A Guide to a Happy Life

Eat some fruit every day.
Note: This is the first-ever guest post on The Happy Homunculus.  It comes to us from an anonymous philosopher who figured it all out and never told anyone.... Until now!

No one can make you happy (or unhappy for that matter).  That choice is totally up to you.   All some of us can do is point the way, and hope that you take a look.  Learning about yourself and living life well is a process that we ALL go through.  It’s about making mistakes…lots of them…every day.  The only way to learn is through our mistakes.  Did I mention that WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES?

Here’s the important piece-try not to make the same mistakes over and over again.  It’s hard, I know.  The first step toward that end is to THINK very highly of yourself.  You’ve probably noticed that the word think is in big letters.  That’s because it’s important.  Thinking rather than just feeling.  It’s a huge concept.  Not one that most people can wrap their minds around.  But it’s worth THINKING about. (Sorry, I just love caps)  Try not to act on feelings…most feelings mean very little, no matter how passionately you feel them.  Rather, act only after thinking those feelings through, and deciding whether it would be in your best interest to do something about them.  Most feelings just need to be acknowledged and then let go of.   Too much?

Speaking of feelings, it’s worth noting that we all carry around some emotional baggage from our childhood.  Those are feelings we were never allowed to feel or express at the time or never quite understood or were traumatized by.  The bad news is that those feelings can become repressed, hidden just under the surface.  They come out as anger or some equally disconnected painful emotion at the wrong time and usually targeted at the wrong person. Often times they are self- destructive.  Many people live their lives completely disconnected from themselves or their true feelings.  VERY UNHEALTHY for all of us!  The good news is through therapy or self introspection we can remember those less than happy times, relive those feelings and connect them to the appropriate person, place or thing, living or dead.   Once you confront those emotions and deal with them by connecting them to their original origin, then you can let them go and begin to heal.   Just remember, ALL FEELINGS HAVE TO BE RECOGNIZED AND EITHER LET GO OR DEALT WITH.  NEVER IGNORED!     Now you are free to begin to lead a much healthier, happier life and deal with emotions as they happen, without going through the much more complicated process of storing them for later, inappropriate use against an innocent bank teller, co-worker or poor hapless spouse.  It’s NEVER too late to treat your child within really, really well, especially if you weren’t treated well when you actually were a child.  Take responsibility for the care and feeding of that child and move on whistling a happy tune.

Your life has purpose and meaning.  If you were not born, those whose lives you’ve interacted with would not be the same.  We are all inter-connected.  We all share the same purpose.  It’s OK that you have no idea what that purpose is-that’s part of the process.  I can tell two very general reasons we are here (on earth) Ready?

LOVE  and  KNOWLEDGE.  There you have it.  Let’s keep it simple.

Love yourself first and when you’re in a really good place, then help others along.
The more you learn about yourself and others and life and, well, everything, the more advanced you become. The more you grow.  The further along in the PROCESS you go.  Easy!

Be positive rather than negative.  You cannot be both.  They are opposites and cannot exist in the same place at the same time.  Choose to be positive.  Trust me on this.

The more positive energy you put out there, the more will come back to you.  It’s a good thing.  The same is true with negativity.

Believe in yourself.  You are all you have.  Recognize all your successes and build on them.  They weren’t accidents.  Give yourself all the credit you deserve.  If you don’t, you’ll be constantly filled with fear and self-doubt and always starting from scratch.

Don’t confuse STUFF with success.  Clothes don’t make the man…or woman.  Success comes from the inside out, not the other way around.  If you feel empty inside, you will NEVER have enough clothes, drugs, cool friends, cars, shoes, beer, wine, money(you get the idea) to make you feel the way you want to feel.  NEVER EVER!! 

Fill that void with self-love.  Positive actions… A strong work ethic… Trust the PROCESS.

Keep doing the right things the best way you can, not perfectly, but the best you can and you will be successful.  I promise.

