Hello there, my friend!
I hope your week was filled with joy, but if it felt heavy, take a moment to nurture your soul and reframe your memories.
This week, I'm delving deeper into the topic of happiness. Recently, I discovered that happiness isn't a simple switch you can flip on and off at will.
It's a multi-step process, an ongoing adventure to explore and embrace the joy that resides within you.This week I’m still talking about happiness, I recently learnt that happiness is a journey, and trust me, it's far from automatic.
On a quiet Sunday morning, my mind seemed entangled in a web of negativity. I've come to realize that these thoughts tend to resurface when I've been hurt, almost like a self-preservation mechanism. They replay like surveillance footage, aiming to shield me from similar painful situations.
This brought up a nagging question, "Have I ever truly experienced happiness?" It made me wonder if I've missed out on genuine happiness in my life.
To be fair, some relationships and experiences haven't exactly nurtured the roots of happiness. Nonetheless, I know I've experienced happiness. So, I embarked on a journey to remind myself of those moments.
As the days passed, I began to make sense of what was happening. I developed a 4-step framework to guide me on this quest.
Step 1: Acknowledging that you can be happy. It might sound straightforward, but for many of us, this step can be one of the most challenging. It's about recognizing that happiness is not just a distant dream but something entirely attainable, something meant for you.
For some, it involves the ongoing journey of defining what happiness truly means to you. It's not a one-time revelation; it's a continuous process of exploration and self-discovery.
Step 2: The journey to learning to catch intrusive thoughts and reframe them is essential. It's about not allowing your brain to automatically recycle them.
It means understanding that happiness can be defined and defining it ahead of time so when negative versions of memories come. up you have a strategy for dealing with them.
One thing that helped was asking myself “what else happened that day? and How did I feel before this event happened?”
Step 3: The last but not least, learning to honour painful experiences that many perceive as good but have made you uncomfortable. It's about acknowledging that your journey toward happiness may be different from others.
As the week progressed, the initial dread of endless unhappy thoughts began to lift. I learned to catch intrusive thoughts and reframe them. One of the most challenging parts of this week was recognizing that happy memories can sometimes coexist with sad ones. It's an ongoing puzzle of what to do with this revelation.
Have you ever experienced the weight of unhappy memories? How do you deal with them?
Here’s to embracing the pursuit of happiness,
Oibiee
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