Choosing Happiness...
What does this look like Energetically & What Habits Support Happiness?
Is happiness really a choice? If so, how do we choose it? What is the secret? The easiest way to understand this is to first look at what we are feeling when we are not happy. There’s a variety of answers here … sad, angry, anxious, stressed … and if we stay in any of these negative reactive states long enough we end up feeling stuck … stuck and hopeless. Time and time again, as I sit with people and hear their stories I see them cling to negative beliefs that keep them stuck, and eventually lead to hopelessness.Interestingly, we get stuck because of early programming we chose as defensive strategies in response to uncomfortable situations. We have habitual thought patterns that kick in when we get hurt or scared / when we feel vulnerable. These habitual thoughts began when we were small children, vulnerable and powerless. Back then we were protecting ourselves in the best way we knew how, in lieu of real power in the outer world, we chose to see ourselves and the world in certain ways to try to protect ourselves from recurrent emotional injury. The resulting recurrent thought patterns, such as, “Never trust authority figures," or “I’m not very likable, so I should not expect people to befriend me” created defensive barriers that were designed to keep us safe, but over time just keep us stuck. As the word “habit” implies, we don’t pay much attention to these thought patterns, they spring up out of the clear blue and we consider them to be truth because they are part of our own long held belief system. For background information on fear based beliefs / roots of distorted thinking, see previous blogs on this subject archived under Mind/Body/Spirit or Consciousness at sacredhealingjourney.com/blog/Now let’s see what happens to us energetically when we continue to allow these habits. Imagine you are walking through your day feeling content, peaceful, and at ease. In this case your energy field will be full, light and bright. We are energetic beings, with our heart center sending out an electromagnetic field that signals others. When we are cohesive — registering good feelings on all levels of our being, physical body, emotional body and mental body we are open and receptive to Spirit and energetically more expansive. Imagine this scenario … you are fully present, all parts of self in alignment, with a beautiful expansive, light energy field, going about your business having a great day. Then something happens such as your boss sends you an email inquiring about a project you’ve been working on. You have a habitual thought pattern that your boss doesn’t like you and you can’t please her, based substantially on your old fears of authority. What do you think happens to your energy field in that moment? … It contracts! Your energy field contracts, imagine this now, you can feel it! It feels like taking a hit. You contract: it’s a protective measure.The trouble is, once you contract, it’s not always easy to expand again. Now you’re in protective mode, and what happens when we’re in protective mode? Habits! Remember those thought habits? And guess what, they have emotional habits and / or physical habits that accompany them. As soon as you start thinking about your boss not liking you, what feelings come up? Most of us will feel mad / angry / frustrated, and underneath that we’re likely to feel hurt / sad, and another layer deeper if we are courageous enough to dig that far we’ll find fear. Now what do you suppose happens to our body when we are holding these types of thoughts and emotions? Physically we are going to register pressure, tension, aches or pains, or conversely, sometimes there is a sense of numbness. If we examine the energy of these physical symptoms, we invariably find some type of barrier, like walling up our heart, or energetically fleeing, which we experience in various ways … by becoming ungrounded, shutting down lower chakras, or simply residing in our heads with no awareness at all of our body.Suddenly, in the snap of the fingers, we are very far from that healthy self I was describing earlier who’s energy field was open, expansive, light and bright and who’s emotional resonance was one of peace and calm.Then the saga continues, because … see what unfolds: If you respond to your boss from this energetic place, what she’s going to receive is this feeling of contracted energy (fear, hurt or anger) when she reads your response. Isn’t that interesting? You don’t even have to be on the phone, or face to face, because whether or not we advertise as such, we are all reading energy and responding to energy. The less conscious we are about responding to other’s energy, the more we will respond from habit, because habits are less conscious behaviors. A habitual way of responding to contracted energy is a reply of contracted energy (fear, hurt, or anger). And if we are suppressing these feelings and trying to be polite, calm, happy, we will be registering a sensation of stress. Because basically, that’s what stress is — negative feelings we don’t want to own, so we suppress them, which leaves us feeling vaguely stressed. You see where this is going … downhill fast.The question becomes, how do I wish to go through life … expansive and present in my energy, or contracted and reactive?If I choose to go through life expansive and present, then I choose to live more consciously, to be awake and pay attention to my own subtle cues. If you are ready to make this commitment to yourself, below you will find some helpful tips to get yourself started.
- Pay attention to your own subtle cues, learn the difference in how it feels to be expansive or contracted within your energy.
- Practice imagining yourself in each state … Take a minute, ground yourself, and practice this now. Quiet your mind by bringing your awareness into your breath, and recall a recent time when you were in one state, then the other. Feel yourself present in each state for a minute or two, and notice the differences within your self — emotions, thoughts, body and energy.
- If that doesn’t work for you, then find some practices that help you feel your energy in its grounded and expansive state. (We have a chakra cleansing meditation on our website that would work. See link below)
- Choose to start each day with meditation or an energy grounding exercise so you can get used to tuning in and feeling your subtle energy. Become your own expert at knowing the difference between your energy in an expansive state or contracted. (Another way of saying this is high frequency or low frequency). Feel free to use one of our online meditations at sacredhealingjourney.com/meditation-workshops/
- Begin to notice the situations / relationships where you regularly experience an energetic contraction response. Don’t judge it, just notice, and begin to play with your energy in this or similar situations.
- If your energy routinely contracts around certain people, then begin to prep your energy before those encounters, and consciously expand your energy rather than contracting.
- It’s important to pay attention to these experiences, to journal about it, to experiment with it, and to keep a playful and creative attitude about it as much as possible.
It’s your life, you get to choose moment by moment your reality. We are all co-creators here! Allow this truth to open up new possibilities for you … Expand into the potential of all that you are, day by day, moment by moment. There are as many ways to get unstuck as there are actions that inspire your heart and expand your soul! Do more of these.