Happiness lies in deep acceptance

Former prime-minister Cameron, from United Kingdom, thought at some point to take happiness inconsideration as an economical factor. It would be interesting if that wonderful quality jumped from being just something people like to have to that thing people MUST have.

I feel happiness is so deep nobody can really track it efficiently. Why is that?

First reason is the fact people mix different feelings and emotions. What is the difference of happiness and joy? When you are drinking with co-workers, is that happiness? That video on little cats that made you laugh… is that happiness? If your son is very sick and needs your encouragement, what feeling will come to your mind? Happiness? Knowledge of what happiness is would be a first step to consider, in case someone really wants the happiness factor in their community.

Second reason is the fact most people consider happiness as something coming from outside, instead of emerging from inside. People often looks for happiness in a new car, a different spouse or a better remunerated job, and of course they lose it when the car is not new anymore, the different spouse behaves exactly as the former one and this job is so stressing…

But it is the third reason that makes me thinking on how to make people happier. Acceptance: happiness cannot be attained if true acceptance does not happen. Not talking here about resignation or submission, but true and real acceptance, that sensation when the person understands what is going on, with no struggle, but a feeling of something is right about this.

Everything that occurs in life may be a curse or a blessing, and it depends of the person’s perspective. If there is real acceptance, it is possible to use circumstances as leverage for a higher jump.

When acceptance is present in the heart, the individual can start to enjoy happiness despite the situation: if it is bad, it is a lesson that will help him or her in the future; if it is good, it is time to help others to have it too.

Until real acceptance is attained, real happiness will be difficult to be experienced.

The art of getting feedback from others

One of the easy ways to improve your life is to learn from others’ experiences and lessons. For that, you can just watch them and try your best replicating whatever you see, listen or understand. Or, you can let others say what they think.

As children, we learn from our mistakes. A lot: we raise and fall, and we learn we shouldn’t fall; we go and play with a dog that bites us, and we learn we shouldn’t pull its tail, or we arrive late for lunch and mommy gives us cold food, teaching us to arrive punctually. Of course, the love we receive and the unconditional forgiveness for every mistake compensates any bad situation.

As adults however things are not that simple: we often don’t learn from our falls, we keep on pulling another dog’s tail and our punctuality does not improve. It seems adults don’t learn at all, at least not as a child would do. We learn differently and there are many theories about that, but I would like to talk about feedback, which means others telling you what to do.

I consider an art to be able to get feedback from others. When there is an opportunity to improve – in other words, we did badly – what we hear is complaints or accusations; to turn those into a positive experience and help the self to improve is a hard work for the listener rather than the speaker.

It is useful to separate whatever others speak in categories. A typical example is when someone indicates about your lack of punctuality; put aside their anger or the fact they are upset by that. Then, focus on the need of the other person, ask yourself: How can I be more punctual?, and listen to their advice.

Second step is your own reflection on whether you implement that feedback. Maybe you simply can’t; if that is so, just talk and explain that to the other person. If you can, make a plan to turn it into reality. In case you need to talk to the other person, look for an agreement that makes them happy with your own situation.

The third step comes when you yourself ask for feedback, checking if everything is alright after making some experiments.

Feedback is a cyclic process… after the third step, go back to the first and start all over again, which guarantee you will have a very interesting and dynamic life.

Win and win...

One of the biggest changes in terms of civilization paradigm – and it is still going on – it is one of the least perceived, and it could comprised in the change of just one word: from OR we are coming to AND.

Now, now, we are not talking about math here, but common use of these words. When I say I will be working today or tomorrow that means it is one of these two days, not both.

OR worked powerfully for centuries and it was expressed in many ways like I will be a lawyer or a doctor, I will be supporting this political party or the other one, I am either a Christian or a Muslim.

AND is the new model and it can be expressed in different ways: I will be a lawyer specialized in medicine, I will be supporting any person whose values are aligned to mine, I understand and embrace all religions.

In relationships and any negotiation there is another effect: you want all sides to win.

During the OR paradigm, winners were only that because of the losers; with AND paradigm, there are no winners if there are losers, and of course there are no losers when all win.

It is probably a little harder; it will take much more time than just go and win over the other and declare your domain. But in a life we all know it is a long journey, that time you spend reaching a consensus will be rewarded in a big way.

When to stop is a good thing

In a world in a rush, to stop does not look good.

In terms of your career, part of your success relies on you working as much as possible and as hard as possible. If you stop at some point, people will forget about you and to resume your activities maybe is not that easy.

So don’t stop… however, how much your body, mind and soul can resist? There is a point we all break, when we cannot do anything else and, of course, we stop…

And that is the real stop everyone fears. It is the stop after which you won’t be able to do much. It is the stop that takes you into retirement, sometimes an early one, or makes you to leave whatever you were doing.

But retirement is not supposed to be like that. On the contrary, it just means a period of your life when you have more time to enjoy life or, like in the old Indian culture, you can go and dedicate yourself fully to a spiritual path. In other cultures, retired people became leaders and the wise guides of their communities.

Retirement really means to be able to go beyond the basic and general needs and be in a state which anything you do is for your own comfort or pleasure. The problem is if that stage is fruit of extreme tiredness or any other reason through which you had to stop, then you won’t take advantage of that important part of life. 

