Accepting Life

Changing The Way We Think About Happiness

Human beings are hard-wired to seek comfort and avoid pain. We all want to have more postive life experiences while avoiding problems. This natural pursuit of happiness, however, is not always simple.

When we think about the things we want to experience or the things we wish to avoid, we generally think about circumstances or events. We believe a better job, more money, a bigger house, or fancier car will bring us lasting happiness. Likewise, we fight like hell to avoid the pain brought by ending relationships, bad bosses, mounting bills, or dealing with inescapable things like sickness, old age, and death. As a result, we develop a belief system that embraces attachment on one end and repression on the other, the very things that lead to suffering. We strive to have more good experiences and less bad ones, all in the name of avoiding pain and gaining pleasure. While this link between circumstances and happiness seems logical, it is a misconceptions that tends cause us long term suffering.

We wish to have what we cannot have and avoid what we cannot avoid.

The truth is that circumstances, both desirable and undesirable, arise mostly outside of our control. While we have a certain amount of control over ourselves, we only have…