Reading Martha Beck's article in O Magazine....I read this;
"Choosing to be happy, like choosing to be healthy, means committing to actions that create those states. The good news is that the actions required for happiness are surprisingly simple. Just as weight-loss advice basically boils down to "eat less, move more," happiness requires just two steps. They'll sound counterintuitive, but people who really seem to have made themselves permanently happy - your Buddhas, your Jesuses, your Yodas - all recommend some version of the following prescription: Allow your pain to exist. Dissolve your pain."
"At first, this sounds patently ridiculous. Feel pain? Isn't that the definition for unhappiness? Only if you define unhappiness as the absence of all stress. But that definition doesn't wash. Up to a point, discomfort, uncertainty, and struggle are deeply compelling; otherwise, why would we watch movies that makes us shriek with fear and weep with sorrow, or rise up in anger against injustice? The fact is, those feelings are part of life's richness and beauty."
"Of course, actually suffering is very different from drama that takes place on the silver screen. You can't just watch your own experience like a movie....or can you? Actually, this is exactly what enlightened people suggest, and a growing body of evidence is proving them right. Mindfulness and meditation -simply focusing on the present moment, observing one's feelings without judging or reacting to them in any way - have been show to increase neural density in parts of the brain related to well being and raise the happiness set point that determines how we typically feel."
"Clinical psychologist and author Steven Hayes, PhD, asks readers to imagine an emotional machine that has two dials, one labeled PAIN, the other WILLINGNESS, as in willingness to suffer. Any sensible person cranks both those dials down to zero. Unfortunately, the pain button doesn't seem to work: No matter how far we turn it down, we still hurt. So we read self-help books and munch antidepressants like Pac-Women. these things might help us deal with pain, but they won't get rid of it. This method just never works. Bizarrely, here's what does: turning the willingness-to-suffer dial up to maximum."
"Don't take Haye's word for it; try an exercise. Search your mind for a topic you prefer not to think about; your dog's failing health, an argument with your spouse, the highly personal photos you accidentally posted on Facebook. Notice how you push away your sadness, anger, embarrassment. Accept this resistance. Let it be as it is. Paradoxically, you may feel it lessen slightly."
"Now, take five minutes to let yourself feel your true emotions about the forbidden subject. Don't take any action - please. Just allow your emotions. Write them down: "I'm so angry (sad, nervous, embarrassed), and with now I am just going to let myself feel it." If you don't resist at all, the pain will come in awful but brief surges because just like happiness hormones, the chemicals that cause misery tend to be short lived. According to neuroanatomist Jill Bolte-Taylor, PhD, it takes only 90 seconds for a wave of emotion to pass through us. This is the same length as a typical contraction in the final stages of childbirth. Coincidence? I think not. If you can allow enough 90-second intervals of emotional agony, the pain will eventually stop, and you will find you've given birth to a wiser, more compassionate version of yourself."
"So why, if emotional pain can be fleeting do many people suffer for years, a lifetime? The answer: thoughts. Animals get upset when some negative stimulus - a predator, an indeterminate loud noise - is present, but when the bad thing leaves, they tend to relax. Humans, on the other hand, can be lying safe in bed but feel absolutely terrified, enraged, or devoted about things that are present only in their imaginations."
"Many wisdom traditions teach that painful thoughts are never ultimately true. According to Buddha, tormenting thoughts are rooted in illusion. Jesus taught that God, truth, and peace are all one thing; it follows that an unpeaceful thought can't be truth. Writer Byron Katie, a modern master of thought dissolving , was wrenchingly miserable until she began questioning all her painful thoughts with rigorous honesty. "The mind's natural condition is peace," she writes. "Then a thought enters, you believe it, and the peace seems to disappear... When you question the thought...the story falls away. Peace is who you are without your story."
"After questioning a few million painful thoughts, I haven't found one I can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. My ego hates this. It wants it mopey ballads, war chants, heavy-metal tantrums. My ego argues that if it can fuss enough, the universe will finally relent and give it everything it desires. You own ego probably wants the same thing. Good luck with that."
"If you are so tired of hurting that you're willing to let go of your favorite painful beliefs, you can dissolve them with steely eyed insistence on factual evidence. Let's look at some common human thoughts, as represented - you guessed it - in a few popular songs. I've had all these thoughts myself, and then I've rigorously checked them agains concrete external reality. Here's a short version:"
Hypothesis: Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
Observation: She's gone.There's the sun.
Hypothesis: I can't live if living is without you
Observation: And yet here I sit, eating a sandwich.
Hypothesis: Love stinks
Observation: That's just silly. Love is the best.
"I could go on and on (and on and on), but you get my drift. Now it's your turn. Whatever devastating top ten hit your mind's constantly playing -- "I'm Not Enough," "No One Wants Me," "I'll Always Hurt Like This" - put your ego aside and test it with the pitiless honesty of a scientist. Any evidence at all that you are enough, or that anyone wants you in any way, or that there may be any pauses in your pain, disprove the hypotheses. And hear this, loud and clear: "If you can't know a thought is true for an absolute certainty, it doesn't pass the test. Reasonable doubt means the thought doesn't get to rule your life."
"Eventually, most painful thoughts dissolve in the light of this uncompromising truth. What's left is not some happy-face ditty, but a vast, sweet, silent openness. Many emotions flow through the openness, some are happy some are not. but the openness itself is who you are-- and it's unfathomably indescribably blissful. Dissolving pain is scary and hard, but will get easier with time. The openness is a discipline - and it may take your whole life to perfect."
"Some songs tell this truth, and singing them to myself has gotten me through a few truly awful experiences. Try this one in your own tough times:
It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes a chance.
It's the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give.
And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live.
Lean into every emotion you fear, let your ego die as you dissolve your painful thoughts, and watch how joy arises. Then, my friend, don't worry, be happy." Martha Beck
This concept does work. I have turned my willingness dial all the way up and I always test all my thoughts up against the harsh reality of life.
I am completely more joyful by allowing all my emotions into my life...and my life is richer and beyond beautiful with all their intensity.
I am alive, free and fluid...with willingness to accept what is, no matter what it is.
My dial is broken. It will no longer be set at zero; but rather there is nothing I will not feel and I am open and willing to accept all that life offers me.
The alternative is denial.
To shut down and reject me.
That is what I am not willing to do ever again...
I am unapologetically open to all of reality; no matter the cost or pain.
I do not trust thoughts unless they match reality.
"Reality wins only 100% of the time..." Byron Kate.
