Inspiration
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
Marcus Aurelius
The Psychology Perspective
We need very little to make us happy. In fact, other than food, water, shelter, and clothing, very little is needed of material goods to foster a sense of happiness from within.
Then why is it that we are so unhappy?
In essence, we place too much emphasis on the ideal that happiness is fostered through things and not from an internal feeling within.
Carl Jung wrote:
The academic psychologist is perfectly free to dismiss the emotions or the unconscious, or both, form his consideration. Yet they remain fact to which at least the medical psychologist has to pay ample attention, for emotional conflicts and the interventions of the unconscious are the classical features of his science.
Carl Jung (The Symbolic Life, p. 249).
For practitioners of psychotherapeutic process, we must take into account the emotional state of the client we see. However, emotions lack rationality, can hardly ever be explained, lack direction and longevity, and pose quite a conundrum for those who seek to explain their overall feeling state or the individuals that will take up exploratory arms to analyze their symbolic content. As Jung noted:
If he treats a patient at all, he is confronted with irrationalities of this kind, whether he can formulate them intellectually or not. He has to acknowledge their only too troublesome existence.
Carl Jung (The Symbolic Life, p. 249).
When we acknowledge a concept such as happiness, we automatically define is antithesis. No, I am not talking about sadness. I am talking about the absence of Happiness’ virtue. Marcus Aurelius reminds us that Happiness is within you… It’s in your ways of thought. While it is a feeling in essence, it is also dictated by the feeling state you feed your heart through the words you tell yourself.
Be grateful and watch more things manifest to be grateful for. Be lazy, and watch nothing manifest to enliven your senses to move beyond the vision you have in the moment. The choice is yours.
Have you engaged you Happiness Habit Today?
Believe, Achieve, & Advance Confidently in the Direction of Your Dreams