The third step on the path to happiness is to understand and really believe that it is possible and necessary to manage your thoughts rather than letting them control you.
You are now ready to start trying to do this and this section will show you how.
You can and should choose your thoughts with care because what you think controls how you feel, and how you feel controls how you see the world, both overall and moment by moment.
People look for and want peace and harmony in their world. But you have to understand that you need to look inside yourself to find it. If you are at peace and relaxed on the inside then you will find that the outside world that you see will be more at peace.
You may not fully understand this yet but you really do create your life with your thoughts. Further what you are thinking now is creating your future life. Happiness does not come from events and what happens but from within. You really can decide in advance whether you are going to have a good or bad day and through your own thoughts and actions attract the commensurate result. Later when I get deep into SI I will cover the Law of attraction and show you how and why you attract your life, and how you can attract the life you wish for.
Understand that thoughts emerge from pure consciousness and are then reabsorbed in it, just as waves emerge from the ocean and dissolve back into it. Once we have understood this we have taken a leap towards inner peace as the thoughts have lost their power to disturb us
Much of what we think and how we initially see a situation comes from negative motivations especially craving, aversion and ego. Try to understand that these are just thoughts and are transitional and have no substance in reality. For example, anger is born in the mind, lingers for a moment or two, and then can be allowed to dissolve there. In reality there is nothing substantial that can explain its tyrannical influence over our lives. Unless we see this we end up fixated on the object of anger overtaken by destructive emotion. If on the other hand we see that anger has no substance of its own it rapidly loses all power. Filter it out and replace it with a positive thought about the situation.
I would like you to think about the following everyday example which illustrates how what we initially and instinctively think about a situation is not necessarily the truth or the reality.
The phone rings at home. Immediately your mind will tell you who it wants it to be for its own selfish reasons and its belief that it can control reality. But when you answer it you find instead that it is an elderly person, perhaps even a close relative, who wants some information or help. Your mind goes into overdrive. It immediately casts a black cloud over your consciousness. You are too busy. You do not have the time. Why me? Why now of all times?
The harder you try to dig deep and do the nice thing and give this person some quality time, the more your mind will be frantically tipping sack loads of negative thoughts over you about how you need to bring this to a rapid conclusion as it is a complete waste of your time.
But what is the Reality? In truth you probably can afford a few minutes-what were you doing before that was so precious? See that your mind does not really know how valuable this conversation will be or not be to you or the elderly person. Just because you have such a strong response from your mind it does not mean that it is true or Reality. You are in control - not your mind. Don’t tolerate that old selfish and predictable reaction.
Here is the alternative way of thinking about this situation in an Emotionally Intelligent way.
“I am going to give this person some time and really LISTEN to them because I have learned that if I give people time and truly, actively listen, I will nearly always find out something that is interesting, stimulating and possibly pleasurable and of benefit.” Say to yourself , “I now live in the moment. I know that I am lucky to be here at all to have this conversation and by the end of it even if it was not that valuable to me I can almost guarantee that it will have been useful to the caller and in all probability the highlight of their day. And the positive energy that was created during the call will enhance my own well being and self esteem for the remainder of my day.”
So just because you have a thought – which is often a conditioned reaction anyway- IT DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE.
I really urge you to start to NOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT YOU THINK.
Banishing negative emotion, and developing EI can more or less be summarised by that single sentence.
Feel the excitement of living and life and its richness of opportunity. In the brief time that we are here you cannot scratch the surface of what there is to do. Wake up to each new day with the excitement of a child in your heart and make a plan to fill it with worthwhile and affirming work and play. Live your life with total enthusiasm as if you were rushing along beside a beautiful river or canal where you cannot wait to see what is around the next bend.
You have the choice to be in a good mood or a bad mood. You CAN control how you feel and behave.
Focus on all the good things in your life rather than dwelling disproportionately on the things you wish you could change.
Live in the moment and handle each new moment with skill and freshness. I have introduced the expression ‘live in the moment’ for the first time but it is a very well used term that most readers will have heard many times before. Living in the moment is fundamental to happiness and as such you will find a great emphasis and a lot more detail on what this really means when you get onto this section in behaving with SI. But for now I want you to recognise that increasingly people are unable to give the here and now their attention preferring to always be thinking about the past or the future or e.g. distracted by their smart phones and other electronic gadgets. It is becoming increasingly rare nowadays to see someone who is not staring at their phone regardless of whether e.g. they are walking along the road, or sitting on a train or even worse sitting with a friend or partner. Nowadays many people are never really ‘present’ and just take a momentary glance every so often at their actual surroundings and situation preferring to immediately re-immerse themselves back into diversionary distractions.
