Read an Excerpt
The Happiness Secret
How to Rediscover Lost Happiness
By Steve Wood Balboa Press
Copyright © 2014 Stephen A Wood
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-2593-8
CHAPTER 1
My Secret Unhappiness
The achievement of happiness, most of us would agree, is the one common goal of all humanity. Seven billion people throughout the world, in hundreds of countries, all with vastly different cultures, lifestyles and opportunities, nevertheless, individually, desire and seek to attain this one thing we call happiness. Happiness has been described variously as an emotional state of being ranging from gladness to ecstasy. And a vast variety of means to achieving it have been offered by the masters of differing beliefs, faiths, and ideologies. "But how," you must be asking, "despite all the wisdom, despite all the wealth in the world and all the reasons you'd expect this state of being to be as natural to us as breathing, does happiness remain so elusive?" Well, my friend, the answer is;
1. We're unaware of our subconscious minds.
2. We cannot stop our thinking.
3. We believe what we think.
It's a simple enough answer, isn't it? But it has been a very complex issue to untangle, because from our earliest beginnings in life, each of us has had embedded in our subconscious mind unique and complex information giving direction to our individual life journeys. The subconscious is our life-forming crucible and contains the seeds of all that has given rise to the story of our life. From its' archive of all of our experiences, including those of our forebears, our ancestors, has formed, our life paradigm. Although this paradigm is the blueprint, for the design and construction of our life, for our values and life choices, it's primarily due to our unyielding attachment to it, that so much unhappiness prevails in our life.
When we pause to reflect upon our life journeys, remembering the crossroads and obstacles we encountered, the choices we were offered and directions we chose to take along the way, we might wonder how differently our lives might have turned out had we chosen another, different route. You will relate to this, and of course you may well wonder about it, but you shouldn't fuss about it, because, at the end of the day, you can rest assured that whatever road you have taken, it's been the right one. After all, that road has led you to this day, to this moment, and to this book. And at this moment, for better or for worse, your life, and most likely your level of happiness, reflects the sum of all of the choices you've made, the sum of your life's journey to date. What you are about to learn in the reading of this book is also a part of your journey, a part that I hope will enlighten and uplift you, opening up and straightening out your road toward happiness.
So let me begin by asking you this simple question: How has your journey turned out so far? Would you describe it as good? Wonderful? Just okay? Wavering, or Miserable? I'm sure that like everyone else on the planet, you will have experienced what you considered both good and bad times, highs and lows. Yes? Whatever the mix, as you take time to read through the chapters ahead, I'd like you to reflect on the bad times, because you see, unbeknownst to you, throughout your life's journey it's actually been the difficulties, the crossroads, and obstacles that you encountered along the way that may have presented you with your greatest opportunities. These were opportunities to make not just subtle changes in direction but profound shifts that would last throughout your whole life. When they presented themselves to you in the past, you may or may not have recognised these as potential life-changing opportunities. That's a matter that you'll be able to determine after finishing this book. For now though, as you set out on this journey of discovery with me, I'd like to begin by telling you about a particular life-changing opportunity that presented itself to me. It happened at about the halfway point in my life journey. Here's how it unfolded.
Perhaps like you, I was born free of unhappiness, born into a financially poor but harmoniously rich family environment, and I grew up in a quiet residential suburb close to the beach. Being the youngest family member, I was always referred to as the baby, a term used by my father when introducing me to his friends. Oh, how I loathed that name as a ten-year-old! Together with my parents, my three older brothers and I lived with my maternal grandmother. We four brothers were well loved and well disciplined by our strict parents, and we were certainly never abused. In our twenties, one by one we left home to marry and pursue our lives and to raise families of our own. Being the "baby," I was the last to leave, and I travelled the farthest in search of a life, a life and lifestyle that would turn out to be vastly different from those of my parents, at least in terms of material matters but, remarkably, very similar in terms of family interconnection and moral and social values.
As I'm sure has been the case for billions of people, as that life unfolded, unhappiness, in its many forms and levels of intensity, became invisibly entangled in my psyche. Its complexities and their embedded effects dwelt there, unrealised, for forty-six years. During this period my life challenges were many and varied, yet even the worst events seemed always to be surmountable. I always managed to put even the very tough issues behind me, and to move on. But despite my gritty attitude, unnervingly, too many of them seemed to be repeated over and over again. Too many years were spent living a less-than-happy life, but due to my sense of pride and fear of others learning about my unhappiness, I never talked to anyone about it. My unhappiness was my best-kept secret. Always remaining optimistic that one day all would be well, that better times were ahead and my life would eventually blossom, I put on my happy face. But underneath, somewhere deep inside me, I knew life ought not to be so difficult, so miserable. As I'm certain that anyone suffering unhappiness would agree, my unhappiness was a lonely place.
