The Limitations of Happiness - DMH Podcast Ep 5

Hello, divine, messy humans. I'm so, just glad, you're joining me today for this episode of the podcast. 

When people come to see me, as clients, there are a couple of things that I notice in probably over 99% of them. 

First of all, when I ask people what they want they will repeat to me a whole list of things that they don't want in their life any longer. So, for example, they will say to me; 

"I don't want to wake up in the night anymore." 

"I don't want to feel sick anymore." 

"I don't want to have this pain anymore." 

"I don't want to experience this judgment anymore." 

"I don't want to feel this way." 

And when I say to them, and re-question, "so, what do you want?" 

They will then give me another list of don't wants. Now, the problem with that is our brain does not understand the word don't. So when we say, "I don't want to wake up in the night", instead of, "I'd like to have a great, restful nourishing night's sleep", our brain isn't thinking, "I don't want to wake up in the night." It's thinking, "wake up in the night". 

There isn't a long lasting change there, and don't get me wrong, language is a huge, huge part of our healing journey, and this is one small part of it that we really need to start becoming more aware of. 

When we put in this list of what we don't want energetically out to the universe we are effectively reinforcing that we do want our current state of affairs. 

So, I help people to reframe that into "well, what do you want? So, you do want to wake up in the morning, feeling nourished and nurtured and rested. Full of energy and vital." 

I don't want to feel sick anymore. We can turn into, I want to feel healthy and vital. 

With the pain. We can make it into, I want the freedom and flexibility in my body. I want to feel strong and healthy. I want to feel limitless. 

And so we can start to use different language to build the list of what we do want. 

The other thing I notice is a lot of people struggle to tell me what they want because they've often never been asked before. 

Some have never been allowed to have wants before. Some have not recognized that they have needs as a human being, and that we are allowed to have basic needs. We all have basic needs as humans. 

And we're also allowed to extend that into wanting things for ourself. And that in itself can create stress in the body that we then need to clear. 

Start asking yourself things like that. 

What do I want, if money was no issue, and time was no issue because, let's face it, they're all energetic constructs, if these things were not any issue, what would I want? 

Even with those restrictions in place what do I want? 

And then, people get to a point where they say to me, I just want to be happy. And happy for me has become one of those 'bleurgh' kind of words. It's like nice, or okay, or good. 

There are so many more expressive words out there. And if we look at happiness as our end goal, our happiness that we're often talking about, especially when we have not done much personal and spiritual development before, the happiness is often tied to external circumstances. It is tied to relationships. It is tied to work. It is tied to our feelings of abundance, and our cashflow, and our financial situation, and our relationship with our family. It's tied to all of these different external factors. 

And I'm going to put it out there, if we just want to be happy all the time, how realistic is it? I think it's quite delusional, and false to start from a place of wanting a one-dimensional emotion that is tied to other people, or to external circumstances, to external things. 

So again, I get people to reframe happy. What does happy feel like to you? How will you know when you get to happy as your final destination. 

What will your life look like? What will it feel like? Who will be around you? Without them changing. With you doing the work. What can that look like for you? 

And then we start to get into a bit meatier ideas of what they actually want. We've managed to tease out the ideas of what 'don't wants' are sitting in their subconscious, and to really build a list of what is wanted, and desired, I love that word rather than want desired! 

Desire for me hits me right in that sacral chakra. It gets juicy and exciting. It feels attractive, and it feels so much deeper, and it gives me so much more vitality, and excitement to think of it as a desire. 

And when I feel into it that way I have much more energy to go out and start working towards it, to take action steps towards it. 

When we look at happiness as our endpoint, the problem we also have is that, if we were feeling happy all the time, we probably would need medication because it would probably fall under that manic type emotion. 

And when I think of the people that I know who pretend to be happy all the time, that's all it is. It's a pretense. The happiness doesn't always reach their eyes and it gets into that, "Hi, How're you going?". 

That fake voice where things don't quite reach the eyes and reach the soul, and reach that beautiful, emotional depth that we all have within us. 

It feels a bit like painting ourselves into a corner of one emotion to be able to express the rest of our lives. 

And, I really do understand what people mean when they say they want to be happy. They mean that they want to be happier, that they want happy as more of a baseline for themselves. 

I just challenged them with different words. 

What would contentment feel like? What would peace feel like? 

Because our emotional existence in this plane is wide, and varied, and nuanced. And it is painful, and beautiful, and everything in between. 

