I was just about to leave the main Yahoo site when something interesting caught my attention. The title read : Happiness – 3 amazing tips from the world’s oldest study
The article was an interesting read and the findings somewhat fascinated and reaffirmed my previous held beliefs on happiness (Don’t take life too seriously for example). I’ve always been interested in ‘the pursuit of happiness’ simply because I like being happy. I love the emotions and positive feelings that are associated with happiness. It’s a “duh!” statement I know, but I am still writing it down because that’s what I believe and like so much about happiness.
I guess maybe to a certain degree, the reason for this is simply because I grew up in a not-so-happy home where fights and arguments were cyclical and had their seasonal operation. It wasn’t that my parents were bad or anything, or that either one had developed a family-breaking habit. The problem was rather (as I adult I see this a little clearer now) that old problems that were raised in the past were just swept under the carpet. Forgive and move-on was my dad’s modus operandi when it came to fights and arguments.
However mum was the kind of person who needed to talk it out – something dad was crappy at. Dad didn’t like to hear things out and things would end up just being swept under the carpet rather than being dealt with in a healthy manner. So naturally over time, whenever a volcano would errupt, it would be more devastating than the previous, because the previous unsettled lava would come out with the current erruption.
Hence, that’s why the first tip this article recommends is to have a healthy outlet to let out your negative feelings. Pent-up feelings may be masochistic and manly, but its determining to the mind and body. Whenever I visit my local pastor to talk about mum’s death and how I’m coping with it, he will always encourage me to “cry it out” and just “let it out” and I would do so unbashfully in his room while he just sits there empathizing with my sorrow and struggle. But I feel better after that, I feel light and with his encouragement I’m able to carry on.
So yeah, having a healthy outlet is good for the soul.
More on the second tip tomorrow
