How To Be Happy Episode 3:
Stay Curious!
Many have heard the expression "Curiosity killed the cat", but most don't know that it has a second part. The second part is "but satisfaction brought it back". For today's installment, I'm going to talk about what that means to me.
We are so terrified of the answers to our questions that we will opt not to ask them in favor of leaving things as they are - even if they are terrible.
You should know that this strategy is not helpful and should know that deep down, those feelings and questions will still be there. You can’t really lie to yourself or ignore your feelings. Deep down you know what your truth is. The feelings and questions we need to explore don't go away when we don't ask or acknowledge them. Instead, they get louder and louder until we can think of little else and avoiding the issue starts to make us feel worse than the feeling ever did or could
We are all really scared to look at ourselves and our emotions too closely because we think that curiosity is a risk to our sanity and peace, when in fact it is an essential part of knowing and loving ourselves and each other.
We are all out here trying not to be the cat that curiosity killed by avoiding ourselves, our lives, and our feelings. We cannot run from ourselves, though. Wherever we go, there we are. Most importantly, anything that can be destroyed by the truth deserves and needs to be destroyed.
Perhaps we'd operate a bit differently if we understood the COMPLETE expression?
Whatever you grow to understand about yourself is a lot less scary than it sounds bouncing around inside your skull. We're operating our whole lives afraid of the answers to our questions about ourselves and each other, but if that strategy worked, there would be a greater number of happy people in the world.
If we look at the whole quote it's not telling us not to ask questions. It is acknowledging the RISK AND THE REWARD of curiosity. We have spent our whole lives only seeing half of this very important picture. We must know both things are present. The risk of questions about ourselves, our emotions, our relationships, and our lives IS WORTH TAKING. THE REWARDS of true happiness, true growth, and honest relationships are worth the risk.
So how can we use curiosity to our advantage?
In the first installment of this series, I wrote "Stay curious about your emotions and motivations as well as everyone else's".
Curiosity is a tool we can use to get to the bottom of and understand ourselves and our lives. Happiness comes from understanding and accepting ourselves. We cannot accept ourselves and become truly happy without first truly understanding ourselves.
The gifts understanding can bring include happiness, but that's not all that understanding can give us. In order to be open to understanding ourselves and to have any success accepting ourselves we must not only ask questions. We must also stop placing judgment on the answers. When you are exercising your curiosity in an effort to understand yourself, you have to do your best to look at whatever you find out with our judgment. Whatever the answers are, they are merely a starting point for your growth. They do not limit what you can be. They are only a reflection of your experiences thus far. Things so trivial have nothing to do with our worth, it is so much deeper than that.
We need to feel worthy to be happy, so we cannot place conditions on our worth. It has to be separate from our thoughts, feelings, and actions. It is an inherent part of who we are and nothing can take it from us. We have to choose to surrender it. Knowing that is a huge precursor to exercising the risk of curiosity. Curiosity can hurt, but it can't take your worth.
Knowing that, the cat story seems a little extra, right!? It is a risk and it might hurt, but the cat survived it and so will you. Remember when asking questions that the answers might hurt, but understanding your truth and speaking it is quite literally worth any hurt you could ever imagine. In fact, it is the only path to real happiness. Not surface happiness or social media performances, but true lasting happiness and freedom from your fears.
Everything that you want is on the other side of your fears, but you have to walk through them. This will help you to conquer them, because facing your fears inevitably shows you that you are stronger than they are. It also is the only way to get what you want and need out of life. You have to walk through your fears. To make it easier on yourself, you can do it with a friend, a counselor, or your journal. You are not alone. Everyone needs this knowledge, the problem is, everyone only heard half of the story about curiosity. If they knew that the risk was worth it, they might not be so afraid of it.
So what does curiosity look like in practice and how can you use it to work on yourself and build your happiness?
Ask yourself about your feelings and thoughts, challenge them and see if they hold up, journal through them, or talk them out with someone you trust. This will help bring clarity from all that's bouncing around in your head.
Seek to truly understand how you got to be who you are without judgment. Growth requires an understanding of where you are starting.
Explore your strengths, motivations and weaknesses without judgment. Your knowledge of them is key to reaching your goals. You need to know what is challenging for you and what you excel at to reach your goals for yourself . Remember this is separate from your worth. Think of them instead as taking stock of enemies and allies in the battle of life. It's just strategy.
Continually explore your emotions and the physical feelings/reactions associated with them. Try to know where they come from. Is it a current problem you are responding to or one in the past? Is your feeling matching the situation? Or maybe there are some other factors involved?
