How The Mind Affects Your Happiness (Part 2)

Part 2 of our journey to happiness is here, read carefully and try to apply these techniques to improve your personal life and achieve greater, long lasting happiness.

Your Happiness and Unhappiness is Created Internally

Take a circumstance such as being fired from your job. In the moment you might feel like it is the worst experience of your life. Those feelings are really created by the self judgement, criticism, and beliefs in the mind. There might also be blame and anger at your former employer. These opinions about the event are generated in the virtual reality about being fired. It is these opinions and beliefs that drive the emotions.

Now imagine that a few years have passed. You have moved on and circumstances are better in your life. Your virtual reality will interpret being fired as a beneficial turn of events that helped facilitate a better life. It was an event that was necessary to bring you to your current state of enjoyment. The story projected in the mind changed and so did your emotions.

Did the event actually change? No. You were still fired on that day at that time for the same reasons. However since your opinions and beliefs about the event changed so did your emotion. Your emotions are created by the beliefs in the virtual reality of your mind and are independent of the event. Most people only change their interpretations over time. However with awareness you can change the opinions and beliefs in your virtual reality in any moment.

How you feel in terms of happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction is not a function of success, failure, or other external factors. Happiness and fulfillment is determined by the opinions and beliefs in your virtual reality about your accomplishments and perceived failures. After all success and failure are just description labels projected by the mind. They can change with time or perspective.

Shifting Priorities

When you understand the significance of how your virtual reality impacts your emotions it will become more important to create peace and quiet in your mind. Depending on how important it is to be happy, you might even conclude that changing your opinions, beliefs, and fears is more important than your external goals.

Without accomplishing a shift in the virtual reality of the mind external success will often be empty emotionally and leave you wondering, “Is this all there is?”

The Measure of Success is Emotional Happiness

You can be a success in your field, make lots of money, and receive accolades from peers and authorities in the external world. However if your internal world of imagination dictates that you are not good enough or a poor performer you will hear the stories of failure in your head. You will feel the emotions of a failure in your body.

If you are unable to satisfy the critical voice of the Inner Judge in your head no amount of external rewards will be satisfying.

Numerous studies indicate that wealthy people are not much happier than the middle class. Once a person’s basic needs are met there is very little change in a person’s happiness as they gain wealth. What these studies don’t explain is the lack of difference. That’s because these studies don’t reveal the aspects of fear, judgments, criticisms, and beliefs, that make up the virtual reality of people’s minds. These elements of a person’s mind do not change because of a change in their wealth.

The Conflict Between Worlds

When there is a disparity between the image of success that others have and the image of failure in your mind you will feel a conflict brewing. They believe you are a success and yet you know your self image in your virtual reality as a failure. It will seem as if they don’t really know you and this will create a feeling of disconnection. You will feel like you don’t deserve the attention and compliments. You may end up feeling like a fraud to them.

A simple example of this is when someone tells you that you are beautiful or talented. A person that doesn’t feel congruent to this on the inside with their beliefs will feel uncomfortable and dismiss or minimize the comment. In this way their worlds appear and feel more congruent.

Most people most of the time will dismiss the evidence that contradicts their virtual reality. Sometimes this is called denial. At other times people will sabotage their success in the external world just to rectify the incongruity between worlds.

Hollywood is filled with examples of people who achieved acclaim only to feel empty inside. They often seek an internal high through substance abuse only to have it ruin their hard work and everything they have built. When they crash it appears again that their virtual reality was telling them the truth.The virtual reality of the mind is all too willing to sabotage and destroy external success and accomplishments in an effort to maintain continuity and control.

The Illusion of Fulfillment and Happiness

As people strive to be happier and more fulfilled they purse what they believe will make them feel better. More specifically this is the virtual reality’s version of what will make them happy. What the virtual reality equates to happiness does not necessarily equate to happiness in the real world.

In essence the virtual reality claims that happiness is to be created by changing the external world. When achievements are made and goals reached there is often euphoria albeit temporary. The long term internal feelings of dissatisfaction generated by the opinions, criticisms, and judgments of the mind remain unchanged. The virtual reality solution to this return of dissatisfaction is setting higher external goals.

When a person has little awareness they chase whatever goal their virtual reality proposes will make them happy. As you gain awareness you begin to be a skeptic of the thoughts and proposals in your mind. You turn your attention to changing the how the virtual reality operates.

Part 3 - the final instalment in this particular topic will be here next week, be sure to come back for the final instalment. Let us know your thoughts, what are your experiences? Until next time.

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Source(s): Pathway To Happiness LLC, (2019)