The abstract: In today’s divisive world, encouraging critical thinking requires challenging entrenched beliefs. The challenge, of course, is to separate oneself from the mind, a skill rarely taught. The weight of societal expectations hinders our pursuit of true joy. Reconnecting with inner wisdom and challenging the mind leads to slow but transformative progress, offering a path to health and happiness amidst external distractions. Embracing joy becomes a revolutionary act, unlocking individual power and connection to one’s heart.
How badly do you want those knots of stress and worry to unravel? To not wake up with the weight of the world (and the needs of your household) on your shoulders? What would it cost you to wake up most days feeling loved, appreciated, and with a sense of deep peace? Everything is possible, but there is a catch. To experience true joy in our lives, we need to live against the grain in almost every aspect of life. Finding our way to such flourishing requires challenging the accepted paradigms of civilization as it stands today – that happiness will eventually come one day when we earn more, spend more, have more, do more and be more. Very often this extends to the idea that in order to have it all, others must have less.
The short version: Turn off the news, turn off your phones, and live your life. The deeper you go down the rabbit hole, the more you drag your spirit down and the less joy you embody. The equation is that simple.
This does not mean that we should ignore the absolute horrors and tragedies of our world. At all. But we also can’t let it all overwhelm us and determine the energy with which we conduct our lives.
Being happy becomes a rebel.
We are trying to survive, but we have forgotten what it means to thrive. Our natural state of being is to be happy, well, healthy, vital, brave, optimistic and to experience a real sense of belonging, connection and oneness. This is a man in the full expression of humanity. This is where we are born and as we emerge from childhood, we forget very quickly.
We can remember what we’ve always known, but it requires taking radical responsibility for where we are today, having the courage to accept what isn’t working, and the discipline to do the work to change what needs to change both in our minds and in the choices we make in our lives every moment. Like shooting for the stars, adjusting the trajectory even slightly can land us somewhere completely different.
This is of course not a simple task. It is not as simple as deciding to make it so.
Thriving and living happily means we don’t eat the same food, work towards the same goals, watch the same movies, read the same news, shop in the same stores, or value what we’re supposed to value in the ways we expect.
This is why living joyfully can be our greatest act of rebellion.
Being happy goes directly against the rules. We get together with friends and instead of gossiping, venting about the mess in our lives or how we’re not enough, we step up, share, engage, hope and dream. We are looking for solutions to our challenges and how we can be part of an integrated solution for the world. We live today as we planned for yesterday and continue to plan to level up tomorrow. We think critically and question everything. Does this (still) work?
Living joyfully means shifting the metrics used to measure success
Doing this in our world today, amidst the divisive influences that surround us, requires us to get to know our own minds and hearts deeply, to learn to question almost everything, and of course, to give brave real answers, even if the result could be the collapse of the foundational values by which we have lived.
We are not trained in our culture to separate ourselves from the mind, let alone be able to know our own mind and question whether what it is telling us is true. We may have heard the words that we are not our minds, but who actually applies it? Questioning what our mind tells us, that voice inside your head, is at the root of critical thinking.
Is this true?
What if the opposite is true?
Do I really believe this, or is this just what I’ve been told my whole life?
To make the teaching of critical thinking standard practice would undermine a system that requires, for its own survival, that we blindly follow and accept division as normal.
We drift with the tide. We lose our joy. We enter into fear and lose ourselves.
We pack our bags and carry them on our shoulders, filled with intergenerational trauma, the stories our parents and grandparents tell us, the blatant lies and false beliefs we are bombarded with by educators, headlines, government and society at large.
We carry these packages around with us as anxiety, fear, and longing for peace bubble up inside us without knowing how to tap into them. We keep adding weight and joy slips further away.
We were never given the keys to access that place within ourselves, to get back what we lost.
In general, we have forgotten the skills we need, the work we need to do, and that they are always available to us. What we need to do is simple: strengthen the whispers of our heart and follow the path of being well and happy. We tap into our intuition, the wisdom of the heart that only knows the signs and signals of the present moment in which we find ourselves. Can it really be that simple?
Simple; Yes. Easy; At all.
The challenge, why most people fear it, is because this inner knowing does not lie and cannot be denied. Once you hear those whispers, they get louder, louder, and you see the accuracy of it all. We begin to see that we cannot achieve the goal of joy, peace, love, health, and happiness by aggressive action followed by immediate gratification. It’s a slow creep of progress where one day we feel more joy in a single minute of the day than we did the day before. One drop at a time.
But when we can do that – ask the questions of our mind and live with the exquisite intention of living joyfully, the job is done. The baggage we carry falls away, slowly to be sure, but it does, and soon we are swept up in the tidal wave of both insight and compassion. We remember that all life is connected.
Looking around. Does this work?
We are tired, broken and burned out. Health in mind, body and spirit is achieved by the few who have the mind to break free, while too many remain attached to screens that constantly highlight the lack in their lives and that filling that void comes from anything other than the true solution of looking within and summoning the discipline to do the work.
In time, we may find ourselves on its brink. The distractions have quieted down for a moment. Momentum and motivation build, but then – BOOM.
We are heading in a new direction. He pointed out a new distraction. THIS is the reason. It’s their fault. We stay connected to the frequency of fear and make it a reality. Find the evidence that proves it is true. Me against them. Blame and shame, so accountability is never taken.
We must keep asking: What is mine? What have I picked up that isn’t? What is true and real? Which beliefs are beneficial to me and others and which are harmful?
The only truth we can trust is what it is indeed good and beneficial for the full expression of man, it is also good and beneficial for our collective.
To live happily in a world that pushes us to be sick, divided, constantly wanting, other, to work with our heads down and to abandon any sense of personal responsibility is truly the greatest act of rebellion.
We each have more power within us than we have been led to believe. Now is the time to capitalize on it. Your health is your wealth. Your connection to your heart is your superpower. This could change everything. Living joyfully, attuning to the wisdom of your heart, is what will make us extremely powerful, empowering and magnetic.
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