What happens in the spaces in between?
Rather than focusing on the extremes, on the 0% and the 100%, it may be helpful to ask the question ‘What would the 50%, 60% look like?’. Spending more time in this ‘good enough’ zone may help us to pay more attention to the unfolding’ of life, to the ‘spaces in between’.
A friend recently told me about this lovely poem:
“I would love to live
Like a river flows
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.”
This got me thinking about how our rigid ‘black and white’ and ‘all or nothing’ thinking patterns can prevent us from living in this way. We strive to be perfect, often to overcompensate for feeling unworthy or not good enough. We bind ourselves with these unrealistic expectations, leading to harsh judgement and self-criticism when we inevitably fail to meet them.
So rather than focusing on the extremes, on the 0% and the 100%, it may be helpful to ask the question ‘What would the 50%, 60% look like?’. Spending more time in this ‘good enough’ zone may help us to pay more attention to the unfolding’ of life, to the ‘spaces in between’. And if we allow ourselves the freedom to ‘flow with the current’ rather than rather than hurtling towards an unachievable end result, we may discover increased acceptance for ourselves as imperfect beings.
What does it mean to be happy?
It seems every couple of weeks a new book or article is written about how we can ‘achieve’ happiness. A quick browse of these titles tells us that happiness is ‘skill’, something we can learn if we take the right ‘route’ or follow certain ‘steps’. It is unsurprising then that clients often come to counselling saying ‘I just want to be happy’.
It seems every couple of weeks a new book or article is written about how we can ‘achieve’ happiness. A quick browse of these titles tells us that happiness is a ‘skill’, something we can learn if we take the right ‘route’ or follow certain ‘steps’. It is unsurprising then that clients often come to counselling saying ‘I just want to be happy’.
I wonder if this ‘happiness culture’ is creating unrealistic and unhelpful expectations around what is means to be human. May we come to see ourselves as somehow deficient if we don’t feel happy?. May we be tempted to resist our emotional pain through fear of becoming ‘unhappy’?. And are we more likely to attach unhelpful and negative labels (bad, harmful) to those experiences which don’t make us happy? Perhaps accepting emotional pain as part of life, rather than striving for an idealistic notion of happiness, is an ultimately more beneficial approach.
I often find that supporting clients to ‘be with’ difficult feelings helps to build resilience around the messiness and complexity of life and can lead to abundant psychological benefits. The more open we are to our experiences of pain and the more wholeheartedly we can live through them, the more open we can be to experiences of joy and yes, ultimately happiness!