The Battle for Happiness
Two armies are battling for your life. The Army of
Unhappiness is lined up with forces such as anger, hostility, resentment, fear, worry, jealousy, envy, complaining, depression,
and self-pity. The Army of Happiness has battalions of joy, love, kindness, compassion, generosity, gratitude, hope and serenity.
The question is: which army wins in your life?
If you are a regular reader of my columns, you know
you do want to enlist in the Army of Happiness. People can make this choice even
late in life; it's just more difficult and you may have deprived yourself of the opportunity to live a happy and fulfilling
life. So make the choice now and start winning your personal war. You may remember my articles about Positivity or you can
consult this well researched subject by UNC's own Dr. Barbara Fredrickson (Crown, 2009). When you choose the dark side, the
negative forces are initially stronger. As Dr. Fredrickson computes, you will need three positive experiences to build up
enough positivity to win your war. But you will have an infinitely better life as you enlist in the Army of Happiness.
Point to yourself. Do you point to your head or to
your heart? Most people point to the center of their body close to the location of the heart. Your heart is not only the symbol
of love, it's a place where we actually feel love. When we lead with the heart we feel warm and loving energy flowing inside
to ourselves and outward to others. Interestingly enough, research at the Institute
of Heart Math shows the profound positive mind-body effects generated
by loving kindness. When the Institute researchers studied heartbeat patterns they found that negative emotions cause erratic
jagged-looking patterns of incoherent heart rhythms which have damaging effects on the body whereas positive emotions produce
rhythmic and coherent health-promoting patterns.
At this point in reading this article you may be
thinking, OK Phillips, this sounds good but I'm not any happier than when I began reading this column today. OK reader, here's
a good place to start. To travel on to this path to happiness, choose an attitude of loving kindness every day and make this
practice a habit. You will see positive results when you begin to choose, in a conscious and heartfelt manner, practicing
kindness to yourself, to loved ones, to all the tradespeople and others we encounter, yes even to the people who cause you
problems. Too often we go about our business in a self absorbed way, stuck in our mind and our habits but disregarding our
hearts. Remember to smile, say something nice, be helpful to others. At first you will remember loving kindness only sporadically
until the habit is established. This will take at least a month. I recommend that you also add a Loving Kindness meditation
as a part of your daily routine. The article in the Reading Room of my website will introduce you to this most rewarding practice.
The meditation will remind you to apply these feelings and behaviors within your daily routines.
Of course there is no Nirvana anywhere I know of
on this earth. The Army of Unhappiness will win battles. To plan your response to negativity, you can check out additional
articles describing tactics to deal with anger or fear and stress in the Reading Room and Advice Line sections of my website.
My wish for you and your new happiness practice:
May you be filled with loving kindness; May you be free and live in safety; May you be peaceful and happy; May you be free
of fear and suffering; May you be healthy and live with ease.
