There are 4 main emotional states: They are generally happy, specifically happy, specifically unhappy and generally unhappy.
I will take them in reverse order. Generally unhappy is depression. Depression is not being able to see the 10,000 items all around me right now that are amazing: clean air, sunshine, electricity, a working smartphone, smiling strangers, delicious food and all the people involved in making that available to me, and so on. Specifically unhappy is something like being unhappy with the current state of my lovelife, but otherwise being happy.
When I bought my first ever brand new vehicle (a crew cab 4 wheel drive truck to support my healing houses hobby), I dented the passenger side quarter panel within a couple weeks of owning it after having slid into a snowbank. Who knew snowbanks could create big dents?
When the incident first happened, I was tempted to be generally unhappy, deeming my brand new truck ruined and worthless. Soon, reason took over, and despite the need for a costly repair of somewhere in the $1000-2000 range, from about 180 degrees along the driver’s side of the car, the brand new truck still looked immaculate.
This taught me to adopt a viewpoint of specific unhappiness. I still drove my best ever vehicle, it was my first 4 wheel drive vehicle ever during a snowy winter, it had the best stereo ever, and there were many things to be happy about. Yet, there was this specific unhappiness, much of it centered around the shame that I had messed up a brand new vehicle and marred this new treasure so ridiculously quickly. Some major part of that unhappiness revolved on the fact that I took a freak accident and made it about me: I was careless, I couldn’t keep a new truck looking new, did I deserve a nice looking truck, and so on. The dent wasn’t the big deal. My story about what the dent said about me as a person was an unconscious choice I was making that anchored a state of happiness when circumstances for the most part were giving me a huge, warm smile.
Luckily, I recognized that the situation, that created my unhappiness causing story, was fixable, I broke my prior policy of never fixing anything that is both expensive and merely cosmetic on my vehicles. I got the fender repaired and I was back to being specifically happy.
Specifically happy means that while my job at the time was challenging, as was my marriage. My wife was not used to me working on a local project and actually being home 7 nights a week, and some of the strain was showing. Nonetheless, I was truly overjoyed with my truck and really enjoyed my 100 minute daily roundtrip commute. If I had also won the lottery, my now ex-wife had told me she loves me in both words and more importantly deeds, if I had gotten a big promotion and a lifechanging training class to successfully master all the skills to succeed at the new level of responsibility, I might have been generally happy.
Maybe, if I had just had the wisdom at the time to count all my blessings, and tell all the people in my life who are a great blessing to me, I would have gotten much closer to generally happy than I knew how to at the time. If I had known back then that doing something for another person is much more enriching than doing something much bigger for myself, I might have been much more generally happy. But that is all water under the bridge.
Life is a journey. We are always growing and evolving. Part of our intended evolution is toward a higher level of joy and happiness. Most of the time, when we choose to eat, to watch a movie, to buy something, to go somewhere, to listen to a certain variety of music, we are doing it to feel better, to get to a level of greater wellbeing. Often, that state of wellbeing is just slightly less stressed, less anxious, less immersed in our daily challenges, and more grounded, centered, aligned with what nurtures, nourishes, relaxes and renews us. However, as we understand the notion of no longer generalizing unhappiness, but instead making it specific, we move upward on the path toward joy.
As we learn to specifically be happy, about finding a dollar on the ground, about a kind gesture, about great service, about our parents, our bosses and coworkers, all the various relationships that bring richness to life, we move further along the happiness scale.
Once we learn to be generally happy, we are hitting the jackpot. When we realize that happiness is a state of mind, not a state of affairs in our life, when little bad things no longer derail us off our train of deciding to be happy, once we give that decision to be happy the mass and momentum of an 80 Million pound freight train, annoyances (even the ones we used to think are huge) no longer bug us. That is where we all want to end up. That is heaven on earth, nirvana, the promised land, and it’s a state of mind we can start practicing. Join me!