You Can Be Happy No Matter What. Richard Carlson

specific problem; you will just learn to live in a more contented state of mind: a state of love. The beautiful part of this knowledge — once you understand healthy psychological functioning — is that this knowledge lasts. It’s not that you’ll never again lose hold of the feeling of love — you will — but when you do, you’ll understand how you got off-course, and know exactly how to point yourself back in a better direction.

      The Key To Happiness: Your Mind

      Your mind essentially serves you in two ways. It is a storage vault for information and past experience, and is also a transmitter for wisdom and common sense. The storage vault, or “computer,” part of your brain is used to analyze, compare, relate facts, and make computations. The value of this component is clear: without it, we couldn’t survive. The other part of the brain, the “transmitter” that we each have access to, is the part that deals with matters of the heart — where computer information is insufficient. It is our transmitter mind, not our computer mind, that is the source of our contentment, joy, and wisdom.

      Part of the process of obtaining access to this other part of ourselves is to recognize how necessary and practical it is. How inappropriate it would be to use a computer to solve a marriage or career problem, or to decide how to talk to your teenager about drugs or to your toddler about discipline. Most people wouldn’t use a computer for these personal, heartfelt problems; they require softness and wisdom. Unless we understand and value the “transmitter” part of ourselves (healthy psychological functioning), we have no alternative but to call on the “computer” to deal with our personal issues. New answers don’t come from what you already know in the computer part of your brain. They come from a change of heart, from seeing life differently, from the unknown, quieter part of yourself.

      Let’s illustrate this point with the familiar story of someone who has lost his keys. He thinks and thinks (computer thinking) about where they could be, but to no avail. He simply can’t remember. Then, just when he has given up thinking to gaze out the window instead, the answer suddenly pops into his head and he remembers exactly where he left them. The answer came when he cleared his head, and not from the excessive thinking which would not allow the answer to surface. All of us have had similar experiences, but few have learned the valuable lesson of “not knowing” in order to know. Instead, we continue to think that the answer comes from racking our brains, from using our “computer.”

      You can learn to access and trust this healthy psychological functioning — the quiet part of your mind that is the source of inherent positive feelings, the wise part of you that knows the answers. And when it doesn’t know, it knows that it doesn’t. You can learn the difference between computer thinking and creative thinking — when to trust your computer, and when it’s appropriate to back off and quiet down.

      The goal of this book is to help you experience this nicer state of mind (contentment) more often in your life. When people learn to live in this peaceful state of mind, they discover that happiness and contentment are, in fact, independent from their circumstances. It’s not that things shouldn’t go “right,” — of course that’s best — but things don’t always have to go right before we can be happy. We don’t always have power over other people and/or events, but we do have tremendous power to feel happy and contented with our life. One nice by-product of feeling happy “for no reason” is that troubling details begin to work themselves out. We actually think better, more clearly, and more intelligently when our minds are not full of boggling concerns.

      Our minds can work for us or against us at any given moment. We can learn to accept and live with the natural psychological laws that govern us, understanding how to flow with life rather than struggle against it. We can return to our natural state of contentment.

      The five principles will teach you to live in a positive feeling state more of the time. Use them as a navigational tool to guide you through life and point you toward happiness.

      * Rick Suarez, Roger C. Mills, and Darlene Stewart, Sanity, Insanity, and Common Sense: The Groundbreaking New Approach to Happiness (New York: Fawcett, Columbine, 1987).

Chapter 1 The Principle Of Thought

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      All that you achieve and all that you fail to achieve is the direct result of your own thoughts.

      — James Allen

      HUMAN BEINGS ARE THINKING CREATURES. Every moment of every day, our minds are working to make sense out of what we see and experience. While this may seem obvious, it is one of the least understood principles in our psychological makeup. Yet understanding the nature of thought is the foundation to living a fully functional and happy life.

      Thinking is an ability — a function of human consciousness. No one knows exactly where thought comes from, but it can be said that thought comes from the same place as whatever it is that beats our heart — it comes from being alive. As is true with other human functions, thinking goes on whether we want it to or not. In this sense, “thought” is an impersonal element of our existence.

      The Relationship Between Thought And Feeling

      Every negative (and positive) feeling is a direct result of thought. It’s impossible to have jealous feelings without first having jealous thoughts, to have sad feelings without first having sad thoughts, to feel angry without having angry thoughts. And it’s impossible to be depressed without having depressing thoughts. This seems obvious, but if it were better understood, we would all be happier and live in a happier world!

      Virtually all the clients I have worked with over the years have begun their sessions like this:

      Client: “I feel very depressed today.”

      Richard: “Did you recognize that you were having depressing thoughts?”

      Client: “I didn’t have negative or depressing thoughts; I just feel depressed.”

      It took some time before I recognized the problem in our communication. We have all been taught that “thinking” means sitting down to “ponder,” to put in time and effort, as if we were doing a math problem. According to this idea of thinking, a person who wouldn’t dream of spending six hours obsessing about a single angry thought could nevertheless feel quite “normal” thinking fifteen or twenty angry thoughts for thirty seconds at a time.

      “Thinking about something” can occur over several days or within a passing second. We tend to dismiss the latter as unimportant, if we recognize it at all. But this is not so. Feelings follow and respond to a thought regardless of how much time the thought takes. For example, if you think, even in passing, “My brother got more attention than I did — I never did like him,” the fact that you now feel resentful toward your brother is not merely a coincidence. If you have the thought, “My boss doesn’t appreciate me — I never get the recognition I deserve,” the fact that you now feel bad about your job came about as soon as that thought came to mind. It all takes place in an instant. The time it takes to feel the effects of your thinking is the same amount of time it takes to see the light after turning on the switch.

      The ill effects of thought come about when we forget that “thought” is a function of our consciousness — an ability that we as human beings have. We are the producers of our own thinking. Thought is not something that happens to us, but something that we do. It comes from inside of us, not from the outside. What we think determines what we see — even though it often seems the other way around.

      Consider a professional athlete who “lets his team down” by making a critical error in the last championship game before his retirement. For years after retiring from the sport, he dwells on his error for a moment here and a moment there. When people ask, “Why are you depressed so much of the time?” he responds by saying, “What a fool I was to make such a mistake. How else