Why Meditating Will Make You Happier Than Succeeding
This is Part 3 of a 3 part series. (Part 1 – More Doesn’t Lead To Happier, Part 2 – Happiness And Political Correctness)
When I was young and we were going on holiday my Dad would put our suitcases etc on the roof rack. And he would strap them down securely with those elasticated clips that catch on the sides. Since he was worried that the bundles might fall, he would strap lots around them. We would always joke about how many he was using.
In whatever situation you are in, you are bound by your past decisions. Particularly by your successes. Say you start a business and become wildly successful. You probably take on staff, sign long term contracts and so on. Now you have strapped yourself securely into a certain position, which is going to take some effort to free yourself from.
Say you start a new job and achieve huge success at some project. Well now you’ve set a level of expectation and a standard that you’ll be expected to live up to. Plus you may be tied to certain tasks.
Maybe you craved a relationship and a family. You succeed, but now your time is tied up and your freedom curtailed.
None of this is to say that these aren’t worthwhile goals. However it makes sense to be more aware of the consequences of your goal, if it is achieved. It’s one reason people who succeed wildly still end up unhappy.
To be happy, requires freedom. Or more accurately, the perception of freedom. No-one is ever unhappy while meditating. They might not be able to meditate because they are so distracted by their thoughts. But they feel peaceful while meditating. Why?
Because in meditation, their consciousness has freed itself from the bonds that tie us to our reality. The bonds are only really placed there by our mistaken beliefs. These beliefs, developed in the overall framework of our thoughts in the course of achieving or striving for certain goals or as residue from past goals, imprison us.
A prison is there to trap you into a confined space. These mental binds imprison your consciousness.
“To be happy, requires freedom. Or more accurately, the perception of freedom.”
Can we be sure about that? Dan Gilbert’s scientific research into happiness suggests otherwise. What he has discovered is that what we think will make us happy and what we think will make us unhappy rarely do so in either case. Essentially the problem is that we use our imagination to consider what will make us happy or not but our imagination doesn’t use a full picture. There’s some similarity between this and the point that you’re making here, that our imagination of what will make us happy leaves out all the other stuff that might not bring us the happiness we imagine that it will.
You can watch Dan Gilbert’s presentation at TED on TED.com or YouTube.com or read his book, Stumbling On Happiness. An eye-opening read. His conclusion is that to discover if something will make us happy we shouldn’t rely on our imaginations (because they are almost always wrong) but find someone who has acheived that goal and see if they are happy.
Have you ever felt trapped, in a situation, or emotionally, believed there is nothing you could do to change it and still felt happy?
orgasim
is the only thing that has made me happy