Moody Monday: Inside Job

A few years ago, I figured out that for me, being happy, or unhappy was largely a matter of how I decide to respond the world around me.  Happiness is an inside job.  It is not something that someone else, or something else brings to me.  I can be miserable in the midst of comfort and prosperity, I can be happy when things are going terribly. 

Poo happens, how do I allow it to influence me.  

Guilt is another emotional minefield that makes a lot of people miserable, and is often an internal feeling.  Often no one remembers or cares, except the person feeling guilty.  I feel guilty about not telling my grandmother the last time I saw her that I was moving to another state.  I didn't want to burden her, I didn't want her to worry.  And it has bothered me for almost 40 years. It hasn't bothered her, she died the spring after I moved. 

Yes, I could have done it differently, but I didn't, and I am the only one left to think about it.  She would say, let it go.  The past is past, the future lies ahead.  

Guilt, is an inside job. 

I read a really great book one time on forgiveness.  The point of the book was that we forgive others, not for what it does for them, but for what it does for us.  The ill feelings from being wronged, are again often only internal the person feeling bad.  By forgiving, we release the other person, and we relieve ourselves of the burden of feeling injured, hurt, wronged.  In South Africa they held hearings of truth and reconciliation, allowing people to talk about the wrongs that happened to them, and for people to talk about the wrongs that they committed, with the goal of both sides feeling heard, and releasing the past to be the past, while we move into the future.  Forgiveness is an inside job.  

Not everyone can chose happiness, or forgiveness easily.  Some psychological hurts are only healed through therapy.  Some issues of brain chemistry can best be balanced by modern chemistry.  I have a family member who needs this help, and consistently declines help.  I feel for him, I have forgiven him and freed myself.  He has not helped himself and I have no control over that.