Remember that feelings are not good or bad. They just are. They are messages from your brain that you need something. Your truth doesn't give a fuck what your opinion is. It will still be the truth over there waiting for you, whenever you're ready to accept it and listen to the message it came to give you.
All feelings and behaviors are, at their most simplistic purpose, designed to help us meet our needs. Our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs are all important to our well-being and happiness.
In order to meet our needs, we must first be aware of them and awareness requires curiosity. We cannot get answers without being brave enough to ask questions.
So now that you know how important curiosity is to your happiness, it seems more worthy of the risk, doesn't it? We have been limiting our perspective out of fear. However, in that same action, we are dooming ourselves to only seeing part of the picture or living half a life. Half a life isn't enough for most and this is the reason that so few are actually happy. We have gone our whole lives only knowing half of the story about curiosity. We were taught to be inherently scared of curiosity, but it's actually one of the most important tools we can use to help build the happiness we are seeking. However, instead of getting practice building with it, most of us will keep looking for someone or something to build it for us instead. True and lasting happiness has to be built by us. No one else can do it for us or understand us and our needs better than we can.
I must end on the most important part of the story about curiosity and the cat. This often-told tale is better, richer, more helpful, and more true when you know the whole story. Stay Curious, my friends! The risk is worth the reward!
Raven
Written By: Raven Mourningdove - Marvolus
How to be Happy
Episode 2: Time Management
We are not taught much about our own needs or how to fill them as children. We often get some repeated lessons on things that fill physical needs, but we aren't taught much about emotional, mental, spiritual, and social needs. Do you have enough time to care for yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, etc.?
Most of us are going to answer "No" to that or even "Who the fuck does!?". The most common cause of poor self-care is thought to be time, but it's actually time management. There are 168 hours in a week. I'd say for the sake of sanity, you need an hour of time to yourself every day to offset, recover from, or just process the other things you'll deal with. That's only 7 out of 168 if you know how to manage your time, you could get and stay happy and healthy for that low price of actually making you the priority for one whole hour every day. I'm not saying skip straight to that, or even that you have to do a whole hour at one time. What I am saying is that you could try it. It could help you be happier and it can't hurt. Worst case scenario you get to spend some time getting to know yourself and actually thinking about what you need in between racing from goal to goal, drink to drink, relationship to relationship, or thought to thought.
Set aside time each day TO JUST BE. Listen to your body and mind, seek out tension and stretch or shake it out, ask yourself about your feelings, think through any hard or emotional recent happenings, make some space to process your feelings, and stay curious about your feelings and open to what you need. We have to understand our needs before we can fill them. We need stillness to ask the right questions and to hear the answers.
In order become more aware of how much time you have a where it gets spent or wasted, there are some helpful things to know:
Handy, dandy notebooks: Go to Walmart or dollar general and, pick up a day planner with a few lines to write in activities each day and here's the hard part: ACTUALLY WRITE IN IT AND SCHEDULE THINGS. Physically writing it and seeing it on paper help you to commit it to memory.
Help yourself and support yourself to be as successful as possible. You can reinforce your memory and encourage better habits for yourself by scheduling it in your phone and setting yourself reminders, timers, alarms and stopwatches so time doesn't get away from you.
Technology can work for and against you in this battle. You can download apps that encourage self-care or use them to track progress or get support. Just make sure you aren't losing hours of your life or avoiding thinking or feeling.
Get an ACCOUNTABILIBUDDY! Help and encourage growth within and all around you. Find friends with similar goals and help each other reach them. This can help you remember and keep you motivated and on track. Tell others about goals and progress to both celebrate each victory and to keep yourself honest.
You may be stressing yourself out without realizing it. This one way we create chaos in our own lives. Refusing to or being unable to structure your time can create constant worry, fear, panic, aggression, loss of social support, housing, relationships, and absolute chaos both internal and external.
Keeping track of your time is an essential part of life. Unfortunately, it is not taught to many until it's are already lots of great ways to cause them problems. It's often an unspoken expectation. It's not accidental that people who are intentional with their time are more successful in many arenas. However, it's important to understand it isn't a trait. It is a skill, which means you don't have to be born with it and it's possible to get better at it. All you have to do is practice.
Flex your google-fu AKA find the information you need: Some of your time needs to be devoted to getting the knowledge you need to be happy and healthy. I won't be upset if you get it somewhere else, whatever helps you get through. There are many great ways to watch, listen, and otherwise work your way to happiness. The knowledge that you need to keep fighting in this tough old world is the important part.
Rewards for the righteous: Reward the behaviors you want to encourage to cement the memory in your brain by creating a connection to pleasure. Do not punish when you backslide, however. Change is hard and it takes time. Give yourself grace to learn and make mistakes and credit for trying.
