Happiness and Your Sense of Self
So much of our pain and suffering comes from holding on tightly to who we think we are. Our “self” (oftentimes referred to as the ‘ego’).
Each of our selves has a distinct personality. It becomes more stable as we age and is built from a collection of experiences we’ve had throughout our lifetimes as well as what people have told us about us.
If you had had different life experiences, been born in a different culture, perhaps, changed your diet or had a different set of people in your life, your personality would look different. Your self would be different.
I think about the thriller movie Us, where a perfectly normal family in Santa Cruz discovers, to their horror, that they have clones of themselves that have been living underground for generations, called “The Tethered”. Despite being clones of their “normal” counterparts, the Tethered are vengeful, compassionless, and vicious (I mean, wouldn’t you be too if you had to watch your clone living their best life up above in sunny CA while you’re stuck underground controlled by the government?!)
I sometimes wonder how I’d be NOW if, instead of being labeled as an introvert when I was little, someone caught me during one of my extraverted moments and told me I was an extravert. Maybe I’d have chosen a different career path had I not been told I struggled with math (but probs not, lol). Maybe I wouldn’t have gone through a period of severely disordered eating and exercise had I not experienced a conflict between how I felt (terribly insecure) and what people said about me (“you are so confident”).
The point to all this being that our “self” is not grounded in “reality” (whatever reality is). We are so much more than our personality, than our self. In fact...
Our happiest moments are when we lose our sense of self. It other words, when we aren’t worried about our future. When we aren’t striving to look like this or that. To be like that person. When we LET GO.
Some of my happiest moments (otherwise known as moments of “flow”):
When I was an extra on Broadway in middle school.
Writing email newsletters :) (seriously)
Listening to the rain.
Teaching yoga.
The process of creating my first online course for the University of Michigan.
Advising people on exercise when I worked at a fitness center.
When I practiced yoga for the first time during my 200 hour yoga teacher training.
As you can see, you don’t need to do something extravagant to access flow, that state of self-transcendence where we aren’t planning or worried about our future. You don’t need to be a professional athlete or summit Mount Kiliminjaro. You can access flow and self-transcendence in the mundane moments.
We may not be able to be in flow all the time (nobody would show up to work on time), but when we can sprinkle our days with moments of flow and rest from the tiring “self”, the side effects are profound:
Taking yourself less seriously
Wake up excited to do life
Ability to pick and choose who you want to be, rather than be defined by others or your own expectations
Not worry so much about what others think
Less comparison of yourself to others
An ability to enjoy what’s here right now rather than always looking toward the future for something better
Life has more meaning and joy
Positive role modeling for others