Supercoach - Michael Neill [17]
When you really stop to think about it, you realize that you can only choose which thoughts to dwell on and make important, not which ones pop into your head at any given moment.
This is where people come to what seems like a real sticking point. As one of my clients once put it, “If happiness doesn’t come from what I have or what I do, and I can’t choose my thoughts, doesn’t that leave me kind of screwed?”
That’s certainly the conclusion some people come to. They decide that happiness is completely outside their control, and they give up on the pursuit. Often they actually begin to feel better when they stop trying so hard to be happy, leading them to another false conclusion: that happiness can only be pursued indirectly.
The reason why that’s a false conclusion is because it still makes happiness into a “thing”—something we can have or not have, pursue directly or indirectly, successfully get, or, if we’re not careful, lose.
Some people, in their pursuit of connection and well-being—or as we’re calling it, “happiness”—decide that since they can’t control which thoughts come into their heads, the thing to do is to try to stop thinking altogether. For reasons you’ll understand in a few minutes, this seems to work, leading them into a complex set of routines, prayer, meditation practices, and a variety of other disciplines all designed to at least temporarily stop thought. Since feelings of peace and well-being often follow these practices, the practices themselves appear to be the means to a happy end. But the problem with all of them is that they take practice—and while that may seem a small price to pay for such a precious jewel, the vast majority of people are unwilling or unable to put in 20 years of daily meditation for 20 minutes of daily bliss.
So let’s take another look at our fundamental premise:
The one thing inherent in all these notions is the idea that misery and joy are somehow things that are outside us, and that we need to do things in order to get them. But here’s another way of looking at things, one that stands our usual notions of where to go to find well-being on their head:
A quick look into a baby’s eyes will reveal that we’re born at peace—in tune with the infinite, in touch with our bliss, resting in the well of our being. But even when we’re babies, our very human needs from time to time interfere with our connection to this innate well-being. We experience physical discomfort, and because we don’t yet understand the source of that discomfort, we do the best we know how to do—we scream bloody murder! Then, to our delight and amazement, someone comes and “makes it better”—they feed our hunger, dry our bottoms, entertain our nascent brains with funny noises and roller-coaster-type movements . . . and before we know it, we’re nestled back into the bosom of our innate well-being.
Over time, it’s the most natural thing in the world for us to begin to connect and even attribute that return to well-being to the people or activities that seem to be causing it—we’re okay because Mommy loves us; we’re okay because Daddy protects us; we’re okay because the people around us, for the most part, appear to have our well-being at heart. And then one day we do something in our joy that Mommy or Daddy doesn’t like—we splash paint on a wall or cry when Daddy is tired—and suddenly the ocean of love we’re used to swimming in is filled with sharks and other monsters too horrible to mention. Before long, we’ve bought into the myth that love and well-being exist outside us, and the need for a persona is born.
But well-being—happiness, connection, love, peace, spirit—is our essential nature. So all our attempts to capture these feelings from out in the world, no matter how well intended and practically followed, are doomed to fail. Not because happiness and well-being are unattainable, but simply because it’s impossible to find what has never been lost.
This leads us to our second secret:
Well-being is not the fruit of something you do;
it is the essence of who you are.
There is nothing