Ten years ago, I heard the story of a neighbour who used to be married to a guy and divorced him because her mother told her to. Then she married another man, had two daughters, a house, and was living a normal family life. What surprised me about her story is that she said “if I had stayed married to my first husband, I would be happy”. What surprised me is that she was implying that she was not happy in the present, she was rationalising her current state by blaming it on a past decision, and she was convincing herself that her life could have been better.
Have you had similar thoughts before? I know I have, “If I had done this… or if I had that… or if my partner was better… I would be happy”. That is your inner voice, that in Episode 3 of Beautiful Ghosts we call the mind, causing trouble. This mind or inner voice has three characteristics:
- It rationalises your emotions trying to find reasons of why you feel the way you feel.
- It paints rosy pictures of how your life could have been better if you had made the right decision, or how your life could be better if you achieved this or that.
- It spoils your present by making you focus in the past or in the future, and by telling you that you are not good enough.
Let’s start with rationalisation. I don’t believe that we humans are rational, we rationalise but are not rational for the most part. Our behaviour is predominantly the result of emotional drives that we have inherited from millions of years of evolution. Yes, we then rationalise and try to explain why we are behaving the way we do and why we are feeling the way we do, but those reasons are merely rationalisations and often justifications. Are you feeling down? Don’t blame your partner just because it is an easy target. We need to dive deeper into our own emotional drives and behaviour. Most likely, we are feeling down because of physiological reasons, we didn’t sleep well or exercised enough, rather than anything to do with our life situation.
Regarding the second point, our mind will keep telling us that we are not good enough and our present is not as good as it could be. It will keep telling us how we could have made much better decisions, or how our life could be better if we had more money, a better car, or a better partner. All of that is a lie. The truth is that none of that would make you feel better unless you train your inner voice. You don’t need a different situation to feel better, you can start enjoying your present now.
The two previous points lead to the third one. What our mind or inner voice is doing is preventing us from enjoying the present. Happiness is not in the past and it is not in the future, it is in the present. There are many things we can do to enjoy it more, looking after our physiological state and looking after our emotional state. Eating and sleeping well, exercising, building relationships with our loved ones and our communities, spending time doing things we enjoy; these are the things that will produce much more happiness than anything different from the past or the future. Train your inner voice. Don’t let your mind spoil the present.
Make an impact,
Pablo
Image by Okan Caliskan from Pixabay