Happiness pressures got you down?

BY TYRA MYSHRALL

North America is obsessed with happiness. There are a number of great books out there that I have read over the years on my own personal quest for happiness: The Happiness Equation, The Happiness Project, and finally The Happiness of Pursuit. The last one really tweaked my interest as it wasn’t about pursuing happiness, it was about finding happiness as part of the journey and not the destination.

The pursuit of happiness is often what prevents us from experiencing it. The constant drive for happiness can create burn out and keep us in an inauthentic state. Always pushing for the next house, career, lover, likes, means we are constantly associating happiness with external things. Then, if we do achieve that goal, it becomes a fleeting moment of fulfillment before we start striving for the next biggest thing.

Real happiness is a solid-state cultivated from within. It is created internally despite what is happening externally. Our happiness is like a tree that has strong solid roots and the winds of life sway us from side to side but never uproot us. We can’t always stay tall and stoic, just like we cannot always sit in happiness.

The idea that we must always be happy or positive, often driven by the personal help industry, is dangerous and unrealistic. This pressure to always be positive drives people to avoid real feelings and repress them, eventually feeling burned out from the “fake it till you make it” mentality.

By constantly feeling we need to be happy we repress the other important emotions and lessons. Sadness, fear, loneliness, brokenness, disappointment carries valuable lessons. These feelings are a representation of what our soul is going through and are powerful teachers.

The key is not to repress these feelings but allow them to bubble up and feel our way through them. All feelings request that we feel them. Cry, scream, punch pillows, go for a reflective walk, do whatever you need to in order to process the emotion and let it pass through you. This is a healthy reaction. After you’ve felt your feelings, give gratitude for your lessons, and move forward. Even suffering and pain can yield lessons if you reflect and learn from them.

I could never be the empathetic person that I am today if I didn’t have rough times. Life gets tough. Life can be difficult. I can cry as quickly as I smile. If we don’t admit this truth, we can find ourselves in this false perception of reality and not only can we suffer emotionally but our mental health can suffer as a result as well. I do walk in gratitude, but I am certainly not happy all the time. And the pressure to be constantly happy is doing a disservice to people. There is no longer a need for me to pretend and project that everything is a walk in the park. It’s ok to feel your feelings and ask for help when you need it. All these seasons play a role in the story of life.

Is it possible that tough times teach us more than happy times? There has to be ebb and flow in life. We have to learn to appreciate the quality of life. The positive and negative, the light and dark. We were never meant as humans to have all bright days. Throughout history, there has always been struggle and trauma. Some emotions are more difficult to process than others, but they still deserve space and attention in our lives, and they are all a part of what it means to be human. Don’t let the pursuit of happiness actually stand in your way of being alive. It’s okay to feel all of your feelings and to ask for help when you need it. Love yourself enough to TRUST that the tough times are valuable lessons serving us in our highest good