At the age of forty-six, I'd embarked upon and left behind a number of personal relationships and a variety of careers. I'd rented, bought, or built and sold a score of different homes, lived in several cities in two different countries, and was twice married and twice divorced. Enough said. Yet through all of this, I was lucky enough to have maintained good relations with many friends and my past wives, and I was blessed with two loving children, whose ages' are twenty years apart. Considering myself somewhat finally settled, in both my personal and business life, I established a small but successful real estate business. This brought with it a greater degree of financial stability. I felt prepared now to embark upon a new direction for living, with my new loving partner, Penny. She and I were both ecstatically happy to be together, and especially to be free of our earlier life challenges, including both our disastrous past relationships and all the emotional turmoil attached to them. Life seemed to be on track at last. Thank God! We began building not only a happier new life together, but also a beautiful new home, close to the beach in a peaceful seaside town.
We whimsically named the property Seabird Hill, which was the brand of inexpensive champagne we bought to toast our success on the day we acquired the land. This was to be our dream home, where we'd live out the rest of our lives together. A custom-designed, Old World style home, sitting elevated among the trees on a quiet leafy lane, its living areas were airily spacious, with soaring ceilings, and restfully decorated rooms that opened through French doors to wide, shady verandas. This was the kind of house we'd both dreamed of living in. From kitchen to bedrooms, from bathrooms to basement, it boasted every comfort and modern amenity. We considered it our just reward for hard work and our patience in having endured those former years' many difficulties. This was to be a place where our children and friends would come to stay, to share in our love and happiness. Here, miles from the noise of stressful traffic congestion, crowded shopping centres, and urban confusion, the only sounds to be heard were birdsong and the nearby surf beaches' distant roar and surge over the sand. A rare lifestyle awaited us, one that was a delightful contrast to the life in the city suburbs we so loathed. At last we felt we'd found happiness and a peaceful life in our ultimate environment. Friends told us that we were the envy of many. It was all so perfect. What could possibly go wrong?
Actually ... everything! Burning the house down would not have more disruptive.
You see, the happiness of our refuge soon became unhappiness, due to what seemed to me to be, the past. Not my past, I thought, but that of my new partner. Penny's ex-husband, Ron, had reappeared from oblivion to be constantly in our faces.
To me, he was not a civilised man but an uncouth brute. His intrusion into our lives came initially in the form of rude and abusive telephone calls at all hours of the day and night, both at our workplaces and in our home. Not satisfied with firing volleys of volatility from a distance, he'd personally invade our space with senseless physical and psychological intimidation and bullying. Using tactics such as verbally abusing us and his children, even driving his big RV dangerously close to us on our morning walk, ploughing its' chunky tires through our newly laid, manicured lawn seemed to be his perverted way of amusing himself. I tried my best not to become involved in their feuding, but the tediously petty bickering that developed between the two of them, the constant arguing about insignificant things, brought stress and disruption into our otherwise harmonious home, causing the two of us to argue about Ron's untenable intervention.
My every thought about him and his behaviour lit a fire in my head, ever increasing the inflammation in my mind, which eventually became a pressure cooker of mental fury. Overburdened with stress as a consequence of Ron's interference and aggression, and the sense that my loving relationship was slipping away, in this darkened state of mind, I began to imagine that people and events were conspiring to wreck my relationship and my business. My whole world felt threatened and I made some silly choices and said and did some fairly ridiculous things, things that ultimately caused me angst and cost me both friendships and money, all of which I afterwards used up much time worrying about and regretting.
Exasperated and unhappy once again, I had allowed the emotions of frustration and anger spilling from my mind to overwhelm me. My happy life had suddenly become a very dark place.
But this time, way beyond my comprehension, a far bigger picture was about to unfold, a panoramic portrait of a new way of life, one I never could have imagined, not in my wildest dreams.
