positive step.  Then to move from blame to frustration is also a positive step, and that is how this work goes for most of us.  I am certainly not capable of climbing an entire flight of stairs in one step, so I take them one at a time.  It's ok to do that emotionally as well!  You don't have to find happiness today, but if you can admit that you want to feel better, now you're ready to begin.  Sometimes better is as good as it gets, but if every day is better, then Happy isn't really that far away.