May 11, 2014 by Sara Weston

Drop the desire/aversion approach to life.

Most people spend an enormous amount of energy trying to attract the things they desire and repel the things they are averse to. The things most people want to attract are relationship, money, success and recognition. The things most people try to keep away are the things they are afraid of or that make them uncomfortable, such as being alone, unloved, in pain, or appearing dumb or unsuccessful. In this desire/aversion approach, the basis of our thoughts and actions revolve around trying to get what we desire and avoid what we are averse to.

The problem with this approach is twofold. First, it’s not a very reliable approach because if your happiness is based on getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want, you’re bound to be unhappy a lot of the time! We can look at our own lives and the people around us and see that the world just doesn’t go our way a lot of the time. And even when we do get what we want, the happiness that it creates can be very transient. The new car (or house, or job, or boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife) that you wanted may turn out to not be what you expected, or after you have had it for a while it’s not as exciting; you get used to it and it no longer thrills you, or you wreck it and that makes you unhappy. In all these cases, the happiness brought on by these things should absolutely be enjoyed, but they should be recognized as undependable sources of lasting happiness.

Second, this desire/aversion approach to happiness consumes an enormous amount of mental energy. All of the strategizing, scheming and avoiding required to bring what you desire and repel what you don’t, creates a busy mind which blocks you from seeing and feeling your innate light. So paradoxically, all the mental activity devoted to getting what you want so you’ll be happy, actually makes you feel less happy.

Dropping the desire/aversion approach to life doesn’t mean you don’t try to achieve things, it just means you don’t look to those achievements for intrinsic, lasting happiness. They are fun, many times worth doing or having, just don’t expect them to be your ultimate source of happiness. And happily, when you stop clinging so tightly to the things you desire, you actually enjoy them more because you’re not so afraid of losing them.

The alternative to this system is to get your happiness from the light of eternity. When you go into the light you can’t help but get a smile on your face. After meditating you can do the most mundane things and be radiantly happy because you feel that light in your being. From this place, when good things happen to you, you can enjoy them and when bad things happen, your boat won’t be so rocked by the world not going your way. After some years of meditation, your happiness will barely be affected by what’s going on in the world. This might sound so strange as to not even be appealing, but I can tell you it’s the best place to be. You’re not unrealistic about what is going on in the world, nor are you spaced out or ungrounded, you are simply getting your happiness from light instead of from things working out in the world.

Excerpted from the book How to Be Happy NOW…Even if Things Aren’t Going Your Way, available on Amazon, Amazon UK and Amazon DE. © 2013 – 2014 Sara Weston. A FREE excerpt of the book is available here.

April 22, 2014 by Sara Weston

Analyze mistakes to learn how to avoid making them again, and then move on.

Don’t wallow in a mistake you made in the past by feeling bad or guilty. These sentiments won’t help you make changes or improvements and can actually drain or even immobilize you. Instead, analyze the mistake, identify what didn’t work and what you need to do differently going forward, then move on.

April 9, 2014 by Sara Weston

Happiness Tip: Reduce your time on the Internet!

Please, I urge you to fact check this tip for yourself!!! – Sara

The Internet is a tremendous depressant. After spending fifteen or twenty minutes reading the web, you feel less energized, less hopeful and worst of all, less motivated, regardless of the content you’re reading! Fact check this for yourself. When you are feeling good one morning, write down your state of mind and what you feel like doing for the day, then surf the Internet for twenty minutes. Next, look at your state of mind. How do you feel—do you feel differently than you did twenty minutes ago? Most people find that surfing the Internet takes their edge away. The remedy is to be quick and efficient when doing online banking or shopping transactions and to reduce the amount of time spent reading and watching mindless “entertainment.” You can even download information from the Internet and read it offline. I promise you will feel better if you follow this tip!

March 17, 2014 by Sara Weston

Don’t knock others who are successful. The only person you should be competitive with is yourself.

Joshua Tree There is enough success for everyone, so there is no need to knock someone else’s success. You can use other people’s accomplishments to inspire you, but being competitive with others isn’t helpful because it shifts your state of mind to a more primitive one based on fear and territoriality, which isn’t a happy place to live inside your mind. Besides, being competitive with others doesn’t help you win anyway. In fact, you’ll be more “in the zone” and perform better when you just focus on your own work without the distraction of monitoring your competition.

February 16, 2014 by Sara Weston

Relationships

Protect your important relationships. Take steps to protect the relationships that are most important to you. When you are in a situation where you can say something that you know will hurt the relationship, you simply don’t. I’m not referring to true issues that need to be discussed, but rather the myriad of petty things we say to friends and loved ones to prove that we’re right, our way is more sensible, we have better taste, etc. These petty comments erode our relationships and aren’t worth it when we really care about the relationship.

Likewise, let relationships go when they are no longer appropriate for you. People change over time and in different ways, so that someone you were great friends with at one point may not be a good fit anymore. There’s so much romanticization around the beauty of lasting friendships that we may feel obligated to spend time with people that we don’t really enjoy anymore. Let them go.

January 24, 2014 by Sara Weston

Small Happiness Tip: Respond to Personal Emails/Texts On Your Own Timetable

2 Messages

Respond to personal emails and texts on your own timetable. Don’t be manipulated into answering someone right away when you’re not in the mood because it’s a social convention. Most of the emails and texts we receive are not critical and responses to them can wait. (I’m not suggesting you ignore critical messages!) Just because it is easy to be connected, doesn’t mean we should be. We all feel more serene and less pulled in multiple directions when we’re not constantly monitoring our phones and email.

