What’s the most important thing for your happiness?

The simple answer is Love.

Love is not only a beautiful feeling, but an incredibly transformative force.  When we express love we create a feeling of happiness.  When we are filled with love there is no room for fear or the emotional pains that come with self judgment.  Love can be a powerful experience that leaves no room in the mind for that chattering internal dialog that can keep us up at night when we are stressed.  Love can displace all that chatter and keep you in a state of quiet peacefulness.  That’s the simple answer.  Of course it’s not that simple.

If you desire to make changes in your life because you are not happy,,, then you aren’t starting in this state of love.  Where you are more likely involves fear, self judgment, insecurity, anger, and lots of stressful dialog that can keep you up at night.  At that stage of the process Love is foreign and doesn’t mean anything and just having it suggested to you can make you more angry.   So maybe you can’t feel any love and the best you can manage is to just reach acceptance of where you are.

Of course when we consider acceptance the big judge in your mind can jump in and complain about how this whole situation is unacceptable.  Maybe it points out that we’ve done so much self help type of work that we should be way past this.  We shouldn’t be having emotional reactions like this any more.  The victim story in our mind is afraid to accept this situation because it interprets it as defeat and failure.  So maybe at this stage acceptance isn’t much of an option and the best we can do is just refrain from drama as best we can.

Of course this to refrain from following into the emotional drama behavior our mind is projecting  is challenging.  When that is the case then the most important thing is Will power.  We need will power to refrain from acting on the drama stories.

Of course if you haven’t been breaking down your false beliefs very long it is unlikely that you’ve recovered much will power to have at your disposal.  In that case the most important thing is to get some will power.  You need to break down some of the false beliefs in your mind and recover the personal power that you invested in them.  To do this you need some skills and techniques at breaking down false beliefs.  At this stage the most important thing you can do is identify and dissolve false beliefs in your mind.

If this is challenging it’s probably because you haven’t yet adopted a neutral observer perspective.  This is the first step to changing beliefs. Maybe you can’t do unconditional love, acceptance, or will your way out of the emotional reactions, but you can observe the story of the judge, the victim, and all the emotions and chatter in the mind.  Then that is what you can do and that is the most important thing to do.   Trying to do more than you can do won’t help you at this point.

Of course in order to shift your point of perception to being a neutral observer you will need to have the desire to do so.  That desire has to be big enough that you make a commitment to make changes in your sabotaging emotional behaviors.  It’s no longer about just wishing they would go away. It’s no longer about waiting for other people to change before you will be happy.  You make a commitment that you will change the false beliefs and negative thoughts in your mind and you will be happy no matter what. So if you haven’t started really observing your self then the most important thing you can do is to make a commitment to do so.

Of course that kind of change is generally resisted.  The decision making process in the mind is wired such that the very beliefs that are causing all the emotional drama, also have influence in how we go about solving them.  They tend to point us in the direction of:  Trying to change other people,  Building a more positive self image and trying to become that image,  Intending to will our self not to do the same emotional reaction again, (even though we haven’t changed any of the underlying causes),  Or the preferred distraction of ignoring the problem.   So before you make a determined effort to change the underlying dynamics of your belief system you’ll need to become tired of all the excuses, distractions, and denial that makes up the resistance.    What this means is that you eventually have to become tired of being unhappy.

At a certain point the misery of unhappiness just becomes too unbearable and you have to do something about it.   You decide to change what you believe.  Misery, unhappiness, and emotional suffering is the mother of commitment to change.  And when you are just starting out, a commitment to change is the most important thing.

Unhappiness will continue until you are tired of it and you decide that you are at the bottom.  No one tells you that you are at the bottom.  You have to decide where it is.  From there you decide to make changes in your belief system and your life.  With authentic desire for emotional change a commitment is naturally declared.  With that commitment you begin to take the action to become the observer of your thoughts, fears, emotions, and false beliefs.  You take the action to develop the skills to dismantle the false beliefs that you find.  As you dismantle these false beliefs the power of your faith previously invested in those beliefs returns back to you.  As you recover your personal will power you are better able to refrain from the emotional drama.  The critic of the judge and the internal victim don’t seem as believable from your new observer point of view.   It becomes easier adopt an attitude of acceptance for where you are.  From that new plateau of acceptance,,, you begin to experience Love.

And some times all of this is just a bit overwhelming.  There are ten things on the list of important things to do to be happy and you don’t feel that you are very good at any of them.  We’ll at certain junctions of the journey the most important thing you can do is to show up and ask for help.  Show up in the presence of someone that is going to love you unconditionally.  Show up in the presence of someone who will accept you just the way you are.  Show up in the presence of someone who doesn’t judge you.  Show up in the presence of someone that will help you break down the big fearful beliefs into smaller ones that you can manage.  Sometimes the most important thing you can do is to find a good guide that can help you on your Pathway To Happiness and show up where they are.

So what is the most important thing?   It depends where you are in your process that day?  This process of doing the most important thing depends on how much awareness, will power, skills, and acceptance and love you have that day.  It depends on how strong the emotional reaction is that you are dealing with.  It depends on how much suffering you’ve experienced and whether you believe it means that things will never change,,, or you decide to believe, “That’s enough.   I’m going to do the most important thing.  I’m going to do what it takes to be happy.”

For practical insights on and actions to take on changing core beliefs, developing personal power, and creating happiness in your life I suggest you listen to the Free Audio Podcasts and practice the exercises in the Self Mastery course.