LESS EGO / MORE SOUL

“I wish I could tell the young people in my life to not waste any time. To be happy now. Don’t waste time making anybody else feel guilty or otherwise manipulating other people’s emotions. (You always have to destroy your own emotions in order to get any results!)You can’t make someone feel guilty without first making yourself miserable. To free yourself from misery, you must not want anything from anybody. Your happiness must come from within. Not from your friends, family, or partners. You don’t need any one of them for your happiness. You have it within you right now. All you have to do is claim it. Recognize it. Give thanks for it. And thus you’ll be cultivating it. And it will grow!”

- Jinjee Talifero, The Garden Diet

Being happy can sometimes be a wild card. We all want to be happy, but happiness can be a difficult feeling to hold on to.

My Mum (a psychologist) has recently introduced be to the philosophy of ACT therapy, which I’ve adopted and found it to be a really helpful technique in being happier on a day to day basis.

ACT points out that those who measure the pleasure they derive from life by their goals are doomed to being unhappier because once one goal is achieved their brains instantly push them to aim for another. There is no breathing space to just “be” and acknowledge what they have already achieved. This is a really important factor if one is to lead a happy and fulfilling life.

So, instead of measuring life by goals, ACT therapy encourages one to live life by your values.

Let me illustrate this concept with a personal and example:

In the past I thought I could be productive in my days by setting goals. If I managed to achieve most of those goals that day I allowed myself to feel happy. But if I did not get much done I would not feel so good about myself – feeling as if I had wasted the day.

In adopting the ACT technique, rather than planning my day around achieving these goals e.g. clean room, revise french, spend some time meditating, exercise etc. I base my daily activities around what I value in life.

And so it is:

• I choose to clean my room because I value a clean space
• I choose to revise my french because I value learning
• I choose to meditate because I value my spiritual development
• I choose to exercise because I value the feeling of stretching and being alive

Living by values helps me to stay present and live life more mindfully. If I don’t get something I meant to get done done, it does not mean that the day is a failure. Rather, I can still be happy as I know that I have lived out the day to the best of my ability as I chose to do things that reflected my core values.

This gives me more freedom to be present. Today for example, I spent a whole hour just sitting outside, sipping on tea. In the past that would not seem productive to me. But as I change my perspective, acknowledging that I found that activity very enjoyable, it becomes a valuable and worthy way of spending my time and I can be happy.