Archives for June 5, 2016

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”

– Albert Camus

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There is a reliable path to happiness, but I warn you: it’s a path for warriors. It requires casting away the fog that prevents you from dwelling in reality, and feeling the pain you’ve been avoiding.
What follows are instructions for your heart, not your head.

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Walk down the street at rush hour and look into the eyes of the people you pass. You’ll notice that where there should be fire and light, there is vacancy.  These people are living with muted feelings and clouded minds. They are dazed by a quiet sense of disconnectedness from themselves.
I know this feeling; I’ve been there many times before. It’s a side effect of living in a society that expects people to behave more like cogs in a machine, than the vital forces of nature they truly are.

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Being human means dealing with suffering. Even if your life is better than average, you will still experience an abundance of loss, heartbreak, anxiety, and despair. To cope, most people rely on numbing agents to dull the pain. The most common numbing agents:

• Getting caught up in stress and busyness
• Regularly using alcohol, weed, and other drugs
• Surrounding yourself with drama, fear, and anxiety
• Filling your day with the white noise of background music, podcasts, and perpetual small talk
• Staying in bad relationships – romantic or otherwise – in order to avoid being alone
• Pretending that you’re less capable than you truly are
• Depriving yourself of sleep, nutrition, exercise, connection, play, and nature
• Staring at televisions, computers, smartphones, tablets, and other trance-inducing tools
• Lying, either overtly or subtly

These forces keep you away from yourself by dulling your emotions. In moderation, they are harmless. In excess – which is more common – they are deadening.

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One thing I can promise you is that bouts of slap-me-in-the-face-this-is-too-fucking-good levels of happiness are available to you. Even as you read this, they are resting within you, waiting to come out.
To access them you must begin by clearing out all of the pain you’ve been holding on to.

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Temporarily remove whatever you rely on to avoid feeling the full force of life. For a few days, keep your electronics off, get plenty of sleep, eat healthy foods, don’t touch intoxicants, and be alone with yourself, undistracted. Spend time journaling and reflecting in nature.

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You may notice that you are bored.
Good.
Do not fall into the trap of distracting yourself. In this context, boredom is your mind’s last line of defense. Lean into the boredom. Ask yourself: what is my mind trying to prevent me from seeing or feeling right now?
This is the beginning of dwelling in reality. You’ll be surprised by what you uncover.

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You’ll start to notice the pain you’ve been avoiding. The failures you’ve tried to forget. The wounds that never quite healed. The friends who betrayed you. The embarrassments from your past.
Your job is to feel it all.
It may feel like you’re breaking. That’s good. Lean into that feeling. Instead of choking back the tears, surrender to them. Allow yourself to break.
Do what you must. Scream, smash plates, punch the wall, destroy the pillows. Do it all while blasting heavy metal and cursing at the top of your lungs if you would like.
Release the pain that has been building in you. It’s been holding you back from becoming the force of nature you truly are.

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You’ll notice that behind the wall of pain rests a stable sense of happiness and power.
That happiness is always there for you. You may return to it as you wish.

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Once you have found your core of happiness, here is how to maintain it:

• Let go of the need to be happy all the time. You are a force of nature, not a Disney character.
• Align your life with your true desires. If you want to be a writer but you’ve been working as an accountant, start writing more. You don’t have to quit your job, but denying what you truly want is a step in the wrong direction.
• Fill your life with the people and activities you love. Strip away those you hate.
• Reduce the numbing agents in your life and allow yourself to feel the full pain of existence more often. This makes accessing the happiness within easier.
• Remember: beauty is found by embracing the rough edges, not in the frightened attempts to be perfect.

When you allow yourself to feel the full force of existence, you will be able to dissolve the pain that has been holding you back from truth, power, and, ultimately, happiness.
Read More By Jason Connell on the ManTalks Blog:
How Should a Man Be at 30?
Finding Your Deep Gifts in a Shallow World
Or Listen to Jason on the ManTalks Podcast:
How to Successfully Navigate Life Transitions
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The idea that “You deserve better” is applied a lot in dating and relationship advice.
It’s used to explain away breakups: “Don’t worry about him or her, you deserve better anyway.” or  “It’s not you, it’s me, you deserve better.”
It’s even used to explain away failures: “You’re awesome, and if someone doesn’t see that, you deserve better.”
This advice suggests ignoring all of your failures. Forget about the things that aren’t going right, and put them out of mind and move on.
Sounds like a great way to continually make the same mistakes.
Believing you always “deserve better” is a defense mechanism. It keeps you from confronting failure, and learning from your mistakes.
Let’s be honest: you did something wrong in practically every setback you’ve experienced.
Now, you may actually deserve better, but when you do something wrong, you should learn from it, not ignore it.
Failure is an opportunity to learn and grow. It’s a chance to ask, why did this happen? It may be tough to figure out yourself, so ask people that were there. Listen to the feedback and confront reality. It’s only failure if you don’t learn something.
I’ve learned from misery more than a few times. I’ve lost jobs, opportunities, and women. Every time I wanted to think I deserved better, but what would that have accomplished?
What would I have learned?
Use failure to create a plan to improve and make a commitment to work on being better each day. Don’t allow yourself to become a victim of your surroundings. Things don’t happen to you, they are partially caused by you. You don’t deserve better. You deserve to be better for no one other than yourself.
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Benjamin Ritter, MBA, MPH, is an interpersonal, dating, and relationship consultant, author of The Essentials, co-host of the Suave Lover podcast, curator of the Interfaith Relationships workshop, and the Values Systems workshop, freelance expert and writer, and healthcare executive. He has years of direct client, personal, and social experiences towards improving and solving internal development, dating, and relationship situations. For more information, go to: http://www.benjamin-ritter.com.
 

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