I hope you are well today. It’s raining cats and dogs here in Brighton and Hove, but I am embracing the cosiness.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our tendency to chase happiness.
We’re encouraged to make decisions, often decisions about what to buy and how to look, with the promise that choosing correctly will make us happy. Happiness is held up as the ultimate goal, if we find a way to be perpetually happy we’ll have made it, we’ll have succeeded in being a good human.
But actually, as Rumi reminds us, we are here to feel all the feelings. I’ve written about Rumi’s ‘guesthouse’ poem before, how it speaks to the idea that being a human is an opportunity to invite all the emotions in, to welcome them all even the hard ones. Being human is to find a way to be with them all and to see what they are teaching us.
Brené Brown has discovered that there are actually 87 emotions available to us in her recent research for Atlas of the Heart. But rarely do we notice them all, rarely do we recognise that they are an opportunity for connection. When we have an ability to name and share our emotions, we have an opportunity to connect with others.
Welcoming and feeling all of our emotions, rather than staying in the chase for happiness, is the real route to living a wholehearted, fulfilling life.
And so I asked myself, if that’s the case, why I do advocate for activities like yoga, meditation, running, therapy, coaching, journaling. Am I not encouraging folks to lean into such processes in order to feel happier? Am I actually feeding this happy-obsessed problem?
But on deeper reflection I realised that in fact, tending to our wellbeing with things like yoga, meditation, running, therapy, coaching, journaling etc isn’t about feeling happy, it’s actually about keeping the ‘guesthouse’ clear of clutter.
If being human is like a guesthouse where we welcome in each visiting emotion, in order to have space to invite each emotion in we have to have let go of any rubbish that gets in the way. Wellbeing activities keep us clear and ready to navigate all that comes up.
Being resilient is about recognising that things will always happen that trigger thoughts and feelings, life will always be volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. And, in order to navigate all that comes up, we have to first keep ourselves clear, grounded and well, and then welcome it in and learn and grow from it all.
With love as always, Hannah and Team Bird