Your life is supposed to feel good to you .  

 

This is the opening line of the latest Abraham-Hicks book The Vortex, which, like all their teachings, is designed to help us direct our thoughts and emotions so that we create a life that feels good.   Your life is supposed to feel good to you is a different kind of statement than the popular T-shirt slogan Life Is Good.   For one thing, it implies some kind of action on our part.   But how do you feel good when the things in life aren't what we want them to be?   How do we change our emotions in the face of evidence that supports and justifies them?  

 

The answer, in most cases, appears to be: ignore the evidence.   Question what it means. Doubt your own certain conclusions. Even when you are entirely justified in what you are thinking and feeling.

 

A simple example: a few weeks ago I was meeting a friend for dinner. When he was twenty minutes late I called to see where he was—at   home having forgotten about our date.   He apologized, said he'd thought it was for the following weekend and he'd be right there. I ordered a drink and some dumplings, chatted with the bartender about snowboarding in Switzerland. Twenty minutes later my friend showed up and we had a fun night together, the fact that he'd gotten the day wrong almost completely forgotten.          

 

Except for when I looked at him and said, "If this had been a 'date' date, I'd be feeling completely differently." In that case, instead of thinking it was no big deal that a man got the day wrong, I would probably have felt either insecurity or outrage. My friend said his reaction would have been a bit different—he would see it as a power play, an attempt to establish dominance and control in the relationship, and would respond with his own power move.   So, interestingly, while we both saw his mis-scheduling of our dinner as a non-event in our friendship, we both gave it much more significant—and different—meaning in a hypothetical romantic context.

 

It all brought home the point that in the normal situations of life   it is not the event that matters at all, it is the meaning we give it, the story we create and then, forgetting we created it, come to believe that the story, and the emotions it generates, are   The Truth. Why, for both my friend and myself, would a romantic date doing the same thing that a friend did create a very different response? Because he and I   have each chosen to give the emotional meaning we bring to romance a different charge than the one we bring to friendship, or the act of marking the wrong day on the calendar. Other people, with other priorities, would bring a different emotional emphasis altogether. For some people, for example, it's all about punctuality.

 

A story, by its very nature, is a fiction, something we've made up. Change the story and we change the way something feels.   So when something happens we don't like, why not pick a story about it that feels good, instead of one that reinforces insecurity, anger, resentment, fear?   You still might need to make some behavioral adjustments, but in almost all situations it is possible to feel better about what you are doing and why. It takes will power, and the determination to break the trance of our own beliefs, but this is the step by step way we move our life from feeling bad to feeling good.

 

That's all well and good, you might say, when all you're talking about is dinner. But what about serious situations, real crisis? Am I saying just think a happy thought and all will be well?

 

No.

 

We've all watched in horror the situation in Haiti, the desperation and pain of that event. And personally, I have this week been with two loved friends who are going through the worst possible suffering imaginable, one that is far too raw for me to write about. In situations like these, life becomes a moment by moment act of physical and emotional endurance and there are few words that do any good whatsoever.

 

But most of us aren't going through this kind of   life-wrenching trauma.   If there is one thing that results from being with loved ones as they go through unbearable suffering, it is the crystal clear clarity this brings to the problems in your own life.   Real tragedy instantly separates a true crisis from an imaginary one. And frankly, the problems most of us have on an everyday basis are mostly made up.   It   has become utterly clear to me that our job is to focus on the good we do have, not invent suffering in situations, no matter how justified, where we could, with a little focus and determination, create happiness and satisfaction for ourselves.   Instead of making ourselves feel bad about something, why not find a way to feel better about it?

 

Too many of us—and I totally include myself in this—take our life situations and create massive fictions out of some   basic facts. We often generate anxiety over an imagined   worst-case scenario future and then hold onto those feelings as if that imaginary future has already happened. We make other people's actions, or circumstances we can't control, responsible for our own happiness.  

 

We create a kind of mathematical formula for life: If only __________ would_________ then I would be __________ . If only I had X number of dollars in my bank account then I would be secure.   If only my boss would appreciate me then I would enjoy my work. If only I had a boyfriend then I would be happy. If only the health care bill would pass/fail then I could feel safe in America. If only my child would clean up his room then I would relax at home.   I've got my own list. I'm sure you do too.

 

This is crazy thinking. Any good therapist or self-help book or religious text would tell you that you can't rely on another person or situation to create your happiness for you. This is (sometimes) obviously true when you are dealing with someone who is chemically unbalanced, alcoholic, or depressed, but it is equally true about   a sane and balanced friend, lover, parent or child who simply wants something different than what you desire. But we do it all the time anyway.  

 

It's also true about money—think about those studies that show people who win huge amounts in the lottery, and six months afterwards go back to whatever happiness state they were in before their massive luck.   If they were happy before, they stay happy, but if they were worriers, or angry, the money has just given them new situations to worry and be angry about. Their financial condition may have improved and of course that's helpful, but their emotional state has stayed exactly the same.

 

In her book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes:

 

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it,

  and sometimes even travel around the world for it.   You have to participate relentlessly in

  the manifestations of your own blessings."  

 

This has never seemed more true to me than it does today.

 

Yes, the situations of our life exist. Our 401Ks may be worth less than the dollar amount we originally put into them. Our child may be doing poorly in algebra. Good friends forget our 50 th birthday.   We have a health problem,   our mother-in-law is always critical and our ex-spouse is not parenting the children the way we wish. These events may be real,   but we are lucky enough to have a choice about how to think and feel about them even when we have to take difficult action on them. Do what you need to do: set your boundaries, take a second job, set up a more rigorous homework schedule. But make the reasons why you do these things feel good to you.  

 

Drop the story line, drop the story line. Meditate, to create separation between yourself and your thinking, if only for 15 minutes a day. Every day, for five or ten minutes, write a list of things you appreciate about your life, including, as you can,   even the smallest things you can appreciate about the people and situations you are unhappy with.

 

Don't pretend false emotions, just search for any sliver of appreciation you can find and build from there. The Abraham-Hicks people, in their Law of Attraction teachings, remind us that we don't have to try to jump from feeling bad—resentful, angry, sad—to joyful bliss and acceptance in a single leap.   In fact, they encourage us not to.   They say, if you're depressed about a situation, make anger your emotional goal.   When you reach anger, aim for frustration. Once you're frustrated, then hope is in sight, and once you can reach hope you are on your way to generating a positive emotion in the face of a situation where this previously seemed impossible.

 

  Find a friend and make a pact to help each other drop your stories. You'll piss each other off—nothing engenders anger like someone telling you to snap out of your deeply felt rage, resentment, fear. Particularly when it is totally justified.   But think seriously about that clichéd question: would you rather be happy, or would you rather be right? If you choose to be happy then you have to give up being right. You have to give up holding on to what you think—know--believe the facts to mean, and instead pick a meaning that makes you happy.   Not denying reality, but denying what you've made reality mean.

 

Life may be supposed to feel good, but we all know that isn't always true.   Right now, sitting in a place of sorrow and witnessing raw grief, it seems to me the only sane choice is to make it true as often as we possibly can.