If it works for you use your favourite music to lift spirits. Never underestimate the power of music to induce mood change. How does it work? How can some music e.g. Enya, if that is your taste, instantly lift your spirits into the Heavens such that you are full of love for life and everybody? It’s actually very simple. Uplifting music suppresses negative thought and emotion and frees you to live in the moment and see Reality i.e. just how wonderful it is to be alive.
However always remember to make listening to music or the news or watching TV etc a conscious and positive choice with a beginning and an end. You will not be able to have a successful relationship with yourself and be aware of your thoughts if you fall into the trap that so many do nowadays of never turning the TV or radio off and so it is always in the background bombarding and distracting your senses. More and more people are unable to just ‘be’ and feel restless and uneasy when they are unoccupied or not being bombarded by media. This is a symptom of the underlying problem that when they are free to think they are swept away by negative emotions.
If you like reading newspapers and listening to or watching the news a particular issue to watch out for is media induced downward spirals of depressing perceptions of how ‘bad everything has become’, what a ‘mess everything is ' etc when such attacks on your peace of mind are designed to push your buttons for their own ends i.e. circulation or numbers of listeners / viewers. Little good comes from such sessions of depressed thoughts about political and social matters when you usually cannot do anything about it, and the story is being simplistically misrepresented to you anyway for maximum impact.
Be able to manage your emotional life and not be hijacked by it e.g. paralysed by depression or swept away by anger. The easiest way to distinguish between our emotions is to examine their motivation (mental attitude and objective) and their results. If an emotion strengthens our inner peace and seeks the good of others, it is positive, or constructive; if it shatters our serenity, disturbs our mind, and is intended to harm others, it is negative. As for the outcome the only criterion is the good or suffering that we create by our actions and/ or words for ourselves as well as others.
Learn to identify and not to trust conditioned responses that tell you that you should respond to events by feeing sadness that people or life are not as they should be. The inability to manage our thoughts is the principal cause of suffering. Learn to tone down the ceaseless racket of disturbing thoughts through the wisdom of knowing that although you can make efforts to manage and affect your future you cannot ultimately control the future.
Do not be seduced by short term highs of petty conversations and gossip. Rise above this behaviour.
Avoid being driven by uncontrolled negative emotions such as anger, irritation, worry, excessive pride, hatred and jealousy. We are the cumulative product of what we have thought and thus every incident of aggression, jealousy or loss of control (temper) is a setback in the quest for serenity and happiness. Envy and jealousy derive from the inability to rejoice in someone else’s happiness or success. The truth is that envy and jealousy are absurd since someone else’s happiness cannot deprive us of anything. Only the ego can be wounded-this is another ego issue. Blaming others and holding them responsible for things we do not like about our own life is a sure way to an unhappy life.
Do not be affected by minor irritations. Do not believe that when these occur you have been personally singled out! Have the wisdom to know that e.g. when you are in a traffic jam , you are not really in a jam, you are the jam just as much as everybody else who is in it. Most of the time, 99% of our situation and circumstances are wonderful. We are deluding ourselves when we concentrate only on what we perceive to be bad. When your mind is trying to tell you that something is a ‘problem’ and that we should be unhappy about it, e.g. unwelcome noise, boisterous children, rain, heat, etc , say to yourself, “What if everything was OK? What if this were alright? What if nothing around you holds any power to make you unhappy?”
Develop enhanced awareness of the formation of thoughts, which allows for the immediate identification of an angry thought as it arises, and for its deconstruction the next instant. Work on your thoughts one by one analysing the way they emerge and evolve and gradually learning to free them as they arise thus defusing the chain reaction that allows thoughts to invade the mind. Watch closely for aversion thoughts which become more prevalent as you get older. A prime example is inbuilt prejudice towards those who are different especially from different races and cultures.
I invite you now to start to realise that the basis of inner peace and happiness is the absence of negative emotion , or if you like, the absence of irritation, annoyance and agitation. This will be a recurring theme and principle in this guide.
When making a case or expressing a view do not become personally aligned with the view. A view or opinion is just that –a view. You are not that view or defined by it. There are two sides to everything and very little is black and white. Some say there is no right or wrong-just different ways of looking at things. Obviously you can conjure up an extreme example where the moral position appears cut and dried but in general it is true that most debates are complicated and not trivial.
So do not make winning a debate or argument a matter of pride and ego. Just calmly state your view without emotion and mentally shrug your shoulders and think that you hold your view, they are entitled to theirs, and there is no reason why someone else’s view should cause anger to you. Under different circumstances you could just as easily be putting the case for the opposite view!
Have no expectations of other people. Do not allow your inner happiness / mood to be hijacked by a knee jerk reaction to the negative moods of people close to you around you. Just because they are morose or picky or stressed that does not mean you have to rise to it or react to it.
