Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Just Because You Don’t Know how To Be Happy Doesn’t Mean Happiness Is Not Worth Pursuing

Pierre Chatel Innocenti Happy blog

The purpose of life is happiness.

Your life is supposed to be an ongoing series of happy experiences that get better and better. Then you return to where you came, where most of you still is now, reveling in an indescribable bliss. This kind of life is possible when you’re chronically happy.

We call it living “happily ever after.” You are meant to live that.

So, why is it so many don’t? It’s simple really.

They have forgotten how. As a result, they’re literally “doing” it wrong.

Maybe you are too.

Let’s fix that.

blog
Happy isn’t a result. It’s a state of being. This is important.

How to be happy

Happiness is not the result of doing. It is a result of being.

In other words, it’s a “being state”.

You become happy by being happy.

“That sounds like a circular argument Perry. What do you mean?”

First, let’s clear up some misconceptions.

Pursing happiness through consumption or acts, is bound to disappoint because the result you’re looking for from the act your taking isn’t meant to be permanent. It’s meant to make you want more.

Which it does.

That’s why the good-feeling from doing is fleeting.

When you figure out how to be happy as a being state, not through doing things, then actions you take from that being state are the way you express your happiness, not how you achieve happiness.

In other words, your doing is an expression of your happy state, not a means to the end of being happy.

To create happiness you first have to understand what happiness is.

Happiness is an emotion. Yeah, you know that.

But, what is the role of an emotion? Have you thought about that? In all the conversations we have about this, no one (so far) has thought thoroughly about what emotions are for. Or come to the right answer.

They just accept their existence.

Armed with emotions’ purpose, you can then distinguish being happy from not being happy. This is the calibration step. You calibrate your awareness to recognize when you’re happy.

Next, you train yourself to experience happiness using your calibration as a guide.

Then and only then can you tell when you’re not happy and thus return to the state of happiness at will. Once you’ve practiced that distinction, you’re now ready for the next, and most important, step.

Here is where 99.9 percent of people fail:

You have to stay in a happy state consistently enough that you create “happiness momentum”. As we’ve described above, this happiness results from nothing other than your say-so.

IMG_0728 blog
Perpetual happiness begins with you being happy for no other reason other than because you say so.

Here’s why this is important.

Once you have created our own happiness momentum, then you’ve got it all. Because a consistent, perpetually happy state is the open door through which all you want comes to you with very little effort.

There’s a host of other things you have to know in order to get this state to the point of perpetual momentum. For one, you must learn to recognize the signs indicating it’s working.

What do we mean by that?

how you create reality blog
It’s simple science!

The world around you is your subjective life experience. Your life experience is composed of a series of accretion events – seemingly random compositions of people, circumstances and objects coming together in a certain timing.

These accretion events are a process guided by your attention. Your emotions play a significant role in this attention-guidance.

In the happy state, you are deliberately guiding your life experience as it emerges around you. You direct the assembly of events and people and elements and circumstances in a timing that is delightful.

When you’re not happy, you’re doing the opposite of that.

It’s that simple.

Nearly everyone on the planet can’t recognize this is how life works. They have been conditioned out of that ability, including the ability to use emotions like happiness the way they are supposed to be used.

And that’s why people try to “make” happiness happen through doing: buying things, going on trips, being with others, etc.

The pursuit of happiness doesn’t work because the pursuer is blind to the fact that she carries her happiness with her.

Happiness is not found in the physical world. That’s not what the physical world is for.

We know this seems preposterous pseudoscience. But a little test on your part can prove that it works 100% of the time. Like many things requiring mastery though, you need someone who can remind you how to use the process and see the signs of it working.

Make your life purpose happiness and you will live happily every after. We guarantee it.

 

Posted on

How to end up with the rest of the sheep

ROBERT COLINS LESS WORK
Photo: Robert Colins

Greater effort doesn’t mean faster (or better) results.

Higher-order refinement aka mastery, in any field, has more to do with what you don’t do than what you do.

Take martial arts for example. At the highest, most esoteric levels, ability comes through stripping away all effort, thereby allowing a soft, gentle…yes…childlike…approach.

In those rarefied skill levels, a perfectly placed step, outstretched hand or flexed knee are more devastating than a full-out punch or kick.

Such devastation isn’t possible unless you are trained not to resist the natural order of things. That training never involves hard work. It always involves play.

Devastating ability is not a product of what the budoka is doing, it is a product of what she is not doing (thinking, trying to make something happen, resisting, anticipating). For in the absence of all that doing she is present to higher-order intelligence, that which has already decided the battle and orchestrates events, including her moves, toward that end.

The same is the case with all things. Life is recursive. Meaning: in every instance, large or small, you will find the same life lessons repeated over and over.

You don’t need a 15th degree black belt to develop then apply this mastery in your life. What you do need is a willingness to go against the grain of “common” wisdom.

You can lead a sheep to wisdom, but you can’t make it think

You’ve likely heard all this before. In the same way you have heard how to get fit, succeed in life, break a habit or form a new one.

We all have knowledge.

But a lot of us are still overweight, still struggling to find success (however you define that), chewing our nails, addicted to masturbation or porn or both, or wanting to go to bed every night before 11 p.m. but still ending up awake at 1 a.m.

Knowledge is useless unless it is applied in a framework capable of producing mastery. Being caught up in the way everyone else is doing it rarely leads to mastery or success. Instead, you end up with the rest of the sheep.

This guy got it. And this guy, in the realm of finding a job.

