What does it mean to be happy?
For many therapists and specialists in the human mind, happiness does not constitute an isolated state of mind. Whether you're an Eskimo coming back from a day of fishing or a machinist in New Delhi, your happiness is a thermometer for your way of life. And it's going to depend on the sum of positive and negative feelings. If the sum is positive and balanced, you will be more happy than worried.
For Beatriz Breves, a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and psychotherapist who claims that the human being experiences over 500 feelings, happiness is intimately connected to a person's fulfillment: "When we feel useful when we are making a good exchange with our equals and with the world around, life becomes more balanced and light. We feel that we're happy."
But for that, it's necessary to conduct an orchestra of feelings, where there is always an element playing out of tune. A calm person, who's on good terms with life, doesn't let the dissonance take over if an instrument goes flat or silent. And life, like music, must go on.
Intelligently balancing internal and external occurrences, therefore, is the way to combat a lack of happiness and disappointments.
"There is no one recipe for happiness, because each person has their mission, has their choices, and their own path to personal satisfaction," says the psychoanalyst.
There are, however, some measures that can help. For example: at the end of the day, when you pass by the mirror, try to remember what made you feel happier during that day. And keep doing it in the following days.
And don't ignore the problems that come up. The correct path is to know them and confront them. Identifying the feelings is fixing the malfunctioning instruments.
Jiu-jitsu's great trump card is making us lose the fear to open up, the fear to confront what is wrong—and, thus, pursue our dreams with internal strength, regardless of what is said about us, regardless of the size of the obstacle before us.
Or, as Rickson Gracie teaches his subscribers: "Jiu-jitsu may not help you find your purpose in life or happiness itself, but it will offer all the tools you will need in that journey."
Practice BJJ, don't drop your baton mid-symphony and be a good maestro in your own life. Oss...
Comments
Thank you Professor, there are many in need of such words. I have found, from observing others and searching my own heart, that the force that powers happiness resides within us. A will that gives our achievements, joys, and pride meaning. Motivates us to embrace pain and stand against the storm. Happiness emanates from within. Seeking elsewhere for fulfillment is great folly. For the idea that the locus of control over our happiness is external is a confusion that discredits the soul, corrodes the will, instills slavish behaviors, and is all too often fatal.
Breath, training, finding within oneself the most precious gifts. Gifts that are common property to all. That is our way.