January 18, 2014 by Sara Weston

Your Experience of Life Is Determined By Your State of Mind

Tips-Illus-Movies2 How you experience your day-to-day life is based on your state of mind. This concept is illustrated perfectly in the movie Groundhog Day, where the protagonist Phil (played by Bill Murray) experiences the exact same day over and over again. In this day where he encounters the same people and events repeatedly, the only thing that changes in the day is his state of mind. He experiences the exact same day in many different ways, from cynical to amazed to suicidal to supremely content, with the changes arising only from his mind state and consequent actions.

In the beginning when he realizes that he is stuck living the same day over and over again (a metaphor for reincarnation and being stuck on the wheel of life, death and rebirth), he is exhilarated at the perceived lack of consequences for his actions. He pursues his desires, stealing money from the armored car, tricking women into dating him, and most especially, manipulating Rita (played by Andie MacDowell) into liking him. But when he becomes bored with the money and dates and is rejected by Rita, his state of mind turns suicidal and he futilely kills himself over and over again, always waking up again in the same day.

1993, GROUNDHOG DAY When he finally decides to stop being self-destructive and indulgent, he begins to use his day to improve himself and help others, and in the process becomes content. Rita is then naturally attracted to his more authentic self and, without even having to try, he finally gets the girl (becomes enlightened) and wakes up in a new day (exits off the wheel of life, death and rebirth). So like Phil, you too have the opportunity to choose the outcome of your day and thus your life, by choosing your state of mind.

January 8, 2014 by Sara Weston

Core Practice: Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the process of watching what is passing through your mind and stopping the thoughts that are draining or unhealthy. Most things only need to be thought through once. The rest of the thinking, the mulling over and obsessing, is not only draining, it actually makes it harder to objectively see what is best. When you keep your mind quiet and don’t play your worries, schemes and dreams over and over again, you create space for inner knowledge to bubble up and be heard.

Mindfulness isn’t limited to stopping negative or repetitive thoughts, it also includes not holding conversations in your mind with people you know. A lot of people talk to other people in their minds, explaining their beliefs and defending their positions. Not only is this a waste of energy, again it prevents your mind from being still. When your mind is still you can more clearly see the pointers in the universe. The universe gives us all kinds of information, but you have to be still to see it. When your mind is going round and round defending your ego, you miss these pointers, not to mention the relaxation and brightness that comes from being still.

The good news is that after practicing mindfulness for a while it becomes automatic, so as negative or repetitive thoughts and inner conversations arise, you naturally stop them and redirect your mind to higher, calmer thoughts or no thoughts at all.

November 20, 2013 by Sara Weston

Happiness Tip: Remove emotionally heavy items from your house.

Objects can have people and memories associated with them, and if these associations are sad, depressing, angry or make you feel bad for any reason, then get rid of those things. When you have items in your house that have heavy associations with them, a part of your mind feels the heaviness every time you look at them and it drags you down. Getting rid of these items is one of the quickest and easiest ways to feel better on a day-to-day basis.

Some examples of emotionally heavy items to get rid of, such as jewelry or gifts from old lovers or the bed you shared with an ex, are pretty intuitive and most people get rid of these naturally. Less obvious are items that have associations with people you love, but don’t make you feel good. For example, one woman I know always felt uncomfortable in her living room, so avoided it. She described the room as having fairly standard living room furniture and about twenty to thirty family photos on the mantel and piano. After some questioning, I realized the photos made her nostalgic and sad about the passage of time. Though she is quite close with her children who are now adults, and doesn’t want to go back to the times captured in the pictures even if she could, the photos made her sad. I suggested she box up the photos and put them in a closet as an experiment to see if it would make the room feel better. She put the photos away and was amazed at how much lighter and more enjoyable the room felt. You know there is no rule that says you have to have pictures of your kids or relatives or any other thing in your house. If something makes you feel weird, for whatever reason, then get rid of it. There are social conventions about what the house of a good friend, mom, partner, etc. looks like, but these are just imposed ideas that you don’t have to follow. If something makes you feel heavy, get rid of it!

If you feel too attached to an item that you think you should get rid of, put it in a box in an out of the way place and see what it’s like to live without it. Most people find they don’t miss the object at all and end up getting rid of it.

October 28, 2013 by Sara Weston

Don’t own other people’s thoughts and feelings

Gulls_cropped A large portion of the thoughts and feelings you have are not yours, rather you pick them up from others. This may seem entirely shocking and untrue, but you can do an experiment to fact check this for yourself. Go for a hike alone on an uncrowded trail and take note of the number of thoughts you have. After you have been hiking for an hour or so, you’ll notice your mind is very still and that you don’t have many thoughts. Next go to a mall or someplace crowded and walk around for a while and observe how many thoughts are running through your mind. In a crowded place you’ll notice your mind becomes very loud and full of thoughts.

It’s helpful to be aware of this phenomenon because if you’re around an angry person, you’ll notice that you’ll begin to have angry thoughts. If you’re around someone who is worried about money, you’ll be worried about money. If you spend a lot of time with someone who is depressed, you’ll feel tired or hopeless when you’re around them. When you realize that a lot of the things that you think and feel aren’t coming from you, you can be an “educated consumer” and not spend as much time with people or in places where you pick up crappy thoughts and feelings. You can also learn to not act on the emotions that you pick up externally that aren’t yours.