Be careful with things that frustrate, bring regret, or make you wish you were someone else. In short, change your thinking in order to find happiness even in times of painful circumstances and loss.
Life can make you feel pain, sorrow, and deep depression when you face things and see others around you seemingly untouched by such things. A person who cannot walk may feel angry at the universe or God because they see others around them walking and wish they could too. They can become so focused on that they may miss the things they can do that others can’t.
When you start to feel this way, change the subject in your head. Go read your Bible, find and ingest wholesome content, use your talents to write or draw, or even play a video game. Avoid content that refocuses you on your problem: if you are a girl and just got dumped by your boyfriend, now may not be the time to watch romance comedies unless that actually cheers you up (which it probably won’t).
Do anything but let yourself dwell on that thing, because things we cannot control but focus on our frustration about can be crazy making. Dwelling on things in your life that are sad and painful, at times when you cannot take action on them, is never fruitful.
Often we try to psyche ourselves out a bit, like somehow we can rationalize or understand our source of sorrow, as if this will change it. It may be good to get to a point of understanding, if it is possible, but it’s not the best and most consistent way to handle that pain in the long term.
The key is not to psyche ourselves out but to simply look at something else. A Jewish friend once told me that when he was depressed his Rabbi told him to “go and count your money.” I misunderstood this to think he was being shallow. But the man had money and all the Rabbi was doing was showing him how to refocus on the good things in his life.
This man had experienced a love rejection and was so focused on that he was spiraling downwards. He counted his money and his mind changed its channel. It didn’t erase his sadness, but it decreased the burden and eventually he was able to find love again, which would have been hard if he had stayed in his funk feeling sorry for himself and imagining only sorry and rejection were his fate.
You become what you are looking at. The lesson with my Jewish friend wasn’t “money brings happiness”, his Rabbi explained, it was to focus on anything positive about your life and to give your mind and heart a vacation from the pain and sorrow.
I knew someone with cancer who was relatively young and who faced a bad prognosis, and yet they seemed happy. I asked them how they could be happy, suspecting the answer they would give, and I was not surprised. Basically, they said they don’t think about that, they don’t even focus on tomorrow or any time down the road. They live their best life here and now and when that dark cloud of comparing their life to others comes, they do anything it takes to get their mind busy doing and thinking about something else.
They lived far more years than anticipated but eventually passed, albeit never with regrets and always staying in the moment.
By changing what they looked at, from the pain and loss to happy things, they became more happy.
Happiness is not even mostly circumstantial. I’ve met people who experience great pain every day due to some serious medical condition who were mostly still happy, but I’ve also met people who were mostly unhappy whose circumstances were not pleasant but not nearly as severe as these other folks. What I saw different in them was more the things they spent time doing and ingesting or imagining than anything else.
Even in my own life I have had real depression dealing with some circumstances that were painful and yet not as bad as I imagined but yet as I grew and gained more wisdom, worse circumstances came and yet I could say some of those times I was much happier than in those less trying circumstances. There are times when the deepest painful situation happens and yet other good things are also happening because I choose to focus on them and the overall sense of joy and happiness is greater.
Most of this, with faith in God an eternal view of life as a foundation, was effectuated by the simple expedient of changing the channel in my mind.
This is not a perfect solution that will prevent you from ever feeling the pain or sorrow of your situation, or that of a loved one. But if it can reduce 70% of the amount of time you consciously sit in that, then it is worth trying.
Don’t get cynical. The saying by Nietschze that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger seems superficially true, but it is a cynical and pessimistic saying. First, “being stronger” is neither a goal nor a source of happiness and, second, wholeness, our deepest need, can come from that which not only doesn’t kill us but brings us joy.
Back to the man who eventually died from cancer. He was able to focus on what gave him joy, and even as his choices narrowed, he never stopped searching for that which gave him joy in the moment. He once said that because of his terminal diagnosis he was given many opportunities to speak into people’s lives, which gave him great joy in the moment, and this joy he imparted to others who were made stronger in love, not just some horrid trial by fire that almost killed them.
We all have been given a life and circumstances all meant to mold and shape us into the people God ultimately desires us to be for eternity. For every tear we shed while remaining in the faith, God rewards us. One day, therefore, some of the people you may think got short-shifted in this life will be seen as having been given the greatest opportunity to experience a depth of oneness with Christ that not everyone seems to get.
Many of the people who I have met who have experienced great tragedies, some enduring for decades, have shown me truths and principles for living that have made me better and stronger. They did not begrudge me the fact my circumstances were better and that I could benefit from the wisdom they earned through great sacrifice and loss without me having to experience that loss.
Change your mind’s channel from your pain and suffering, inasmuch as you can, through the simple expedient of taking some action to encumber your mind’s time with something else. Why sit in the pain any longer than is necessary?
About Author
Bill Collier
Bill Collier Jr is a US Navy veteran, newspaper publisher, marketing expert, and digital knight in shining armor who leads a charge against the corpostate’s war on freedom, to advance liberty and justice for ALL Americans, without exception.
