How to be happy part IV: self-reflecion

It is our default state to be happy and we all work to that goal, one way or another. We all want to be happy and so this whole ‘how to be happy’ will be separated in four parts:

The first is about my life
The second is just pure theory
The third will be practical tips
The fourth will be about self-reflection

In our quest to find happiness we came to the last post (oooh) and this will for me the toughest one to write. You have to do the reflection, I am only going to write a guide which you can follow if you want to.

being honest

Before I start with the guide, you need to be completely honest with yourself. Not with me, not with your boy/girlfriend, only you. That is the toughest part for you. Listen to your emotions, they always tell you if you are lying or not. As we have seen:

happening -> thought -> emotions -> reaction

So when I ask you something you will feel if you are lying or not. Never underestimate the power of emotions. Feel how your emotions change or doesn’t change.

limiting belief

The problem with limiting belief is that it’s like blocks building on each other. It always starts with a thought and the more evidence you find to support that thought it will become an opinion. Add more evidence that support your opinion and it will become a mentality and add again more evidence it will become belief. You can’t separate it from each other; they are really built to become your worldview.

The evidence that we are talking about can be all kind of things: it can be things you heard, saw or read. It can even be if you keep thinking about it and find logical arguments that support your thought or opinion. Thoughts and opinions are fluid and in or conscious, but the mentality and the beliefs aren’t anymore and it is by those two that you see the world through.

The biggest problem with that is you can’t change mentality or beliefs by just saying it or come up with a bit of evidence to undermine the other person his mentality or belief. The only person who can change the subconscious of the other person is the other person himself. When he has knowledge of his worldview he can search for evidence that doesn’t support it any longer and has the evidence starts to sink in, slowly his subconscious changes and so does his worldview.

You just have to see if that belief is helping you are not. If it doesn’t than it is a limiting belief and I recommend changing it in something that will help you that support you in your life. For example: if you have the belief that friendships doesn’t last long, then you can find evidence that undermine that belief and evidence that friendships does last long.

self-fulfilling prophecy

One of the things people do if they have a limiting belief is acting and reacting so that it will support the belief. Otherwise his world collapses and that is something we all try to avoid. So how do we make our self-fulfilling prophecy?

Because we see the world through our limiting belief, our thinking is affected by it. Through our thinking we handle and because our thinking is affected so is our action, which lead to an experience that most likely causes pain and we see it as evidence to support our limiting belief. For example:

I have a belief that women superior to men and they don’t deserve it. So I will treat women as that they are inferior to men and by doing so they react negative to me and so do my friends, which leads to my conclusion that women are superior because they act in some way and so do other people (my friends) just because they are women and the cycle is back from where I start.

This is a good example of how the self-fulfilling prophecy works. As you can see the limiting belief is something that doesn’t make sense and the way they react to me is evidence of the thing that doesn’t make sense. So now how do we stop this cycle?

Easy, we reframe it. So as in the example above I would reframe the ‘women are superior to men and don’t deserve it’ into ’women and men aren’t superior nor inferior to each other’ if I get a negative reaction back I can reframe ’ you see? Women think they are superior to men because other men do the same as they do’ in to ’maybe she has a bad day’

self-reflection

The question is how do we know what are beliefs are and if they are inhibiting us or not?
The best thing is that we ask our self questions and we analyze our actions. So if you acted in some way, then why did you do it? What were you thinking? Don’t forget our actions come from our thinking either conscious or unconscious. This is the toughest part for me. Because I don’t know you at all, so I can’t really get to know your worldview. But follow this diagram and you will get a good idea how your worldview is:

You have to determine yourself that the way you act or react or think is a limiting belief or a downwards spiral as we have seen in my previous post. If you have a belief that people are here to get you, then you are going to be having a hard time to be happy. If you have a belief that people are here to help you and want to make your life for the better, then you have more change to be happy.

I have given you the tools to make yourself happy. As I said in my first post I have read books and books on how to be happy because I wasn’t. I have shown you how we can reaction, how our brain works and how you can make a change in you thinking. I’ve talked about the quick fixes and the slow fixes, but I can’t do it for you, I only have shown you the way. If you want to walk the path of happiness, then it is your choice.

Until you have made a chose,

Take care!