A simple solution is to stop from now and then, taking sometime free for yourself to reflect and relax, to go deep into your life and give others much of the inner treasures they have accumulated along their valuable life…. But not in the end! Right now!

You can meditate or just sit surrounded by your family and friends. You can just use the red traffic light to have a moment for yourself and think of peace, or you may go into a retreat every year and take that time to set yourself into an improvement path.

This is the type of stop that is good, very good.

How to change your behavior?

Can you stop eating your nails? Hummm… I knew you would act just like that! Did you lose your job again? Can’t you make something about the way you treat other people?

When people want you to change, that means your behavior. However, it is not that easy as you probably already know.

Behavior is influenced by the way we think and see the world, which may be called attitude and awareness. So, if you are able to change any behavioral feature but you did not change your attitude and awareness, that will come back when you less expect.

For instance, if you are able to stay at a job longer than normally, that is something to celebrate. However, part of the reason you used to lose your job was your bad temper and it happens in this job each person is nice; what will happen when your boss hires someone who starts to upset you then?

The inner concept you have about yourself tells you something like this: whenever someone starts to create problems for you, just move away from that person. That means your time in this job is limited by those circumstances; when you change your awareness, you will be able to keep any job.

This is why this idea of quick change or 21 days to get rid of a habit is a myth if you don’t change those invisible aspects along with those nasty habits.

How to change the way you think? How to change who you are? That means deep reflection and inner work; it means you need a method that helps you with that too.

In my experience, the easiest part is attitude and there is a basic 3-step process that may help a person to do that:

1. Identify. First of all you have to understand your attitude; it works as a template for your thoughts so that when you react to situations or you start to reflect on something, those thoughts will work a pattern. Identifying and understanding the pattern is the first stage of a personal change. OK, I have the tendency of being pessimistic…
2. Check and change. During sometime – ok, it can be 21 days… – you will be your own observer. You may use some tools like meditation or a journal, but the main important point is to be aware of those patterns; whenever a bad attitude emerges, stop a few seconds or minutes and review it, replacing it with the thoughts or ideas you would like to have instead. I think I will lose this job… Wait a second! Why am I even thinking like this? I will work with quality and intensity, and I will prepare myself better by studying and researching, improving that quality.
3. Dare. After a while, you will feel things have changed and bad patterns are not emerging as much as before, or have completely disappeared. That is the point when you have to challenge yourself and get into a situation where you will test your ability, see what happens with you and go back to the first stage of this process. I will go and talk to my boss, seeing if there is the possibility of losing my job, but I will do that from a positive point of view, knowing how capable I am.

With your awareness, it is a similar process, but deeper and subtler. Meditation is probably the best tool when you feel it is not enough to change attitudes, and the reason is that by meditating, you have another perspective of who you are, beyond all labels you have tagged in yourself; so, you can identify that you want to change, being an observer and eventually, challenge yourself to see if the change really happened.

When both have changed you will feel a behavioral transformation. Even if one of those – attitude and awareness – has changed, you will feel some level of transformation.

Who am I? REALLY!

An old joke a friend of mine used to tell was about this person who was very blunt and used to have an answering machine with a message asking Who are you? What do you want? Then, he went through a self-development course and one of the results was the change in that message: Who are you REALLY? What do you REALLY want?

Although governments and main powers, everything in the main stream and in our day-to-day life point to the development of things and situations, societies and civilizations, reality is what really matters is how I develop as a person and human being.

Our profession, our tastes and preferences, our family and friends… all of that only contributes to what I am, but knowing it is the basis for any relevant development.

Think about this: if you run a company, one of the things you need to know is what that company is: its mission, values and vision, production and service, its culture and influence. When you know that REALLY, that means, with knowledge and experience, and then you can proceed to develop it, otherwise you may make many mistakes on the way.

By developing the self from that point of self-knowledge, I create a wave, inspiring many others to change their own reality – after all, that is the meaning of development; the change by emerging potentials. Eventually that wave transforms your house, family, city, country and, why not, the world.

Yes, world transformation can come from self-transformation, by knowing what I REALLY am.

About fairness and justice

An interesting video shows how monkeys react when they are not paid in equal ways. By watching this video, you will probably identify someone you know – maybe you?

It is kind of a natural instinct when fairness is not present, after all if I am doing the same job of another person, I should receive the same payment, right?

Let the animal cruelty aside, the video shows fairness in its most basic and primary manifestation, taking the person to be angry or the nowadays fashion of passive aggressiveness.

Justice comes after that though. It comes from a theoretical animal defense group who will try to sue this institution to keep monkeys in cage. It will come when you sue your company or you try for a divorce.

Justice comes from a more complex and elaborated sense of how our culture and civilization operates. That is what it looks like, because the reality is that justice comes when fairness is not present.

Fairness is a natural state and it helps people not only to avoid going to justice, but also to understand a big picture and work harder, if that is the case.

To be fair, check these points:

• Are you treating others in the way you would like to be treated if you were from their same social class, gender, age or any other way to classify a person?
• If your honest response is NO, how can you amend for that? What are the changes you need to perform to treat others as you would like to be treated?
• And if you are the person who feels you are not being treated in a fair way, did you check the reasons for that? No matter how preposterous those reasons may sound, until you don’t know them you cannot claim for a better treatment.
• If you don’t agree with those reasons, what are you doing there anyway? Can you do something about it? Otherwise, can you hear your inner call and find the right place for you?