Don`t worry choose Happy

 

Some years ago, singer Bobby McFerrin released a little song called  ‘Don`t worry be happy’. That little song really greated my nerves. My dad said to me once; Every day, be grateful for at least one thing. This was during a period of my life when I had fibromyalgia, a condition where pain is a constant companion. Granted I didn`t share my condition with my father, I felt he wouldn`t be able to relate. So he said, be grateful for being alive, what I thought, but didn`t say out loud, was, how can I be grateful for being alive when I am in such pain and suffering?

I did`t find an answer that day, or for many days after that.

For the longest time, I believed that in order to be happy, some external experience or circumstance creates feelings of happiness. For example, if I was in love, I would feel happy. If I had a good job with a good salary, I would be happy. I really didn`t fit in with corporate structures, so I felt very frustrated with the kind of work I was doing, (the medical industry ironically is filled with frustration) So I had an external locus determining my state of being. After a constructive midlife crisis, where I looked at my life and work under the microscope, I decided to change my manner of interacting with people to a more personal, empathic and caring manner.

Working with people closely, I was reminded how we live in a world of fear and frustration. People are anxious, tense, stressed and in pain. Their work occupies a large amount of their thoughts and behaviour. How many people are doing something they don`t enjoy, or feel indifferent to or might even resent, in exchange for a salary every month? If you look at your life now, how many of your thoughts and decisions are focused on trying to survive, to keep your family safe, to keep some danger at bay, to keep yourself  afloat? This constant state of anxiety and worry can be very strong if our locus are outside ourselves. If we keep looking at current circumstances and the state of the world, it reflects our own anxieties and fear back at us. We see a world caught in fear and frustration.

When we dare to step back and review our lives, to see what motivates and drive our decisions, you might be surprised to see how much of it is determined by fear and frustration.

What I have found, in the last year and a half of living in fear and frustration, is I have a choice between having an internal or external locus. Trust me, choosing to feel happy and love for myself, when external circumstances reflect back a dismal picture, is not an easy task.

From observing it regularly, is when my locus is external, when I get scared, irritated or angry at what happens to me or in the outside world, when I remain in that low state of conscious, is that I let others determine my state of being. I give my power away.

When I practice to be happy, to feel love and appreciation, for no reason, except that it feels way better than feeling fearful or angry, my locus becomes internal. What that happens, I take back my power. It feels good to feel good, to feel happy. Try it for yourself. Choose Love instead of Fear.

Choose Love, not Fear #ChooseLoveNotFear #Don`tWorryChooseHappy