Get more done and be less stressed. Win/win!!!!
Why aren't we taught how to be happy?
It sounds so simple when you say it like that, but how many truly happy people do you know?
Don't worry, I'll wait….
That's because we aren't being taught to be happy. We are being taught to be agreeable, productive, and profitable, but not happy. We often get the message that we are supposed to appear polite and approachable all of the time, because if we aren't agreeable, no one will want to be around us.
But where do these ideas come from?
We all follow these social rules, not knowing that this civilized and emotionless existence is a lie crafted long ago by the pilgrims. Yes, the same unfortunate group of people that were expelled from England for being too uptight in the 1600s. Yes, they are the same people that considered wearing color unseemly and were responsible for the Salem witch trials. I believe this is a very extreme example of suppressed feelings bursting out of us against our will and in very unexpected and sometimes violent ways. Long story short, they were not exactly ideal role models for a modern world.
They believed that visible or audible emotions were uncivilized. So we all deny and suppress our feelings, our sexuality, and much of our humanity along with them. We are taught that we can avoid the pain, rejection, and uncertainty of living our truth by living in denial instead. The truth is that although we think avoidance protects us it also prevents us from truly connecting with ourselves and others. Much like one of my favorite quotes, you prevent some of the pain that way, but you also prevent real joy too. Not the cheap imitations of joy that we are constantly being sold, but real, deep, lasting joy.
If we do hurt bad enough to override our programming and our shame and admit to our feelings, we feel as though we immediately should apologize or minimize to avoid making someone uncomfortable with our pain or making it clear we need help, which is among the strongest taboos in our society. American cultural norms are heavily based on personal responsibility. Meaning that it is extremely unacceptable to ask for help and we often feel immense shame about needing help.
Instead, we pretend everything is fine until we lose our minds - that is after all the inevitable conclusion. Our feelings don't go away when we refuse to deal with them. Like a baby crying to get it's needs met, we cannot ignore it forever. We can set them aside sometimes, but this just caused the feeling to get louder and louder in their need to be heard.
This often leads to substance use in an attempt to quiet the needs we feel but can't understand or deal with. It can also lead to depression, anxiety, and the breakdown of important relationships. lsn’t resentment poisoning our relationships or passive aggressive, petty, and nasty behavior to our loved ones? We often end up making our fears of abandonment come true with our behavior. The plain truth is that we are unhappy and it doesn't matter who's fault it is. It's our life and we have to take responsibility for fixing it.
Many of us try to move through life fast enough each day to avoid feeling. We can't outrun ourselves. Wherever we go, there we are. This is a losing battle no matter what we DO
But, my friend we are not human DOINGS, we are human BEINGS. We need to slow down often enough to allow ourselves to just BE. To figure out how we feel or listen to the voice inside. How can we expect to have our needs met if we don't even know what they are?
One thing is certain, we cannot change the past. We can only learn from it and do better in the future. So, all told, what does all of this mean now? How can we learn to be happy now, regardless of where we started? We have to get past romanticizing the miserable, lonely, empty perfection we are socialized to want. We need real connection, real emotion, and real happiness. Nothing else will ever make us feel alive.
That's the difference between surviving and living. We must risk the hurt if we want to be loved. If we want to master our emotions we have to actually feel them. No matter the challenge, it will involve being open and vulnerable to whatever comes. It isn't easy to unlearn, but we need to take steps to undo some of these terribly limiting rules we've been trying to follow.
STEP ONE: SET ASIDE TIME EACH DAY TO JUST BE. Listen to your body and mind, seek out tension and stretch or shake it out.
STEP TWO: Stay curious about your emotions and motivations as well as everyone else's.
STEP THREE: Create healthy boundaries for yourself and others. It will help protect you and your relationships from wear and tear. (Try the Better boundaries workbook. Type PDF after it in Google search and you can print it for free or click the link.)
STEP FOUR: Start building love and trust with yourself. Your relationship to yourself is the foundation for all you hope to build. It makes sense if you think about it. A staircase has to be built from the bottom up.
STEP FIVE: Know your enemy. Continue to arm yourself against all that you all must face each day with knowledge. It will serve you always.
STEP SIX: Be open to changing the way you think and feel. We are meant to evolve and being flexible makes us even stronger. We need to bend in the wind like a willow so that it cannot break us.
STEP SEVEN: Turn away from shame and blame and embrace responsibility for making the future better than the past.
Tune in next week for:
Step one: Time Management
Raven Mourningdove-Marvelous
B.A. CPC SUDPT/ Substance Abuse Counselor/ Specializes in Crisis and Trauma, LGBTQ humans and cultural competency.
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