In particular do not allow the knee jerk reaction of disappointment or deflation when you experience what you interpret as selfish and inconsiderate behaviour by others for example when driving. Try to cultivate being impervious to the selfish and aggressive actions of other drivers.
When family members or close friends around you are stressed rise above it and take it in your stride. Do not feel irritated or frustrated by it. People are who they are. If they cannot cope they cannot cope. Do not believe that you can change the people around you. The more stressed, depressed, tense and uptight someone else is the more they will believe that you are the problem and not them. Do not ever expect to rationalise with a tense and stressed person and absolutely do not attempt to convince them that they are the one who is stressed. You cannot expect others to not be stressed just because you are not. They may be stressed for any number of reasons but for females this is especially likely to be hormonal, and for everyone overload, pressure and tiredness. You may be frustrated and disappointed that they are stressed and thereby spoiling the day but what will be received and perceived is that ‘you are getting at them’, and that ’nothing is ever good enough’. This is a perception gap that cannot be bridged and no good ever comes of trying. Just refrain from judging, definitely refrain from passing comment, and divert your own thoughts and attention onto something independent. Just offer unconditional love.
No good can ever come from allowing anger to take over your mind. Remember that this unbalanced/distorted view of a situation has only arisen in the mind, and has no substance in reality. Anger and rage seriously affect your ability to deal with a situation.
Anger is bad for your health.
When I see an angry person I know that is not a happy person. They may be angry because they are unhappy, or unhappy because they allow themselves to get angry!
When someone or a group of people are making you angry ask yourself why does it bother you so much? What is it that is really annoying you?
Try to see issues in perspective. Often when you have got angry you will remember that you got angry, or perhaps that you had an argument, but will not remember what it was that you were angry about. The negative energy and damage caused by anger lives on long after the issue ceases to matter. So ask yourself will the issue that is making you angry matter in a year’s time or possibly even next week?
It is not enough to just concentrate on maintaining your own mood when close ones around you are uptight, tired, and stressed. In fact to maintain your own mood you need to positively apply yourself to meeting their needs. This is a time to give them unconditional love, consideration, and support. In a relationship try to predict when these situations will arise. It is a golden rule that you do not look for any emotional energy and support from then during these times.
Above all just listen and ask open questions and do not be in a hurry to offer off the shelf solutions. Just because you may believe you have a better perspective, and more EI, this is not the time to thrust your beliefs on another.
Emotion is not weakness or, as some males assume, limited to females. It is crucial to give emotions free expression and allow the energy to dissipate rather than to suppress emotion. Do not be ashamed to cry. It is a bodily function with a purpose.
In modern culture we have a tendency to bury grief, or turn our backs on emotion, and refuse to allow ourselves compassion. We confuse self pity with self care. We refuse to show sympathy for our own pain. This is repression. The trouble with this is that strong emotion demands to be acknowledged and processed and ignoring it does not make it go away. When we swallow our feelings they emerge in other ways e.g. depression, lack of confidence, or anger. Showing compassion to ourselves is emphatically not self indulgent. Positive thinking is good but do not turn positive thinking into a stick to beat yourself with like I must get over this and not feel or process the sadness or pain.
Feeling melancholy and contemplative or reflective / sad / nostalgic are natural emotions. Do not beat yourself up over them. But remember they are only thoughts and cannot harm you. The main thing is to feel at all –so embrace a range of emotions and enjoy the ride. Feeling melancholy is not depression. Emotional reminiscing and nostalgia is a natural consequence of having had good experiences in the past and is not depression. You cannot always be high. If you were it would not be a high!
Constantly worrying about what might go wrong has become a very common affliction. Many people feel anxious even when there is nothing specific or tangible to feel anxious about.
Worry really is a pointless emotion. Do your best to plan for your future, manage risk, but let go of the outcome. You must know and understand that usually in life the adverse things that happen are not the things that we worry about but instead tend to be unexpected and unforeseen events that occur at random. Worrying about what may happen is entirely pointless and arguably may cause illness and self fulfilling prophecies due to our own behaviour attracting the very things that we dread. Living is like climbing a ladder –don’t look down as this can cause fear and freezing.
A healthy and confident acceptance of yourself and the outside world, really knowing that things are as they are, is the way to achieve a positive optimistic outlook.
After socialising with a friend or relative do not give any time to worrying whether you have said the wrong thing. If you have tried your best to be pleasant , loving, and friendly then leave it at that. Nobody is able to express themselves perfectly all the time and it is inevitable that after any bout of socialising there will be one or two things that you may wish you had put differently or perhaps not mentioned at all. It’s life. The most likely situation is that the other person will not have noticed or remember.
Why does the mind left unchecked have such a strong predisposition to worry? Human beings have evolved to be worriers, and to look for