Feelings

Retraining Your Brain: The Pursuit of Happiness

As the resident psychotherapist for Healthy Living, I want you to leave having some information that will enhance your life, stimulate your thoughts, and most of all encourage you to find happiness in all that you do.

Happiness is not a byproduct of external things or wealth, happiness is created from within.
Happiness is an attitude which multiplies more feelings of gratitude which directly feeds your sense of happiness.

Happiness creates a climate of kindness. When you feel good about yourself and your current state of affairs there is less of a need for competition or people-pleasing. You feel differently about others. They do not affect you as much and consequently you are more positive, which promotes more happiness.

Many clients wonder what they need to do to create more happiness in their life. I encourage them to learn the skill of reframing. Reframing is the ability to take any situation and see the positives in it. I tell my clients that it is the ability to “put a positive spin on things”.

• Getting a divorce?
  Look at divorce as an opportunity to grow as an individual. You can’t stop the process, so ask yourself what you can do to get through it with integrity.
• Losing 60% of your net worth because of the stock market?
  Tell yourself that losing the money allows you an opportunity to find other creative ways to make money. Refocus on what you do have in your life as opposed to the monetary losses.
• Does a family member or friend have a terminal illness?
  Remind yourself that you can make a difference in their life and recognize what differences they have made in your life. Focus on the moment instead of the future. You will experience this person differently when your focus becomes appreciation.

I picked three traumatic situations to highlight that life is about how we choose to look at things. It’s not the outcome but the journey that we need to stay focused on and learn from. If you make the conscious choice to look at life with a positive attitude, you will promote that state of well-being that will create happiness.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet, we live in a society that doesn’t promote happiness unless you meet its rigid standards. Consequently, you will need to fight the urge to be a specific size, make a particular income, or acquire materialistic things.

Unfortunately we weren’t trained in school to develop happiness and yet it is an easy skill to learn if you practice the following steps daily.

• Train your mind to focus on the positives for one hour at a time. Don’t treat it like the infamous diet approach—you know, the one where on Monday you have great intentions of staying focused on eating healthy, but by ten AM you are giving into any temptation that comes before you?
• Replace the negative self-talk with a positive statement. When you retrain the brain, you will find negative thoughts that will naturally occur, and when this happens, make a conscious choice to refocus on the positives and “create a positive spin”.
• Repeat the positive statement silently to yourself. The more you do it, the better you will become. The secondary gain is that in retraining your brain you create that state of happiness, because your attitude becomes naturally more joyful and positive.
• Use reframing in any situation that appears problematic. Look at what a situation has to teach you or how it has made you stronger. You will drop the victim role and have a better sense of your own personal strength!

Your homework is to follow these four guidelines and train your mind to focus on the positives for one hour at a time. Practice it faithfully and you will attain true happiness!

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