If you want to think of your emotional landscape as a tapestry hanging on your wall, happiness for me is like hanging a beige rug and going, oh, look at my new tapestry. 

When we add all of those different emotions, the depth and breadth of what we can feel as humans, it adds color, and texture, and light, and dark, and shadows, and highlights, and everything in between, and we end up with this beautiful tapestry that we feel we can walk into, that lights our soul on fire. 

And yeah, life is going to get tough. That is one of the things that we can guarantee in this world is that shit happens. And, that some days it feels like we are walking through ankle deep molasses. It feels hard, and heavy, and challenging. 

And that's why I go for words like contentment and peace. Because in those times that I now go through having done so many years of this personal and spiritual development work, when I am walking through those really challenging times, and trying to navigate them there is still this kernel inside me that is this soul deep knowing that I'm going to be okay, that this is one of my lessons to navigate, and that I will come out the other side a richer, deeper person for the experience. 

Potentially more broken open, but so far in my life, more broken open has never been a bad thing. It has allowed me to reach greater depths of empathy, of compassion of grace, of love. 

It has really made my life so much richer. Every single one of those challenges. And I'm going to put it out there that when we are in the messy middle, of these challenges there is no way in hell we want to think about "this too shall pass", and "this is a lesson that I need to learn", because when we're in the messy middle, that just makes us want to hit people. 

It makes us angry because we know on some level that we're going through it for a reason, we know we are navigating these times to learn and to grow. And, we know that this too shall pass but it's not the right time to be told that or to have that message thrown at us. 

So, how could you reframe happiness in your life. Is there a different emotion that you feel is a more amazing thing to aim for? 

Is there a word that really hits you deep in your heart and soul that says yes, that! If I can have that as an anchor point, when life is tumultuous and I'm feeling untethered, if I can access that peace within me, then, you know what? Even in the tough times I'll be okay. 

The word I give that as peace; because it is like this little sanctuary. That is between myself and my divine. 

You can call it whatever you fancy. I just like to get people thinking deeper than happiness. Deeper than needs and wants. Certainly deeper than a list of don't wants. 

And sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to dance in these fields, to allow ourselves to want something more than happiness or to want something as deep as a desire. 

Do you need to give yourself permission to enter into those parts of your soul? 

When I think about that idea of happiness, for me, I lived so long on the "I'll be happy when".

I'll be happy when this happens, or I'll be happy when I reached this goal, or I'll be happy when... whatever it is. 

There was always something else that would make me happy. And yet, I was still miserable. I call that the happiness of pursuit. 

I always needed a goal. I always needed something bright and shiny to be aiming for. 

When we are in the pursuit of happiness and we flipped that around, we can bring joy into our life much more regularly, we can celebrate our wins. We're not onto the next goal before we've acknowledged and celebrated the goal that we've just achieved. We find ways to be happy, content, peaceful, joyous, all of the things in this moment right now. Where I am. And from this place of presence, yes, we've got an ability to look back and see how far we've come, and we can stand and look forward to where we want to go. 

But the more that I've been happy on the path, the more that I've been happy in my day to day, the more that I've been connected more to the people around me been more present to all of the emotions that I'm experiencing, the peace and joy is on the path, it's not at the destination. 

And yes, I love achieving goals, of course I do. And I also find goals whereby the path is as joyful, is as wondrous, is as awe filled as the journey itself, and as the destination itself.

Every facet becomes something beautiful. And that's what I want for you. 

It really is what I want for you. 

So I'm going to give you a bit of homework if you're up for it. 

Go and buy yourself a notebook, doesn't need to be beautiful, it doesn't need to be a fancy journal, but buy yourself a notebook. I love writing in colored pens because I find if I write in black and white or blue and white, I don't read it again. But write down. 

Allow yourself to daydream. 

What do I want? 

What are some of the needs that I have? That I need. 

We need love. We need connection. We need friendships. And we need depth in our lives. 

So, what are some of your needs? What are some of the things that you want? And what are some of those things that you desire deep in your soul that really pull you towards them? 

And, what are some of the little actions that you could take towards fulfilling some of those desires?

And, then I want you to ask yourself, what does happiness look like for me? What does it feel like? If I have this baseline of, we're going to call it happiness, what does that mean when times are tough, when I'm facing challenges, when I can't control what's happening around me. How can I access that? What do I want to call it? Remember that you are connected to the divine. You have the divine within you. That your messiness is completely and utterly normal, and part of our human experience, and that the more that you can love your divinity, and accept, and have grace for your messiness the easier your human existence will be. 

Sending you love until next time.