The Myth of Lasting Happiness and Why It Makes Us Unhappy

We want to be happy. Everyone, everywhere, is trying to find -- and hold onto -- happiness. We do everything we are supposed to do, follow the experts' advice, practice the techniques -- and still, more often than we should be (given the amount of effort we are putting in), we are not consistently happy. As a psychotherapist, I have spent the last two decades watching people feed their addiction to happiness; they get their short-term fix here and there, but end up "back on the street" searching for happiness yet again, even more desperate. The thing we want most and spend the majority of our time trying to accomplish, eludes us.

We human beings are remarkable creatures. We can do anything we set out to do. So why not lasting happiness? Why is there such a gap between our desire for happiness and our ability to hang onto it? After many years of listening to people talk about their failed attempts to hang onto a state of happiness, I began asking myself the following questions: What is this thing we call happiness? Is it achievable? Is it reliable? Is it sustainable?

As I studied happiness, I became intensely aware of its fragility. When our life circumstances change and the thing that was making us happy goes away... Poof, our happiness goes away with it. When uncomfortable feelings appear within our state of happiness or the object that was bringing us happiness no longer works, happiness is lost again. We are constantly acquiring and losing happiness.

It is not our efforts to create happiness that are flawed, but rather our choice of happiness as a goal. Happiness is the wrong goal for this life. Happiness relies on our ability to control circumstances that, no matter how hard we try, we cannot control. Happiness relies on circumstances staying the same. Nothing stay the same. Uncomfortable feelings always arise, and what we want is always in flux. This nature of life is transitory. We should be grateful for happiness when it is here, but as a goal for life, it is inherently flawed.

Normal life is not easy for anyone. Why then do we expect ourselves to be happy all the time? This foolish expectation is responsible for tremendous suffering.

Is there something larger, deeper, and more lasting than happiness? Is there a state of well-being that can sustain itself in the midst of the changing circumstances and emotional shifts that every life includes? Is there a way to feel grounded and well, even when the contents of our life are not? If so, what shift must we make to discover this state that is deeper and larger than happiness?

For a long time, I used my spiritual practice to try and achieve peace and happiness. And I did, in stretches. And yet, again and again, when life presented its toughest challenges, inevitably, the peace and happiness that I had achieved slipped away. Somewhere along the path I got tired -- luckily, tired of trying to get to peace and happiness, or rather, of getting there and watching it disintegrate. And with my weariness came an interesting development: I got curious about what was actually true. I stopped trying to do something with what I was experiencing, to change it in any way, and just let myself see what was there, to experience what I was experiencing.

No longer trying to get to somewhere else, my meditation practice, and consequently my life, could then be what it was, whatever that meant at any particular moment. It was through this shift that I began to glimpse a state of being that is radically different and amazingly okay, a state that is deeper and more eternal than happiness. Indeed, it was not until I stopped trying to create happiness -- as a way out of now -- and started investigating what is here -- a way in -- that I discovered a doorway to something far more blissful than happiness had ever offered.

We spend our lives trying to get to some imaginary there, where lasting happiness awaits. What we don't know how to do is to get to here, where we are. We discover well-being when we shift our focus toward this moment and what is actually here. The secret to well-being is counterintuitive: Allow whatever is happening inside you to happen, don't do anything with it, don't judge it, don't try to change it, don't turn it into an identity -- something that says something about who you are. Allow the feelings, allow the thoughts, allow all experience to happen within you without turning any of it into a story about you and your life. When we let go of achieving a particular outcome with our experience and meet our experience as it is -- wanted or not -- we discover a state of deep well-being and contentment, which relies on nothing and no one, and is inherently and eternally ours. Indeed, we discover who we really are.

Excerpted from the upcoming book, Inviting A Monkey to Tea: Befriending Your Mind and Discovering Lasting Contentment. (Hohm Press, October, 2012)

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Addicted to Facebook? NLP Tips for Cutting Back on Social Media

Recently I got a message from a student asking what techniques I would suggest for helping people limit their time on Facebook. Specifically, this student requested suggestions for NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) techniques that could help.

I have to admit, when it first came along, I wasn't a big fan of Facebook. Then I started to see it works. I was holding an NLP workshop in San Jose and a woman told me, "I am so glad you posted on your updates you were coming to San Jose -- that's how I knew to come."

Around the same time, I received an email from a student saying she was having trouble with marketing and attracting people to come to her trainings. I was pondering what I could do to assist her when I got a private message from her through Facebook. She sent me a "golden potato" from the online game FarmVille.

I turned to one of our trainers and asked her, "What is this FarmVille thing?" She told me how it works. You sit there on Facebook and press the space bar over and over again, like one of those rats in a maze that hits a button and a little pellet comes out. "What does this do for you?" I asked. She responded, "Nothing. You can become a grand master farmer and have golden radishes and whatnot."

I felt a little frustration. I was wondering, "Why is this student emailing me saying she is having trouble with her marketing when she is sitting there -- tap, tap, tap -- trying to make a radish turn from red to gold?" I mean, who cares if you are a grand master farmer in FarmVille? Who cares if you win at Mafia Wars? Who cares how many friends you have on Facebook?

There are more important questions you should be asking yourself, like what is your purpose for being here? Have you let go of the baggage that is preventing you from doing what you are meant to be doing so you can have what you want to have?

From a psychological perspective, some people use things like Facebook to escape from reality -- the reality of having to deal with their stuff. Maybe they fear they might fail. So rather than even trying, they spend their energy to become a grand master so they feel like they have accomplished something.

If you feel like you are spending too much time on Facebook or other social media, try changing your perspective. You have to look at social media for what it is meant to be. Facebook is for social networking, to keep in contact with your friends, and to post what you are doing. If it is taking away from some other area of your life, you have several options.

First, you can make a change. Let go of the baggage -- let go of the anger, the sadness, the fear, the guilt that is holding you back. Get in touch with your purpose. Why you are here? What are you meant to be doing? Who are you meant to be? And begin to do the things that fulfill your purpose.

Second, you can use specific NLP techniques, such as the chain of anchors, procrastination to motivation, or a submodality belief change in what you do with your time.

Finally, consider this: If you are living your purpose, you have been practicing these techniques, and you are able to get the results you want, maybe you just have to choose to do something different with your time rather than spending it harvesting digital potatoes.

You may be saying, "How do I do that?" Maybe you have already done a lot of change work. Maybe the answer is not another technique you do or another thing you release. Maybe it is just time for you to remember who you are, what you are meant to be doing, and get up and do that, plain and simple.

Here's an example from my life: I don't always want to work out every day. There are some days when I would rather just stay in bed, being lazy. But usually I get up and work out. Maybe "get up and work out" is an anchor I use. Maybe I have just done it so many times it has become an anchor. Who knows?

I do know this: We are what we repeatedly do. Therefore, excellence is not a chance. Excellence is a habit that you form. Begin to make a shift on the physical level, because an ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Aloha!
Matthew

Matthew B. James, MA, Ph.D., is president of Kona University and its training and seminar division The Empowerment Partnership, where he serves as a master trainer of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), a practical behavioral technology for helping people achieve their desired results in life. His book, The Foundation of Huna: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times, details forgiveness and meditation techniques used in Hawaii for hundreds of years. He carries on the lineage of one of the last practicing kahuna of mental health and wellbeing. To reach Dr. James, please contact him via his Facebook fan page or his blog.

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