My book on happiness back in 2013 was insightful.
I went back and reread part of it, and while there are certainly holes in the logic that I now see, I do understand the path I took, and think someone could follow along and gain from a recalibration of how they think about things, which will increase their happiness.
I ended the book, though, back where I began. Searching again for Happiness.
Of course, I now know that much of this mental work is like a upward spiral, where each level of awareness raises me higher as I wrap back around to the same question I started with. Yes, the question is the same, but the understanding and assumptions that underlie the question are next level, and allows for a jumping off point to the future at a much higher level of thought.
However, at it’s essence, I found myself back at a steady state of disillusion with life. And it is this disillusion that pushed me forward the past few years to think more about the question.
This is really just an update to what I found.
In its essence, the discovery was that as long as I am living in my mind, happiness was somewhat sketchy. I could improve the happiness of life but I was still in the confines of the mind. The mind reflects backwards or plans for the future. That is its natural state. And sometimes the mind is less scared or more relaxed than other times.
What I learned is that the only way out, was through. To stop all the thinking, rumination, and protective planning, and exit the container of the mind, and rather focus on awareness of the present moment. No thinking, just feeling.
Practically, what this means was to move to a more constant state of awareness. A state of being aware of my surroundings, and where I am right in each moment. Besides being exceptionally grounding, it also allowed me to see the canvas on which I was writing my thoughts better. And in doing so, I was able to recognize the negative bend I naturally chose to give them.
This is likely both nature and nurture, but most importantly I now realize it is a choice. The question then becomes, how can I flip this default thinking to something more positive. And this is my current work and discovery.