Project Happiness Articles — contemplation

When I’d encounter myself in high-stress situations, I would engage in the following 5-minute exercise, which is extremely efficient if you feel a lot of nervousness and you need to be quickly calmed down (i.e: when looking for a job, before an interview, before a presentation, before asking for a raise). You can do it wherever and whenever you want.

The definition of Overwhelm: “feeling completely overcome in mind or emotion.” Maybe we have too much on our plate, maybe the to-do list is ridiculously long, maybe we’ve packed on too many “shoulds” in there. We stress about feeling stressed! But with overwhelm, there’s also the feeling of lack of control, and lack of clarity – we’re going to address those with two strategies to help you move forward.

It’s surprising how often each of us worry about our social situation or experience loneliness and lack of connection, yet how little time we spend exploring ourselves. I’ve learned that spending time by myself actually enhances my ability to connect with other people. It turns out that as I spend time understanding myself it helps me understand and connect with others.

I choose to live my life now empowering those weak be it by their cognitive delay, their socioeconomic status, or their lack of social confidence. Despite being a victim of child abuse and the long range effects of it, I choose to rise above. So many people stay stuck there or become abusers themselves.

At first, this title makes us feel like we’re entering a dark room. But I promise this darkness won’t stay for long, and by the end of the article, as our mind understands and gets comfortable with this truth of life, we will see bursts of light.

Our work often puts us down, bringing stress, suffering, and pain into our lives. However, we’re intellectual and spiritual beings. Our mind is not subject to our thoughts while our thoughts are subject to thoughts. Simply put, use your WILL to change the way you think, and you WILL achieve harmony and happiness even if your work is pressing you harshly.

These occasional feelings of apprehension about our future distract us from our authentic journey. What can we do when we feel this way? If this is where you are at, bring your focus back to the moment. Norman Fischer tells us, “No matter how much or how little we're doing, we're always just doing what we're doing, simply living this one moment of our lives.”

I attended a workshop recently on the topic of flow or what some people refer to as “the zone.”  We were discussing that professional athletes, musicians, and experts, create their best work in the zone. So, is being in “the zone” just for the extraordinary or can we mere mortals, doing well but seeking to do better, learn the tricks of the trade?  

The trap I was falling into was the tendency to judge each and every experience on the scale of my likes and dislikes. If we truly want to learn how to embrace each moment of our lives, rather than pulling some close and pushing others away, we need to understand that a sensation is neither desirable nor undesirable.

I like it because you can embark on whatever you wish. How delightful it would be if we all, instead of "having to do", " should get done" or "must finish", we simply embarked on every day, every task, every thing as though we were compelled by this work to simply journey without necessarily knowing the ending.