How to Live Happy
Given our lifestyles of material abundance, energetic variability, and stress/pressures on our living space and time, how do we design our lives to be cleanly centered on what is good, essential, necessary and beautiful? How do we arrange our work, our love, our joyful pastimes so that we always feel the perspective of gratitude, positivity, uplifted energy?
All that we do has the potential for intention. When we imbue our daily work, thoughts, movements with conscious, open awareness, we increase our sensitivity, feel deeply, notice how flimsy the pressures are. We empower ourselves to rise above the normal attitudes, to experience and perceive life in our own unique ways.
With clear perception, we are able to discern the difference between what we see, the substance that takes up space and schedules, from the essence and energy of what we are working. The energy, the attention that we bring to anything we do determines how we feel about it. When we apply the energy, intention of love and joy to all that we do, then work no longer feels dreary. Joy will also feel less intense, and instead suffuse the entirety of what we do.
This is not normal for adults, but was in the past: this is normal for all children. They have a natural suffusion of joy for all that they do, naturally resist what they feel is incorrect, and are constantly trained towards the normal adult patterns even though adults are in continual awe of how much energy children have.
Joy requires energy. When we have plenty of open energy, we feel joyous. And when we are feeling tired, low, negative, we seek out sources of pleasure, distraction, and higher energy. Sometimes from things, or habits, and often from the people and work we do. The cycles of energy keep us up and down, wanting to feel differently or clinging to how we feel currently. How do we step out, into the light?
Most importantly: we must desire the freedom. Each of us is capable of the extraordinary when we truly want something, from our very centers. With that certainty, that grounded dream, we need to liberate our energy, and direct it towards our reality.
Living joyously requires that we undo old attachments and mobilize that energy towards becoming our highest happiest selves. To break bonds, which releases energy, we need to first see the attachments that we have, then unpin, unpair the bonds. We begin to see the difference between things and the energy we put into them: the feelings, the memories that often overshadow the actuality of our routines and rote behaviors.
We ask, what can we do without? And this question comes from from lack, or deprivation, or frugality, but from a place of empowerment. When we see new potentials, the energy within ourselves to reconsider and rework, we release the self-limiting thoughts that keep us down and dull.
With fewer attachments, fewer things, commitments, responsibilities to uphold the routines of our past, we can reassemble our lives to reflect current reality. We are naturally more present, able to attend to what we are doing, in the spirit of caring for what we do. This usually takes more energy, because we are not doing what is convenient, but we also are saving ourselves the energy of craving/consuming and then assimilating and using all our possessions, tasks, commitments.
As we reassemble lives around our core values, our central dreams, we make conscious choices on what to keep and create with what we own, think, and do. That energy of caring will grow naturally, drawing us into the future we so desire.
You can find more thoughts on woke life here: consciousandcurious.com
xo