Everyone has a different few on happiness depending on their upbringing and belief system. There’s no right or wrong way to view happiness truly. But some of us have the subconscious belief that we are supposed to be happy 24/7 hours a week and if this is not the case then there’s something wrong and we feel the need to fix it.
It’s truly not possible to be in a happy state 24/7 hours a week. One reason is that we aren’t designed as humans to feel good all the time. The second reason is a little bit more obvious but good to mention anyways. The reason is that during our sleep we are in a state of surrendering. Which means this is not a time we can actually perceive emotions since we are asleep. What we are really talking about here is the subconscious belief that we are supposed to feel happy all the time during our day-to-day life.
Forced happiness within society
There is this pressure to be happy and show people how well we are doing. And for empaths it seems to be a bit harder to truly say: ‘I’m doing good’. Since we can feel the collective pain and while feeling the collective pain we can’t honestly feel happy all the time, even if we try. We can’t ignore how we feel like others seem to be able to. But we can all learn flow with these emotional states. If you’re an empath then you have to figure out what is yours and what is not. And you definitely don’t have to pretend that you’re happy when you’re not!
There is this forced happiness within society and because of this we never allow ourselves to feel our pain. We don’t allow ourselves to feel in general. We love to see people being happy and we get uncomfortable when others are sad. We get uncomfortable because we don’t know how to take care for someone else’s emotions and that’s because we don’t know how to take care of our own. This fear of our emotions is what is fueling this ‘fake’ happiness that we like to show people. And this is one of the reasons why we can’t feel happy in our lives.
Temporary Happiness
There’s nothing wrong about searching for happiness and go after what makes you happy. Following your joy is a very good thing. But what happens when we never feel fully satisfied? What if we never feel the relief that we are looking for by going after our happiness? What then?
When we are searching for happiness and try to attain positive feeling states as much as possible, we will find that it doesn’t seem to stay. These positive feelings states seem to be there for a moment in time and then disappears once again.
Do you know that moment when you want to buy something and you know you don’t really need it but you convince yourself that you do? You purchase the item and you feel this heightened emotional state that feels like happiness. You come home and you still like what you purchased but a few hours or a day later that ‘high’ is gone again… What you were truly experiencing was a sense relief.
It was a sense of relief that filled you up for a moment in time but it actually distracted you from what you were really feeling. You were avoiding an emotional void and this purchased item brought you relief from this void. This is the negative feeling state people tend to run away from by distracting ourselves from what’s going on inside.
And the hard part about this is…it will never go away until you address it. You keep circling in these emotional states until you understand how to work with your emotions. Feeling states can be temporary, but if the root isn’t addressed it will come back up again until it’s resolved. We have to face these negative and scary feelings in order to resolve it.
It’s natural to seek pleasure and this makes us feel amazing. But pain and negative emotions serve our expansion and are just as important as positive emotions. Emotions are messengers and are there to tell you something important. There’s never a right or wrong message they convey. We make emotions mean something and we create meaning by choosing our thoughts. These can be positive or negative meanings.
Contentment allows happiness
Take a look at the graph above. At the top you see that most people like to stay in a positive feeling state (we all would like to feel good all the time). The downside of this is that people are afraid to drop. But when we do feel down and we don’t allow that feeling state then we get into denial about how we are truly feeling. The denial makes us convince ourselves that we are ok, but we truly aren’t. We make these negative emotions so wrong that we already distract ourselves with thoughts that do feel good. This is what happens when we use positive focus. There is certainly a place and time for positive focus, but not beneficial when we are avoiding the reality of our experience.
The key is to be able to flow with the current of our emotional states and rest in your center (see the arrow in the middle above). We can be living our lives in a state of contentment/neutrality which is what will actually make us feel happy in our lives. This is not a state of numbness! Don’t get confused about that either. You still allow yourself to feel it, but you can drop without judging what you’re feeling. It’s just a feeling. You learn that dropping down in your emotions isn’t actually that scary. And this takes practice! Lots of it. You need to face your ego at the same time and it isn’t always easy to work with.
The lessons we need to learn and grow from are hidden within our emotions, including the negative emotions. We can’t avoid our emotions since we will have emotions for the rest of our lives. So, you are better off by learning how to flow with them.
The main message
The main message here is this: emotions are truly neutral. Not numb, but neutral. You want to attain a good enough relationship with your emotions so that you can live in a state of being content. Which is neither super happy or super sad. You can flow with the ups and downs of these emotional states without giving the meaning that there’s something wrong. The moment that you make your ‘negative’ emotions wrong and you shouldn’t feel this way, that’s when the unhappiness starts. This is the drive force behind wanting to feel happy. The moment we feel down and we give it the meaning that we shouldn’t feel this way, is the moment when we add more pain to our pain.
Afraid of positive emotions?
We can also be afraid to feel positive emotional states and feel good. To actually feel good can be something we aren’t used too and this can create anxiety and a sense of unease. Feeling good is then associated with ‘there’s something wrong’. Crazy isn’t it? In this case you want to work with positive emotional states and sink into those feelings.
Where can you find happiness?
You must have heard it before: happiness is found in the simple things in life. And it truly is! But it takes inner work to feel this true state of happiness. It’s not a happiness we can put on a pedestal and then hoping it stays. You can truly feel happy when you understand your emotions, when you understand your life and this reality and when you can find pleasure in the simple things in life. Can you be present with the mundane and simplicity of life?
And if we truly want to feel happy we want to care about how we feel. But you first need to want to take care for your emotions. If you don’t honestly feel the desire to take care for your emotions then you won’t keep doing it. After you decide within yourself that you want to understand why you feel the way that you feel, then you can learn how to regulate your emotions in your day-to-day life.
Only when we can become content with these emotional fluctuations that we experience every day and when we can allow the highs and lows then we can fully experience life. The good and the bad. Only then we are able to reach a true state of happiness.
And if you still can’t touch happiness then give up on happiness and go for the feeling of relief instead. Happiness is not something that can be achieved it’s a feeling state that can only be allowed.
Until next time.
With Love, Naomi
P.s. meeting your needs is another important aspect of feeling truly happy. You can read more about that here: ‘Why Meeting Your Needs Is Crucial For True Happiness?!’
Sign up for my Newsletter to receive my free guide ‘6 Steps to Emotional Stress Release’.
Written by Naomi
More Posts
The Blind Spot Behind ‘Feel It To Heal It’
For those of us on the healing path must have heard about the saying ‘feel it to heal it’. This is a good thing to have going around in the healing communities, since we are still in the emotional dark ages collectively. The first step of getting out of the emotional...
What Is The Difference Between Shadow Work and Somatic Work?
A lot of people associate shadow work with psychology which is true, the psyche is a big component of where our shadows are hidden. But there is a real kind of shadow work that is the most effective for our healing and that is somatic work. I personally think that...
How To Prepare For Activations On Your Ascension Path?
If you are on your ascension journey you must have heard about 'activations'. Activations are light codes that are coming into the planet and into your energy field. They are essentially helping us reach higher consciousness and clear out distortions that we have been...