When I look around, I find an increasing number of our fellow beings in one or more of the below states;
- Don’t find meaning and fulfillment in the work they are doing.
- Unhappy about how their physical wellbeing is.
- Unable to fulfill their personal desires – sports, travel, hobbies etc.
- Feeling stuck in their relationship with spouse/partner.
- Feeling constantly disturbed mentally / emotionally
- Unable to experience quality family life.
- Lonely because they do not have friends and relationship.
- Unhappy with their overall quality of life.
- Forced to remain in the job they don’t like.
One could argue that ‘happiness is a state of mind’ and can be felt irrespective of circumstances one is in. In my view we must apply this phrase a bit more thoughtfully rather than in a general always-true sense. Let me elaborate.
Granted that life is not an all-the-time-high situation, it is certain that you are going to feel unhappy during your lows or when you are still in transition towards what you are working on.
However, continuing to stay in situation that are keeping you unhappy and miserable is failing to choose happiness. In this context, we need to challenge and question the thought or operating belief that ‘happiness is a state of mind’. How could one ignore important aspects of life & keep a happy state of mind?
- How can one feel happy if you are stuck in a kind of work that you don’t find meaning and fulfillment in and are not doing anything about it?
- How can one feel happiness when you are living with the person you don’t feel alive with?
- How can one feel happiness without having a deeper connection with your kids, family, and friends?
- How can one be happy if you are not able to fulfill your hobbies or anything that you want to personally do?
Nonetheless, we all end up there for whatever reason. Choosing to remain in those unwanted situations for a long time and feel unhappy is highest level of negligence or irresponsibility towards your own and only life you have got on this planet.
Therefore, the question is, why so many people continue to remain unhappy and let their only life pass by?
When you ask this question, people often reason that ‘that is life’, ‘one cannot get everything in life’ or ‘one has to be practical in life’ or ‘everybody is not lucky to get everything’, etc. etc.
In my view all these responses are the conditioned responses that people are under the influence of and are unaware of the impact until it is too late. Let me elaborate.
We all brought up by parents, teachers, family, others in a society. During this period, since we are dependent, we learn from others mostly be imitation or by listening, accepting, and adopting what we are told. And since society in which we grow up has history, practices and strongly held, followed & protected norms, we grow up acquiring and following those norms & practices as a way of our lives. During the entire period of growing up we are told repeatedly, taught rigorously, groomed to follow the norm. Anytime our instincts made us deviate, we are told, coerced, forced, or intimidated ‘Don’t’.
Some of the dominant or most influencing norms or practices which form deep rooted habits in us are.
- Safeguard ourselves from dangers or avert any form of risk or uncertainty. We are stopped every time we tried to sway from the norm. We are shown the fear if we do not follow the norm. Our brains are trained and get wired to be safe from dangers and we continue to operate and bring up our children with this mindset. Trying anything that is new or different from set norm is then considered risk and is discouraged.
- Because we are younger, our elders want us to ‘do what they tell us to do’ (to sit, to read, to eat, to wash, to listen, to do, etc.), and this habit gets so ingrained in our brains that we stop thinking independently and always looking for instructions from somebody to tell us what to do.
- During the 1980s & 1990s when world business was still not globalized, overall economic development was not as it is in 21st century, ‘making a living was given more importance than doing what you like (passion)’. Because of this people survived in one job for their entire career even though they did not like it. However, the parenting and conditioning of mind has not fully evolved out of this era and even now children are often advised by parents to get educated into a stream for the sole reason that it pays well. They often discourage their children away from their passion or interest area which seem unexplored or does not guarantee steady income. Most of the time the intention is to secure employability at the cost of doing what you love.
- Another important and prevalent practice is coercing people chose who they want to spend their life with. Though there is a visible change in this practice in the recent years, but it is still a deep-rooted norm that parents or family feel responsible to find the match and marry their adult children. In other words, they decide who you spend your life with.
- Since our slates are clean, we form our own religious beliefs solely based on how we are brought up without having an independent thought even when we have grown up.
Many a times we follow a social norm because not following it would put us outside of the society we are part of and we don’t want to be standing alone and exposed even though we deeply believe there is nothing wrong in not following a practice that does not serve any purpose any longer. This is the reason why even though age old traditional ritualistic practices do not serve any purpose but most of us blindly follow them for decades or even for the duration of our entire lifetime.
We acquire a thinking, mindset and beliefs based on above repetitive practices that we accept them as ‘way of being’ and we make choices for the rest of our lives. Our mind is conditioned, and we live our lives out of those mindsets and beliefs.
Having grown up, we must closely examine and reprogram our mind to change your life for a fulfilling and meaningful experience. Check out our blog “how you can transform your life”.
