I have been working on the science of happiness for a long time, receiving training, giving and developing my consultancy practice within this framework. In addition, I have benefited from many teachings over the years to cure my current illness. After all, I have a few personal implications for healing, well-being, and happiness that I would like to share with you.
People generally think that the state of being in eternal joy and meeting their expectations is "happiness". However, finding meaning, getting help and supporting, and developing different perspectives even in difficult times is one of the most important investments of happiness. It is even more valuable than having everything you want. Because having everything you want causes us to get used to it quickly and get bored and pursue a new desire due to hedonic adaptation, getting through difficult times by finding meaning and getting social support improves us and our relationships.
According to positive psychology, social relationships and meaning, which are the components of happiness, are the two most important elements that give people hope and accelerate their recovery. Then comes positive emotions, being in the moment and in the flow, and success. However, we often tend to prioritize those that come next.
Recovery, just like happiness, is not the end point to be reached. It is a lifetime journey where you discover different layers at every stop you arrive. Like the layers of an onion, each micro-healing or purification brings a new discovery. Knowing that there is something new under that layer makes you realize that the healing is a lifetime deepening.
If we are lucky and working on it, we are on the path of healing and happiness by constantly experiencing the positive and negative and making inferences. As we move up the spiral of being, we experience joy and pain at a wider frequency than before. In other words, our container is expanding. The more experiences and meaning we make, the more likely our container is to expand.
While experiencing all these, being able to hold on to a solid understanding of meaning enables us to internalize the experiences patiently. It can easily fall apart when there is no meaning, "Why me?" We can lose our direction wit their complaints.
Looking positive, being happy is not just experiencing good things or hoping good things will happen; It's about seeing the good, the teaching, the positive even in negative situations. As we ask more and more what difficult situations taught us, how they improve us, what they add to our outlook on life, we consolidate meaning in our lives.
As meaning becomes more visible in our lives, not only our present and future, but also our past can change. Now think, what could a negative experience have taught you, how could it empower you? What can you be grateful for about this experience?
One of my most valuable discoveries about life and happiness is that in the absence of meaning, happiness becomes a purely pleasurable and addictive cycle, which we call Hedonic Happiness. Hedonic happiness, unfortunately, does not make you happy in the long run. Of course, I cannot make a claim like "Let's remove pleasures, pleasures, positive emotions from our lives". Life would be very uninspired without these. But a life that contains only these, devoid of meaning, cannot go beyond a shallow fragment that has not deepened enough.
I wish to focus on the richness of our inner treasures, which we will discover as we deepen, instead of the habits of the consuming culture imposed on us. So that every frame of our movies is worth watching.
Interesting