Wealth, Success… Happiness

First, in the last post I mentioned being a ‘Hot Rod’... a custom, one off creation. In truth, I believe we’re all unique, not just me. We’re each a little different from each other, yet fortunately we often share some ‘common ground’ with each other as well.

I’ve been in the process of redefining what’s important to me for many years now. Once I was entirely driven by success, making more money and having more things. Over the years I’ve come to believe that it’s not those things that make a person feel happy.

Don’t get me wrong, some money in the bank, the bills paid, a nice car and house are all things that we can look at, and take pride in. They are not however, in my opinion, the real components of happiness.

I know that most of my soul searching began after my Dad’s death. The hollow, empty feeling I had then went far beyond the loss of him in my life. I was grieving the loss to be sure, but, I was also adrift and without a focus for the first time I could remember.

In examining that, I realized that 95% of all the drive I’d had, the work that I’d done, the goals I’d achieved, had all been a direct result of my wanting to hear him say “I’m proud of you”. He’d died without ever telling me that.

So there I was, my reason for getting out of bed in the morning, the push behind my tireless efforts, my one true goal, no longer viable, forever unattainable.

I really had little other choice but to examine my life, my beliefs and what I felt was valuable in my life.

It was in this process, which continues today, that I came to believe that happiness, true happiness, comes from within. No other person; no drug, possession, or achievement, can give it to you. You have to give it, to yourself.

For me, that meant taking stock of, me. Who I was, how I lived my life and what I valued. It also meant identifying those things that caused me to not feel happy, and why that was.

I say I’m still in the process because, as much as I hate to admit it, I’m not happy, everyday. I’m happy more often than not, but my goal is to find happiness each day.

I believe that, I am the only person responsible for my happiness. Others can enhance, or detract from it, at times, but ultimately it’s how I process their actions that yields a happy, or unhappy, me.

I’ve been told that we can’t control our emotions that they just happen, that all we really have control over is how we react to the emotion when it rises. We decide how a certain event in our lives affects us by what we ‘feel’ when we experience it. Have you ever noticed that when experiencing the same event different folks can react in almost opposite ways? One person becomes enraged, another sad, yet another may seem ambivalent. It’s how they’re processing the event that yields this range in reaction. Or, at least that’s what I’ve come to believe.

So, with that in mind, it should be possible to minimize the amount of time (and energy) we spend on what I’d term ‘negative’ or ‘not happy’ reactions, and maximize the amount of time we spend in a ‘positive’ place.

I went through a course once, intended to lessen the chance of stress induced ‘burn out’. In presenting the course, the lecturer set a scenario where you and a friend went swimming. In changing into your suits, you placed your clothes and valuables into baskets and left them with an attendant.

Prior to setting this scene, he’d explained what he called the ‘body scale’, and how to use it to gauge how important an event (like getting cut off in traffic) really was. The scale ranged from a paper cut, through the loss of all four limbs (what he called the ‘torso’), and the idea was, to work your way up the scale in your mind until you found a pain or loss of a body part you’d be willing to endure to have the event not have happened.

So, back to the scene, as you and your friend are getting dressed after the swim, you discover your wallet (or purse) is missing. You’re obviously upset, and your friend turns to you and says, I know where your wallet is, how far up the body scale are you willing to go, to get it back?

It took me about 3 seconds to raise my hand… and when acknowledged, I said: “If a ‘friend’ of mine, said that to me, I’d go up ‘his’ body scale until he told me!”

Well, first, that’s not what he wanted to hear; second it got a decent laugh, but third, and maybe more importantly, at that time in my life, that’s exactly, what I would have done. It was also probably why the company put me in the class, but that’s another story.

Today, the truth is, I’d make a few phone calls, get some cards and ID replaced and when all was said and done, it would have been a minor inconvenience, not something worth getting upset about. How do I know that? Well, it’s happened on at least two occasions in as many years… not that it was stolen, but washed. For those of you that don’t know, washing and drying credit cards these days renders them all but useless…

The first time it happened, I got pretty upset, Maryan and I had a fairly major argument, and, when I cooled off a bit, I realized I was out of line, apologized and we just got things replaced. The second time it happened, we both just laughed about it.

I’m telling you this to illustrate that you can, and do, decide how you react to events in your life. The decision may not always be a conscious one, but it’s a decision all the same. So maybe, if you thought about that ‘body scale’ say the next time someone cuts you off in traffic, and realize that you’re not really willing to endure much at all to have it ‘not happen’, you’ll wonder what it is that has you so upset.

I believe we all wake up each day with a specific amount of ‘emotional funds’... and once we’ve spent them, we’re borrowing from the next day, or drawing from the funds we didn’t spend the day before. So, I try, sometimes with success, sometimes without, to choose when and why I spend those funds. I may need them more tomorrow, than I do today.

The result is, and that’s the point, the result, I’m happier more days than not. When an event comes along that really requires, or simply takes, a huge amount of emotion, more often than not, I have enough left to spend on it.

I really believe, that this one little thing, changed not only how I look at events in my life, but, my overall happiness and satisfaction levels as well.

Hey, try it, if you find it works for you great, if not, it really didn’t cost you anything to try.

So, tell me, how do you handle stress, simple ordinary everyday stress, or the bigger life altering types? What’s your secret to finding calm, staying happy?