How Can I be Happy? What is Happiness?

Why is happiness so difficult to hold on to? It seems like we are insatiable, anything that pleases us will eventually become stale. This can be a force for good, it pushes us to do more than rest on our laurels, to go out and succeed in life. There is a huge rush that comes with pursuing feelings of lust, ambition, hate, anger and jealousy; but with it life can become a series of conflicts and problems. It can be easy to lose heart.

You may think: "If have a house and wife/husband, I’ll be happy", only to discover that once you’ve achieved these, you are still dissatisfied after a while, feeling an emptiness within. A void threatening to swallow up everything around you. Lots of people try to fill this void up with their bad habits. Kirstie Alley fills it with food, Charlie Sheen tries to fill it with drugs.

When this desperate discomfort or dissatisfaction spills over into negative behavior, its usually the result of anxiety over a central problem that you are ignoring or completely unaware of.

Finding peace is not just having a few hours or days of tranquility by yourself, but finding a higher state of mind where you are in complete harmony with yourself. The secret here is to find and deal with the root of your real problems. If you have negative body issues for example, then binging on comfort foods will lead you into a vicious cycle, but by actively working to resolve those issues with your body image, you can learn to move past any negative behavior and adopt a healthier lifestyle.

Once you've developed better habits, those troubles that drove you to negative choices will no longer bother you. This can take time and commitment, but the end result is a longer, healthier, happier life.

True happiness is a state characterized by stability and contentedness. Learn to be comfortable with yourself and the world around you, accept that some things in life are beyond your control and find joy in things just as they are.

From Chaos to Order

Holistic psychotherapy promotes an integration of wellbeing on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level. When all these three aspects reach their peak, then there is harmony and a sense of wellbeing in a person. In the process of moving towards this "perfection" we evolve in an upward spiral of order and then chaos to a higher level of order through chaos or disease to an even higher level, etc.

Chaos is a stepping stone from one level of order to the next higher level. Everyone experiences this, whether or not they are conscious of it. Each new level of order is a new level of health (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual).. It may be a combination or all of them. Chaos only becomes a disease when we get stuck in the chaos without breaking through to a higher level of order. We might say to ourselves: "this does not feel good," or "maybe something is out of synch".

When we become "stuck" within a chaotic pattern, without learning or evolving through it, that’s when we disrupt our natural energy flow, creating stress and disease. Order-chaos-order happens on a regular basis. It is a cycle that can be used to help us evolve. Chaos is one of the biggest teachers. Most people’s lives have a certain amount of chaos each day and our response can be constructive or destructive.

As a therapist, I help people to break through the chaos to a higher level of peace and serenity. The method I often use: Focusing, is a way of getting to the core of the issues and then gently transforming the obstacles.

Look out for the next post where I will elaborate on the method Focusing further.