MNCT 608 - The Source of Wellbeing
A few months back my best friend and his wife had a baby named
Kai. When we went to visit baby Kai in the hospital, I was
struck as I often am when in the presence of extremely young
children at how peaceful and almost blissed out he seemed to be.
In fact, it was difficult to look at him without falling into a
state of wellbeing myself.
Judging by the goofy looks on all the grownup faces in the room,
I realized I was not alone in having this experience. Since I
make a large part of my living by assisting people in accessing
their own happiness and wellbeing in the pursuit of their goals
and in the midst of challenging situations, I began to wonder
how it is that that state of wellbeing we were all born into
seems to fade over time and become more and more difficult to
access.
Here’s where I’ve got to with it so far…
The way most people think about life is that their experience is
a continuum ranging from misery to joy. The game of life is
figuring out which things take you towards joy (and doing more
of them) and which things take you away from misery (and do less
of them).
At one level of consciousness, the path towards joy seems to be
marked by having the right stuff - plenty of money, a good job,
a great relationship and a nice home.
But we all recognize that there are plenty of people who have
all those things on paper but are still pretty miserable in
themselves. So we begin to look deeper and see that it’s not
your stuff but your *actions* that make you happy or unhappy.
Do the right thing and you feel good about yourself; do the
wrong thing and your conscience will haunt you until the end of
time.
The problem with this theory is that we all know that as often
as not, good things happen to bad people and bad things happen
to good people. And though we may think that “doing the right
thing” should be its own reward, life viewed from this level
doesn’t seem remotely fair.
It’s thoughts like this that lead many people into a more
internal-direction in their pursuit of happiness and wellbeing,
and we quickly see that it’s not what happens but what we think
about what happens that determines our experience. So we begin
experimenting with things like affirmations and positive
thinking, sure that if we could just control the flow of
thoughts through our own brains, we would have the key to
life-long happiness.
A lot of people get stuck at this level of understanding because
of one simple, innocent mistake - they attribute their
inability to think only positive thoughts to a lack of skill or
effort on their part instead of recognizing that the theory
itself is based on an incorrect premise - the idea that you can
actually control which thoughts come into your head.
When you really stop to think about it, you realize that you can
only choose which thoughts to dwell upon and make important -
not which ones pop into your head in any given moment.
At this point, people come to what seems like an real sticking
point. As one of my clients once put it, “if happiness doesn’t
come from what I have or what I do, and I can’t choose my
thoughts, doesn’t that leave me kind of screwed?”
And that’s certainly the conclusion some people come to. They
decide that happiness is completely outside of their control,
and they give up on the pursuit. Often times, they actually
begin to feel better when they stop trying so hard to be happy,
leading them to another false conclusion - that happiness can
only be pursued indirectly.
The reason that’s a false conclusion is because it still makes
happiness into a “thing” - something which we can have or not
have, pursue directly or indirectly, successfully get or if
we’re not careful, lose.
Some people take their pursuit of connection and well-being, or
as we’re calling it “happiness”, and they decide that since we
can’t control which thoughts come into our heads, the thing to
do is to stop thinking altogether.
For reasons you’ll see in a few minutes, this seems to work,
leading people into a complex set of routines, prayer,
meditation practices, and a variety of other disciplines all
designed to at least temporarily stop thought.
Since peace and well-being often follow these practices, the
practices themselves appear to be the means to a happy end. But
again, the problem with all of these practices is that they
take practice - and while that may seem a small price to pay for
such a precious jewel, there is still another level of
understanding beyond this one.
What if, like the baby Kai, we are born at peace - in tune with
the infinite, in touch with our bliss, resting in the well of
our being. But even as babies, our very human needs from time
to time interfere with our connection with this innate
well-being. We experience physical discomfort. Because we do
not yet understand the source of our discomfort, we do the best
we know how to do - we scream bloody murder!
Then, to our delight and amazement, someone comes (this is in a
functional household) and “makes it better” - they feed our
hunger, dry our bottom, entertain our nascent brains with funny
noises and rollercoaster type movements, and before we know it,
we are back in touch with our innate well-being.
Over time, it would be the most natural thing in the world for
us to connect/attribute that return to well-being to the people
or activities that seem to be causing it - we are OK because
Mommy loves us, we are OK because Daddy protects us, we are OK
because the people around us, for the most part, appear to have
our well-being at heart.
And then one day we do something in our joy that mommy or daddy
doesn’t like - we splash colors on a wall, or cry when daddy’s
tired, and suddenly the ocean of love we are used to swimming
in is filled with sharks and other monsters.
Before long, we have bought in to the myth of love and
well-being outside us.
But well-being - happiness, connection, love, peace, spirit - is
your nature. And the reason you can never consistently hang on
to it when you pursue it from the outside in is that it’s
already inside you. It would be like looking for your keys in
the street when you had left them in the house - no matter how
long and hard you look, you can never find what’s not there.
Sitting in the hospital that day, watching the baby Kai as he
slept off the rigors of his birth, it became clear to me that
the source of well-being comes from deep inside us. It is not
the fruit of something we do; it is the essence of who we are.
And all our attempts to find wellbeing from outside ourselves,
no matter how well intended and practically followed, are
doomed to fail. Not because happiness and wellbeing are
unattainable, but simply because it is impossible to find what
has never been lost.
Have fun, learn heaps, and take some time this week to hang out
in your own good feelings. Worst case, you get to feel good;
best case, they may lead you all the way back to the source.
With love,
Michael
PS - If you’d like to explore these ideas further and London
seems a bit far to travel, why not join me and Oprah’s happiness
guru Dr. Robert Holden for an evening talk in New York City on
June 20th?
For more information and to book, visit:
