How to Always Feel Good, Ver. 1 Click here to hear the author narrate this essay
I was 50 before I discovered this simple truth: the only reason we feel bad is because we are thinking or saying or doing something that makes us feel bad. If we want to feel good, we must think, or say, or do something that makes us feel good. It’s really that simple!
It isn’t “easy” because “easy” means “habitual”. And most of us aren’t in the habit of doing things that make us “feel good”. So it requires effort for most of us to change that habit.
I said that to say this: the only reason you feel depressed is because you’re thinking thoughts that depress you! And, since you’re the only thinker in your mind, you are the only one who can choose to change your thoughts.
The way you do that is to simply monitor how you’re feeling. As soon as you notice you’re not feeling “good”, you recognize that by simply saying to yourself something like, “I don’t feel good doing this. And I want to feel good. So I will simply choose again, and I will choose something to think about that makes me feel good.”
That’s a technique. It’s the opposite of the technique most of us have adopted from our culture. We’ve been taught to continue dwelling on those things that make us feel bad, when we are feeling bad. That works wonderfully, but it works to give us more of the same. The other way will work just as wonderfully, but to give us more of the same “good”!
It really is that simple. But, like I said, it isn’t easy, because “easy” means “habitual”. But as you begin to make that new habit, by consciously and deliberately choosing your thoughts, instead of habitually choosing them (from old, self-defeating habits), it, too, will become habitual, and it will become easier and easier.
If you don’t like the way you’re feeling, YOU can change the way you’re feeling. And only you can change it. And you CAN change it, by giving yourself permission to feel good, and then by taking the steps to change your thoughts, words, and actions!
Charles David Heineke, 1999
Spread the word. Please copy freely.