Here’s another important piece – if you do all this good, positive stuff and put yourself first and think before you act on feelings alone…if you do all this, you may still FEEL like crap.  It’s ok.  You can’t make a change after so many years and expect it to feel right.  If you stop smoking after 20 years, you will feel miserable for a while.  But keep with it and you will start to feel better.  It’s a process.  It takes time.   Oh yeah, don’t smoke.

Develop a support system.  Talk to people you can trust.  Don’t keep secrets.  They’re destructive.  Know who you can trust and let them help you through tough times.  Remember, we are all connected, and we’ve all gone through the same or much worse situations than you.  (Sorry, you don’t win the prize for terrible life stories)

DO SOMETHING GOOD FOR YOURSELF EVERY DAY. (Again, note the big letters)

It can be as simple as getting some ice cream or walking in the park.  It’s not what you do but why you’re doing it.  You’re doing it because you’re worth it. (put those last words in big letters in your mind)  You can create a positive mood with not much effort, as I have stated in my opening sentence!

(Admit it…I’m good!)

If you don’t know what to do, just do something positive.  As long as you move in a positive direction, you will find your way.  Believe in yourself.  Did I already say that?  It’s worth repeating.

Eat some fruit every day.

We all have stuff to deal with.  Know what is yours to handle and what is everyone else’s.  You are not responsible for anyone but you.  Not your mother or father or friends. Just deal with YOUR STUFF.  Let them deal with theirs.

Big finish…Treat yourself  well.  Believe in your abilities.  Be Positive.  Live life from the inside out.  Life is about one decision after the other.  Again and again… over and over.  If you don’t like a decision you’ve made – make another one!  Try to make better and better decisions for yourself.  You have a lifetime to practice.  Remember you are special.  Never forget that.

My gut tells me to trust my gut

My gut says: trust your gut!
Is there an optimal strategy for making a big decision?  Should we trust our intuition (our "gut") or should we engage in some methodical, step-wise approach?  You know, writing out the pros and cons.

I care right now because I'm trying to make a big decision: what do I want to do with my life?  Yikes.  So, yeah, I'm interested in learning a bit about how to tackle this.

I stumbled upon research suggesting conscious thought is better in some contexts while intuitive decision-making is better in others.  For example, check out this tidbit on decision-making.  In that example, the conclusion was that experts performed best when they relied on unconscious thinking.  Also, it sounds like expertise became less useful to expert decision-makers when they engaged in a conscious decision making process.

Hmm.  So what does that mean for me?  Here's what my gut tells me to do... When making this very complex decision I will engage in four steps:

1. Collect shit-loads of information - In essence, my goal is to actually become an expert on the topic that relates to the decision.  What are all the variables?  Pros, cons? List 'em out and learn them all.  Gather as much information as possible about the decision and feed it to my brain like some giant super-computer (which is sort of is).  But don't decide immediately.

2. Sleep on it - Next, I let all that information percolate through my nervous system.  It will create new connections and recognize patterns.  I will not be consciously aware of most of this.  Also, getting more sleep will speed the process along and help with fidelity.

3. Repeat as long as possible - Every decision has a timeline.  I will repeat the info-gathering and sleeping steps for as long as possible.  How long can I reasonably delay making the decision?  That may be a decision too, so fold that into the larger decision-making process and keep repeating for as long as is reasonable.

4. Trust my gut - Finally, once I've spent as much time as possible considering all the variables, I will trust my gut.  At the end of that time, my super-computer-like brain will print out a small slip of paper (essentially a fortune cookie) and I will do what it says.

Why does this make sense?  Here's my philosophy: the "conscious" part of our brain is a very tiny part of our brain.  Also, it's evolutionarily new and isn't very good at multitasking.  However, our brain has a lot of processing power that goes on behind the scenes and which contributes to all our decisions and actions.  We ignore all that parallel processing at great risk.

Also, big decisions are very complicated and require an understanding of a lot of moving parts.  While our conscious mind is a shitty multitasker, our brain at-large is great at multitasking (think driving and talking on the phone).  Why not exploit that?

So, that's the plan.  Hopefully it's a good decision...