Sunday, September 13, 2009

Route to Happiness… by Shveitta Sethi Sharma.

Lesson 1

Sometimes, when we are feeling sad or depressed, it is hard for us to ever imagine that we were happy once. We all have issues in life that can unsettle us. Loss of a relationship, financial loss, loss of a loved one, loss of a job and so on. There is no one who is immune to loss, but we can surely immunize ourselves against long term pain. In fact we must. If we don’t pull ourselves out of the crevice, we will go in much deeper and sabotage any chance of happiness.


Often when any kind of loss takes place we start to grieve not for the loss, but for the effect it has on our being. We suddenly start to feel worthless. We start to see life as nothing but a chore and see no joy in living. We start to feel ugly on the inside and outside, we feel alone and insecure.

Although the feelings feel justified, we need to realize that they are not true. So what if we lost a relationship, a job, money. Does that make one a bad person? But that is what starts to happen in our heads, we lose perspective and start to blame ourselves and start to feel guilty about how we would have in some way or the other contributed to that loss. Often even when things are beyond our control, we end up apportioning blame towards ourselves.

The first step towards instant recovery is to realize that things happen and sometimes the outcome is not what we had hoped for or wanted. So instead of blaming others or yourselves, focus on raising your own vibration so that you can start to attract the good times . Staying in the negative field drags us further into negativity and pain and blocks the recovery.

Let’s get on board the train/bus/plane to destination “Happiness”.

So you are feeling lousy- Get up, go to a mirror and say all the bad things that come to your mind. Call yourself a failure, call yourself names, call yourself stupid for not being able to foresee the situation and blame yourself for all that went wrong. Now have a good cry. How does it feel? Does it feel good to berate yourself?

Probably not!

So let’s change the record. Go back to the mirror and now say to yourself the following.
_______________ ( your name) you are beautiful.
_______________ you are talented.
_______________ you are lovable.
_______________ you are lucky.
_______________ you are amazing.
_______________ you are brilliant.

Keep going . Find adjectives that uplift you and look yourself in the eyes and say that to yourself. You don’t need to believe what you say, but just say it.

Remember, “Fake it till you make it.” This may sound flakey and superficial and it probably is. The focus at this stage is not on truth or untruth….All we are trying to do is raise the vibrations of our being so that we are now ready to face the situation in a more positive way.

You may feel emotions welling up and you may feel like crying. Accept that it is OK to be upset and sad, but remind yourself that even though you can’t seem to find any reason to be happy, there is still something to look forward to. Dig deep within and find some happy memory and stay with it for a while. It may not want to stay long, and may want to be replaced by the sadness of the moment. Accept it. Allow it to stay , but treat it like an unwanted guest and then very quickly start thinking of another happy memory…. It might be difficult, but force yourself to think of at least one happy moment/blessing and dwell on it for a while.

Do this exercise and see if there is a shift in your emotions. You should start to feel better. Even though the feeling may be short lived, it’s a start.


Lesson 2 - next week.
Have a superlative week and choose happiness.