Both followed their inspiration, not what everyone else was doing. Both got extraordinary results.

Both stories tell of events no one could orchestrate – seemingly random (it’s not random) single events, dovetailing with others leading to the outcome both desired.

You’re no different. What you want is already yours. What’s holding back the having of it?

Perhaps it’s the stories you’re telling yourself – more in your actions than in your words – which perpetuate the same results everyone else is getting.

Follow your internal guidance and the world becomes your oyster.

But first, you gotta figure out how to hear. Hint: It starts with play.

Posted on

Taking fulfillment beyond the yoga mat

FB Beyond the yoga mat fereshteh azadi.jpg

There’s something about yoga that keeps many Portlanders coming back for more.

Maybe it’s concentrated focus borne of asana mastery. Or maybe it’s realizing skills, confidence and strength built from years of practice. Or, perhaps it’s love for a particular instructor.

What keeps you coming back?

While yoga can be fulfilling, many Stumptowners lose what they’ve gained once they’ve left the yoga mat.

Common mortal hood waits just outside the studio, with daily stresses, anxieties, relationship drama, work “to dos”, personal insecurities….sheesh…enduring fulfillment can be as fleeting as a chocolate high.

Yoga was meant as a spiritual practice leading to higher consciousness states. How is it it rarely comes that? And when it does, it leaves us as soon as we return to daily life?

Is permanent, ongoing happiness attainable in modern society?

The answer is: yes.

And it’s available to everyone.

It doesn’t require any physical mastery, yoga or otherwise. It just depends on discovering what you’re made of, where you come from, and then living from that.

From there, seemingly miraculously, everything starts to work in life. Negativity disappears as does anxiety and fear.

Long-held and forgotten dreams and desires begin to be fulfilled too.

Happiness becomes the theme of the day, every day. Before you know it, life becomes what it is supposed to be: amazing.

Positively Focused clients, like Stefano, used to think happiness was a fleeting emotion, with no rhyme or reason why happiness came, or went. One moment it’s here, the next gone.

In fact, many Portlanders just like Stefano, never really experience even fleeting happiness.

Many deal with anxiety, depression, seasonal affective “disorder” and runaway substance consumption habits as they try to manufacture a facsimile of real happiness, contentment or distraction at the very least.

And can you blame them?

We have to deal with Portland winters after all. Hello?

What are emotions for anyway? And why are the good ones so fleeting?

At Positively Focused, we know happiness not an end state. It is just the beginning.

Human life holds the potential to deliver not only happiness, but a joy that has no ceiling. That increasing joy can be a continual moment-by-moment experience.

And, that joy can create a life experience where desire after desire is fulfilled. No desire is too small, or too big.

“You wanna die today?”

The other day we were enjoying this state, walking along the Max Station at Pioneer Courthouse Square. We were greeting those around us with our smile and our eyes. We were in joy, understanding that all that is is working in our favor. The next moment, we caught the eye of a young man.

“What you looking at faggot! You wanna die today?” He yelled at us.

“Do you?” we immediately replied.

“Yes!” he said, as he averted his eyes and hurried off.

A shocking exchange of to say the least!

Clearly, this young man, by the look of his dress and the anger in his voice, was struggling. We couldn’t tell whether his struggle was emotional, financial, relationship-related, substance-related or a combination of these.

What was clear: he craves fulfillment and happiness. We all do.

Yet that was not his life experience. Our reflecting his grief back to him, in the same intensity, but through the opposite emotion left him exposed. Not to us. To himself.

His attempt to destroy us with his words revealed him to himself. Faced with our in-the-moment happiness, our young man had no other choice but to speak truth: his life experience is so unfulfilling, he wanted to die.

This brief, intense encounter, showed us, as life always does when you’re positively focused, evidence of what’s possible for everyone: life mastery. A freedom and personal invincibility so profound you become impervious…even to violence.

Happiness and invincibility: everyone has access to such states. It is how life is supposed to be. Yoga is great. It’s as “Portland” as Blue Star Doughnuts.

Like doughnuts, though, it can’t compare to a life filled with lasting happiness, invincibility and a joy that becomes more and more day after day.

How to become invincibly happy

The key to lasting, invincible happiness is simply learning what you’ve forgotten, then practicing daily habits that restore your memory. You are surrounded by everything you need to cultivate these habits. The internet offers tons of information about them.

Like yoga, a daily practice is required. Picking out peacock from a list of asana pictures is one thing. Knowing how to do peacock is another. Actually doing it is yet another.

In the same way, cultivating daily habits leading to invincible happiness comes from daily practice. You may intellectually know the daily habits (you do). Maybe you even know how to do them. But results come from doing them. Regularly. Consistently.

The good news is, unlike learning peacock, lasting happiness doesn’t require learning something new. It only requires remembering what you forgot.

The bad news is it’s hard to know something you forgot. That’s why we offer assistance.

Back to the habits.

One of these habits, for example, is expressing appreciation. Super simple, right? That simplicity masks a bewilderingly powerful habit. Habitually acknowledging all the great things that make up your life, by itself, can do wonders.

Ever heard the phrase “the best place to hide something is in the open”?

Life is like that. We are surrounded with an unlimited number of things worthy of appreciation. Especially in Portland. Can you name a few? We think so.

And in the naming of just a few of those things, with the right mind set, you automatically get a glimpse of what being consistently happy can do for you. Whether you’re on, or off the yoga mat.

Helpful? Feel free to like, share or comment on this article.