Are we ready to be happy?
This podcast is a treasure trove of goodies about happiness - about how we think, where our attention is placed, how it frames our experience. If we are wired to look for the negative, the danger, the threats, we'll find it (and we'll feel it in our system, our relationships, our world around us). And this makes so much sense, this negativity bias; we can compassionately understand its intention to care for us, to prevent harm by alerting us to danger. By paying attention to this negativity bias, we aren't covering up difficult emotions either; it's a "both/and" quality - learning to be with the difficult *and* also building the capacity for joy.
"We have all these misguided notions of what's going to bring us happiness, what's going to make us happy, what will stop us from being happy. And then we have habits, ways of paying attention that lock us into a certain range of moods. True happiness is a natural expression of our being when we're open and present...when we're happiest we're free from our self-narrative...What we most need is the resilience, the inner refuge of presence, of inner well-being, that can allow us to respond in an intelligent, compassionate way to what's going on."
-Tara Brach, Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom