Chapter 6
The 4th Step
Beware of Joy Stealers
Beware! You have just climbed three important steps on the ladder to joy and happiness. You not only have a strong burning desire, but have also discovered what will make you happy. You want to pull the happiness triggers that will trigger your happiness. But now, it's time to be careful. Commonly, we have read signs that say, 'Beware of dogs' everywhere we go. Fortunately, dogs rarely harm us. There are poisons which are more harmful that you must beware of. I call them “Joy Stealers”. They are the thieves that rob us of our most valued possessions – joy and happiness. They are strong negative emotions that poison our minds and devastate us. Some of them are anger, jealousy, fear, guilt, temptation, worry, revenge, hate and doubt. These poisons enter our lives and without our slightest knowledge, walk away with our bliss. You must beware of all the joy stealers. This is because we work hard to build a passion for happiness and then persistently discover what makes us happy and powerfully pull each trigger to create happiness. But, the poison of negative energy can nullify all our positive efforts when it enters our lives. And therefore, we must remember, Step 4 - Beware of Joy Stealers. We must keep them away. We must consciously eliminate these negative emotions from our thoughts and attitude. Whenever they appear, we must shoot them down ruthlessly. Let us analyze a few of the joy stealers.
1. ANGER: Anger is a dangerous terrorist that starts as a spark, but burns out our entire emotional strength. You may be the happiest person on earth, but the moment anger enters your life, it flares up and brings out the worst in you. You lose control and explode, not knowing what you speak. The force of anger is such that it can create irreparable damage. It is a strong negative poison that erupts because of various reasons. However, it is a reaction and can be controlled. If we do not burn anger, it will burn us and destroy our joy and peace. Normally, when this joy stealer enters our lives, we try to suppress it, but it will surface again. Sometimes we try to express it. But it doesn't end there; it only flares up worse than before. The only way to conquer anger is through forgiveness which is a positive emotion that can nullify anger. Beware of this joy stealer. Take charge of it before it consumes you, and if it ever does, be ready to forgive and forget so that the anger subsides and happiness is restored.
2. JEALOUSY: Jealousy is another fire that can burn us. We may be living a life of joy and bliss but suddenly and foolishly, we lose our happiness because we become jealous of others. Jealousy is thus a joy stealer. The moment it enters our lives, it walks out with our bliss. It is a strong negative poison that can steal our joy. I had a friend who was very happy because he bought a new Mercedes Benz. We went for a test drive and he was excited and full of joy with his new car. Suddenly his neighbor passed us by in his new BMW. My friend became upset because he was jealous of his neighbor's BMW and all his joy disappeared. Jealousy stole his happiness. Just think about it. Should we let such a joy stealer take away our joy? We must beware of jealousy and when this ugly poison surfaces, we must talk ourselves into being content with what we have. We must learn to be grateful and satisfied. Peace will be restored if we are intelligent enough to let jealousy pass by, rather than give it place in our hearts. If we do, it will enter forcefully and rob us of all our happiness.
3. FEAR: Fear is dangerous, for it can paralyze. The acronym for FEAR is 'False Expectations Appearing Real.' Yes, fears may be false, but this joy stealer is an expert in exaggerating dangers and building strong negative emotions that will steal our happiness. Beware of fear; for once it enters our lives, our peace of mind exits. We must learn to live our lives with courage and confidence – the positive emotions that can conquer fear. When fear appears, we must consciously attack it and make it disappear.
4. GUILT: All of us, sometime or the other, experience the emotion called guilt in life. When we do something wrong, we feel guilty and this guilt steals our happiness. But why should we feel guilty? Nobody is perfect and when we err as human beings, we must make amends. Therefore, instead of letting guilt corrode our soul, we must proactively and positively accept our mistakes and try to make good in place of the wrong done. This way, we remain positive. On the contrary, if we live with guilt, we harbor a strong negative poison that will make us unhappy. This joy stealer can walk away with all our joy and bliss. Therefore when, guilt appears, we must be honest and sincere, and with humility accept our wrong doings. We have to try our best to do good, thus eliminating the negative poison. Never feel guilty. Learn to deal with guilt if ever it shows up again.
5. TEMPTATION: Many of us get tempted to do something ethically wrong. Sometimes, we do these actions to be happy, not realizing that we can never be happy with unethical actions. Some young children steal something that they would like to have, but when they realize that their temptation led them to robbing, they feel miserable. We must hold back from temptation or any negative emotion that will create unethical happiness. Even though we may have temporary joy, this will emit lot of negative fumes which will suffocate our happiness. The short term joy is so insignificant when compared to the long time misery that temptation creates. Therefore, we must not give into temptations, as they are joy stealers dressed up as happiness triggers. They trigger unhappiness and not joy in the long run.
How do we deal with temptation? We must learn to evaluate and differentiate temptation from the true happiness triggers and choose to pull those triggers that will genuinely make us happy and stay away from temptation.
6. WORRY: It is a negative poison and a primary joy stealer because it eliminates the ability to think with reason and brings along with it fear. When worry occupies our minds, it starts consuming our happiness. It can be viewed as a monster that feeds on joy and bliss. We may be perfectly normal, happy people, but when worry occupies us, it starts eating our peace of mind and troubles us like a parasite robbing us of all joy. Just like any other negative poison, its vicious fumes occupy our peaceful and tranquil minds, making them unstable. Since it comes along with fear, it threatens and destabilizes our very being. For those who have experienced worry, it is not difficult to comprehend the damage that it causes. When worry enters, we must not give it place. We must