Would You Rather Be Happy or Would You Rather Be Free?
You have probably heard the expression, “Would your rather be right or would you rather be happy?” It is a helpful reminder that holding on rigidly to a position creates suffering. However, during this weekend while teaching a workshop, with Dicken Bettinger and Barb Patterson, a different version occurred to me. It was, “Would you rather be happy, or would you rather free?”
For most of my life I focused on happiness and how to get more of it. This created pressure inside of me to not feel certain emotions. I didn’t realize my attachment and desire to feeling happy was actually tying me up and creating suffering. Rather than simply allowing my feelings to flow and being okay with experiencing my full emotional range, I would become reactive to feeling states I didn’t like. I would especially try to get rid of feelings like anxiety and insecurity. I believed their presence was proof of my unworthiness. Having them meant in my mind that there was something wrong with me, and I wasn’t good enough.
My not wanting to feel my shame for have these feelings caused me to work really hard at not having them. I would do my best to be perfect and get things right. I loved getting A’s in school because I saw that as proof that I was worthy for a moment, but it was never good enough. My feelings of worthiness never lasted. I would then need to find another way to prove my worth. Living my life this way was exhausting and left me feeling fragile and weak.
Trying to feel good all the time in order to feel good enough was exhausting because I was constantly trying to manage my experience. This ironically did not lead to more happiness. Instead, it resulted in more suffering. As Jung said, “What we resist persists.”
With my striving for more happiness, it completely blew my mind when a mentor shared with me that she wasn’t bothered by her low moods or the negative feelings that accompanied them. She also said she didn’t put any effort into trying to change them. I was deeply impacted by this because I saw her freedom to be herself. I saw her self-acceptance that seemed radical to me at the time, and I recognized her inner peace.
I was so stupefied by her sharing this with me; it knocked my out of my routine thinking. I was confused and befuddled. This shook me out of normal thinking, and I realized in that moment how good freedom felt. I saw how me trying to be happy was not only stopping me from being free, but it was also making me less happy. In seeing this, I experienced my wellbeing in a more profound way than I had before. I felt my wellbeing as a foundation from which I knew I was okay no matter what my experience. I saw my emotions were transitory, but my wellbeing wasn’t. I might not always feel it, just like I don’t always see the sun because of the clouds, but I felt my wellbeing in a way that helped me to know it is always there. And it isn’t actually my wellbeing. It is the wellbeing that is all of us. It is the oneness beyond the small self. It is where no “I” exists and beautiful feelings abound.
I didn’t do anything to get there. In all of my years of striving and chasing after the experience of happiness, I found myself falling into more beautiful feelings than I had ever imagined through no effort on my own. It happened through me seeing that there was nothing wrong with me, no matter what my emotional experience. I also saw that I am not just my feelings. I saw beyond my self-definition and experienced presence.
I don’t always continue to experience this level of presence, but that deep glimpse into being changed my life and gave me more freedom than I had ever experienced before. It set me free from chasing happiness and helped me to see the freedom in simply being myself and knowing my innate worth no matter what my feelings.
I encourage you to simply see what happens when you look away or look beyond your limiting thoughts. What do you see when you ignore them? One of the metaphors used in the workshop this weekend is the ocean and the wave. What happens when you look beyond your separate self of the wave and recognize you are the ocean too?
I would love to hear about your experience of this, and if you haven’t tried to see what it is like to not manage your experience and allow your feelings to move through you like the weather moves through the sky, are you willing to give it a try? Just be you and let yourself feel whatever is present. This doesn’t guarantee happiness, but it does in my experience result in more peace of mind and bliss.
Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their true nature. She is a psychotherapist, a transformative coach, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of wellbeing, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com. She has an upcoming program The Solopreneur Leap co-facilitated with Barb Patterson starting January 15th, 2018.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
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Rohini Ross
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Cariadne Margaret Mackenzie-Hooson
08.01.2018 at 11:24Rohini: Lovely to read your wise thoughts in the New Year. Of course I agree completely about being willing, committed to experiencing whatever feelings emerge, uncomfortable and disconcerting though that can be. I am familiar only too well with trying to censor my experience so that it will only be pleasant. However, I also find now more often that the formerly unwelcomed discomiting thoughts can also in their way lead to a different sort of happiness because there’s some way in which they make life richer–which is what I thin you are saying as well. May you be very well and I send warmest greetings for 2018 to you and your family
Rohini
08.01.2018 at 20:45Hi, so wonderful to hear from you! Yes, I completely agree, ultimately there is more happiness and wellbeing as a result of not censoring our emotional experience. Wishing you a Happy 2018 as well!