Last night the Mindshifters group watched the second part of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled, Empowered To Heal. One of the most powerful lines in the lecture for me was related to the fact that, “If I don’t know how the world works, and how my mind energy influences the world, it is easy for me to see myself as a victim.”. As one of the lines in the Reality Management Worksheet states, “With blame, I hide my power.” If I am blaming others for what I feel and what happens in my life, I am not able to see how I influence the events in my life and how I create all of my emotions and reactions.
I create my own reality, (my internal experience), and my interpretation and reaction to the events in my life is infinitely more important than the events themselves. As I mentioned in the last post, the research evidence is clear, we choose to be happy or sad, regardless of the events in our lives. This is seen clearly in comparing the happiness ratings for people who have won the lottery and those who have become parapalegic, and finding that one year after each event the happiness ratings are nearly identical for those two groups of people. How could it be that those who became parapalegic a year ago, are just as happy as those who won the lottery a year ago?What could possibly explain this finding? This is as powerful an example as I can imagine, to demonstrate that we choose to be happy or choose to be sad, and that the external events in our lives are not nearly as important as how we interpret and respond to those external events.
There is substantial research which demonstrates that we create our own happiness and some of it is reviewed in the book Happy For No Reason, by Marci Shimoff. In this book, Marci gives examples of people who have every external reason to be sad, angry or depressed, and yet they choose to be happy. Marci gives a list of exercises which anyone can use to develop the habit of being happy and maintain a positive outlook through the ups and downs of life.