Charlottesville
August 25, 2022
How often do we read an article and think, "Wow, that was a timely read." Almost like we were led to it by some invisible force that knew we could benefit in that moment from the article." Such was my experience with the following. None of the ideas in it are new; but I needed a reminder.
The article:
If you see happiness as a graph it will be a graph that’s up and down like the song from Ronan Keating — Life is a roller coaster.
If we talk about happiness in the light of stimulating the brain, we can say that each pleasurable moment creates a rush of happy chemicals (dopamine) which gives us happy feelings. However, this kind of stimuli is not satisfactory long term, so we strive for something greater. That’s pretty much why you don’t feel like eating the same food every day or why you don’t stick to the same thing that makes you happy throughout your lifetime. That’s why we’re constantly in search of something greater. We just want more hits thats it, well I mean dopamine hits.
We, humans, are evolving, so the more we get to experience happiness the bigger the triggers required for us to enjoy daily life. This is why people are constantly desiring more, that is: more money, more things, more happiness. You can use this principle for anything in your life. The phone you use today will be obsolete tomorrow because we think it is obsolete due to new needs that we think arise. The vehicle that gets you from A — B will not be enough for you in the next year or so, why? Because we are driven by the emotions that there is always something better. (Hedonic treadmill)
What if there is a way around this?
If you minimize your expectations of happiness and sadness then bring it closer to your natural state of being, you need not swing to bursts of happy or sad moments.
The Feelings Chart
Take a look at this chart below. The X-axis is time and Y-axis is your emotions of either being happy or sad, in other words, your ups and downs. If we can use this chart to monitor our feelings, we can learn many things.
To do so start by placing your feelings on a scale of Happy to Sad then you can plot the graph like below over time.
Now, remember the last time your depressing thought spiraled out of control? You started at -5 (due to one circumstance) and kept going down the graph towards -10 and so on due to each thought that arose. Then did you notice the distance between 0 to your new state is -10 (illustrated below) which might be a deviation of around 15 points from a general happy moment.
In the same way, remember the time you were extremely happy exceeding in joy you expressed an emotional state of joy at +10, and your natural state is 0 which is 10 units down from the happy +10 being so which is a big deviation. Can you see that the more distinction we have between happy and sad moments, the wider the contrasts of the ups and downs on the spectrum? That means our definition of happiness/contentment based on external stimuli (circumstances) is highly flawed because we live in a finite world with finite experiences so the more we get caught into the trap of achieving this momentary happiness, the more we get into trouble as it doesn’t stop there. You will neither can nor will be fulfilled in your natural state of being.
The key to true contentment (which I would call happiness) and peace is to have a middle ground of emotions so that you are always swinging within a +5 0 -5 state… in these cases, you might deviate only a little from your constant state of being neutral being that is, the spectrum from -5 to +5 is just ten points 10 and you are always within the 10 points of emotional change. See illustration below.
The purpose of this article is to show the tendencies of the human mind to go back and forth between various states, and the strategy is to minimize this to a smaller deviation. However, to do this it requires you to cultivate your ability to expand your awareness whenever an undesirable emotion enters your mind, simply learn to start watching the thought and how you are feeling. (Mindfulness)
Also I want you to remember the last time you went through a down moment in life where you might have reached a downward spiral count of -10 lets call that week the Week A, the thoughts were only pulling you down to states which were not healthy yet you give into that pattern of thinking and kept going to lower states of sadness. Yet say a week later (Week B) you are again back to +4 in your scale… but looking back at Week A you will realize the problems we faced and the circumstances have not changed perhaps yet we accepted it well a week later in Week B and managed to bring back the emotional state up to a neutral feeling gradually. (Don't believe everything you think.)
What if I tell you the next time you are in the downward spiral in a Week A moment if you bring your awareness to your problem and realize its there and that you need not give into it because a future Week B will always be fine. You can see that you can basically go beyond the time domain to be aware and almost come to the same emotional state of a future week. At that moment you will realize your current feeling need not go further down into a spiral of depressive thoughts so you will learn to accept it and have a better emotional state or come to terms with it faster.
Through this awareness practice, you will be able to move from a feeling of -7 to -5 and so on till you come to a neutral state. Remember you need not fake your feeling and bring it to a neutral 0 and say you are all fine. What I’m explaining is that you accept your current state for what it is that’s it nothing more.
Steps to achieve this:
- Try plotting the Feeling chart which will help you to understand your thoughts and emotions and help you become more aware of how you feel.
- Be more aware of your thoughts. Acknowledge that you are not necessarily what your thoughts show you or make you feel but you are actually just watching your thoughts (this is the basis of mindfulness).
- When watching the thought which brings you down, feel free to call it unpleasant don’t go any further than that, don’t question why or what during a negative emotional state as it doesn’t do any good but only make you feel worse and can lead to self-sabotage.
- Chill! Everything is not as bad as it seems. Remember you are in a negative emotional state right now so everything may seem lost; but nope, things will only get better.
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