Here's another question you probably didn't expect: Did you ever study Latin? You may or may not be familiar with a phrase the Romans might have used: Felix culpa. It translates in modern English to "fortunate error," or, if you like, a lucky mistake. Which is exactly what my unhappy experience would turn out to be because ultimately it was those out-of-control manifestations of my deepest emotions, my fears and anger, my fury that would bring me to my knees and to surrendering to change. This reoccurring, unwanted, unfortunate and unhappy event effectively forced me to undertake a comprehensive and cathartic review of the way I saw my life, a total review of my sensibilities about life, and to change my whole life paradigm.
You see, for forty-six years I'd been living in a state of unconscious unawareness. A state I've described as, 'living the dark'.
All this drama, this domestic upheaval, had seemingly erupted out of nowhere. Penny had seemed, to me, to be free and happy. Before I met her she and her ex had been separated for eight years. Eight years! Surely, you'd expect, they'd had time enough to put it all behind them and both be able to get on with their future lives without the need to wrangle and fight like children about such trivial matters as which of them still owned an old television set, which of them owned the family dog, whether or not their two children should be allowed to have the dog, and which of them was responsible for feeding and walking it. There were money and property issues too, things that had never been resolved, but in the main it was pretty petty stuff, all of it. Still, employing all this pettiness to great effect, they managed to perpetuate their apparent contempt for one another, and the resulting untenable misery for us all, for many months.
Understandably, their unending drama slowly but surely got under my skin. Ordinarily mundane events began to become difficult for me to manage, events such as daily business decisions and domestic issues, including those around their teenage children's attitudes towards me. Whenever I considered there was need for discipline, Penny's defence of their behaviour seemed to reflect a very biased view in favour of her children. The processes I employed to maintain peace and gain control of situations weren't working at all, and the more I tried, the worse it became. The distraction of my constantly, angrily thinking about so many tedious issues was impacting my business too. I was beginning to get a reputation for being short-tempered.
Late one evening Ron arrived abruptly and unexpectedly at our new front door, purportedly to return the old ten-inch TV that he'd "kidnapped" from Penny's workplace some weeks before. Considering my mood, he was lucky not to have it redelivered through his windscreen! The argument that ensued was the 'last straw'. After being subjected to their selfish bad behaviour and biting my tongue for nearly two years, finally, I exploded!
Eight hours later, Penny, her children, their personal belongings and most of the furniture were gone from the house, never to return. The end was certainly quick. But for me, emotionally, it was also very painful.
To further intensify my agonizing dilemma, my dear, elderly mother and her friend were soon due to arrive from overseas, coming to spend Christmas with us—with just me now—in what was now an almost completely empty house. Why is it that these events always occur right on Christmas? Just as the thermostat on your refrigerator fails right after you've finished loading all that festive seasonal food and wine into it. And can anyone ever find a repairman at that time of year? No, no chance!
My previous personal crisis's and unhappy relationship endings had already left their effects; emotional upset was not new to me. Despite my efforts to create a happy life, it seemed I'd chosen my life path and my partners blindly, and now this painfully intolerable and emotionally disturbing event had sent me reeling. Dumped in a serious state of shock and disbelief, I felt sickness in my stomach and utter grief for the loss of all that I thought was good, all that I'd worked so hard to achieve. Like a sudden death in the family, it seemed too quick and so wrong, and I had never felt so lonely in all my life. In this, my darkest moment, I was in dire need of a repairman, if anyone ever was.
The very next day, as if some alien force had sensed my need, a repairman, a repairwoman in my case, miraculously appeared. I'll call her Ms M.
Ms M was Penny's older sister. I'd previously spoken with her only occasionally, so we were not all that well acquainted; however, Ms M turned out to be a woman not only of great compassion and broad life experience, but also of great spiritual depth, she seemed to project what I'd call an inner knowing.
Although living some distance away, she'd heard the news, and telephoned me out of concern, speaking empathetically in a calm and understanding voice. This welcome but unexpected intervention felt strangely psychic to me, for she was not expressing sympathy so much as an intuitive knowing about my feelings, my state of fear and grief. This was a complete surprise to me. I'd certainly never had a conversation with anyone like it before. Ms M's sudden presence in my life, right then when I needed someone to genuinely understand, was a hugely comforting relief. And, to this day, I'm so grateful that she appeared when she did, and I remain astonished at what transpired over the next hours.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Happiness Secret by Steve Wood. Copyright © 2014 Stephen A Wood. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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