Contents
Happiness is also trained and you only have to take four steps
Tips
Achieving well-being is an exercise in which taking care of “our self” in the future is very important
Never before has happiness been so “fashionable”. Or, more specifically, the search for it. Motivational phrases, self-help books, programs that promise to achieve that state of comfort that we long for… we are surrounded by it. And, in this age when omnipresent pursuit of happiness drink a large part of our life, we have never encountered higher rates of depression and anxiety.
It is in the discord between what we understand as happiness and the model of life that we lead today, where these fatal results for our health reside. This is how the doctors in Psychology Ausiàs Cebolla and David Alvear explain it, who, in their book “Positive contemplative psychology” They try to explain the bases to move towards the search for true well-being, through contemplative practices.
«If we ask what it means to be happy for people, most of them have very wise definitions. The problem is that our lifestyle does not conform to that idea of happiness we have, in which we appreciate the sense of balance, self-acceptance and harmony ”, Ausiàs Cebolla explains. “The happiness they sell us is based on hedonism, but we propose a model of happiness that is off-center of the self, based on virtues and good social behaviors,” argues David Alvear.
The cultivation of these virtues is the basis of the system proposed by these two experts, whose objective is to help us build a sustained welfare state and lasting in time.
The development of these skills, as explained by Cebolla and Alvear, has four constituents: Learning to enhance positive emotions; promote the ability to recover from adversity, focusing on the regularization of negative emotions; train mindfulness, the ability to pay attention to the present; and cultivate compassionate and generous behaviors.
These are the four pillars that the two experts consider necessary for the cultivation of these virtues that will lead us to well-being.
Mindfulness
The so-called mindfulness is nothing more than working to be able to pay attention to the present. Avoiding this rambling is essential “Internal dialogue can be good, it allows us to plan and develop other things. But this internal voice, in moments of vulnerability, can be something that causes us a lot of suffering, ”explains Ausiàs Cebolla.
The expert explains that what the mindfuless pursues is to control the attention of our mind. «The objective is to be able to tell ourselves ‘Right now I am doing something that does not feel good’, and that it is possible disengage our attention of that and focus it on something more positive, “he argues.
Altruism and compassion
Also, stress the importance of compassion in this wellness exercise. David Alvear warns that we should not confuse “virtue” and “value”: “Virtue has an ethical conditioning and value does not.” Both list the virtues as natural things that we carry in an intrinsic way as human beings: strength, courage, compassion, loyalty …
“If we act in alignment with the virtues, this has a positive impact on our well-being. That is the only sustainable well-being over time. The rest is a happiness centered on hedonism, “says Cebolla.
Work on resilience
To continue working, it is also important to learn to regulate our negative emotions. Even so, we should not deny them, since as both experts explain, many times certain negative emotions can lead us to positive actions. We must accept these emotions, but also be able to regulate them and find ourselves overwhelmed by them. «You have to learn to shorten negative emotion, do not spend so much time on it, that it does not consume so many resources. How much time do I want to dedicate to this anger or disgust? Once we have answered ourselves, having the skills to say that’s it, now something else, ”says Ausiàs Cebolla.
Savor the moment
Finally, it is essential to learn to appreciate positive emotions, something that seems simple but that many times we do not do. “We must try to savor the emotion, be more attentive and above all, not boycott ourselves”, recommends Cebolla and concludes: “We must learn to lengthen and sustain positive emotion».
The importance of the future self
“We have a relationship with our future selves whether we like it or not,” says David Alvear, PhD in Psychology. Once we accept that, the expert explains how we should think about that future “self” and cultivate it with the aim that it is in harmony with our virtues.
The future self, with which we have an inevitable connection, is also a strong point of motivation, an essential behavior to achieve the happiness proposed in the book «Positive contemplative psychology». “If I do not have the ability to project myself into the happy future, that will have a negative impact on the actions of the present,” says Dr. Ausiàs Cebolla in Psychology.
«We must design a version of our future self that has reached a set of abilities and brings us happiness. If we do not build that future, we are not going to commit ourselves to achieving certain virtues in the present », Ultima Cebolla.