Mindy Fuchs

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#12 Miseralites: Happy Being Miserable

Miseralites: Happy Being Miserable

Happy being miserable… what an oxymoron! It seems impossible, but many people have mastered this contradiction of life. Do you know anyone like this? You know who I’m talking about — people who bemoan life and begrudge others more than they delight in life and bless others. I call them Miseralites (‘miz-er-e-lites) because they are misers when it comes to happiness. Miseralites: happy being miserable.

Who Are the Miseralites?

Miseralites deny they are killjoys and don’t realize the kind of genuine happiness they are missing. They are the fake happy people, who’ve convinced themselves the components of happiness are the same as the components of misery. They confuse contentment with complacency; joy with exhilaration; peace with avoidance; satisfaction with getting their own way; and freedom with the absence of self-control. Some examples of Miseralites include: people who complain about being overweight, but claim they can’t eat just one cookie; those who want compensation for how their ancestors were treated; folks who’ve been so hurt by irresponsible parents that they continue to be irresponsible adults; people who want what others have, but aren’t willing to do or make the sacrifices necessary to get it.

Miseralites are stuck in survival mode, which Scripture refers to as “natural man.” The natural is how we are born and it’s how we are when we wake up every morning. Therefore, it’s easy to live in survival mode or the natural because we’re naturally there. It is a secure place for anyone who is gripped by fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt – the emotional instincts that preserve our existence.

While Miseralties know happiness exists, their adherence to fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt make it more difficult for them to find and grasp onto joy, peace, love, satisfaction, freedom, and contentment (the components of happiness). It’s easier and safer for them to preserve their existence than venture out of it.

To preserve existence means one has survived and to survive one must have a situation from which he survived. Therefore, one must be a victim. To stay in survival mode, one must continuously be a victim. Miseralites are constant victims. Even if they have no reason to be a victim, they will make themselves into victims by finding fault with others, blaming others, or by holding on to situations when they were actual victims.

Miseralites are not bad people. Like all of us, they’ve had bad things happen to them, but for whatever reasons haven’t been able to heal and overcome. This left them stuck having more fear than faith, more anger than acceptance, more contempt than respect, more shame than encouragement, and more guilt than honor. You don’t have to have all of these to become a Miseralite. An excess of any one of these survival emotions can result in enough misery for you to be a Miseralite.

Common Traits of Miseralites

To help you get a better understanding of Miseralites and perhaps determine your own status, here are 10 common traits of Miseralites. Know that all of them can be corrected.

• Are more interested in themselves than others. Miseralites are front and center in their lives and expect others to help them maintain that position of importance. They shy away from good attention, such as birthday parties honoring them, etc. and prefer attention that feeds their misery. Their self-interest keeps them at the center of their world, making them feel like the bullseye of a target, so they take things personally and are easily offended.

Miseralites’ self-interests make them less interested in people around them, so they lack empathy. They’re interested in others when the interests of others also interests them. Then, they will give that person more time and attention.

Their self-interest also prevents them from stepping out of their comfort zone and limits their willingness to try new things. This cheats them out of getting involved in challenges and opportunities that would help them gain confidence and build trust. Thus, perpetuating their fear and weakening their faith.

• Complain, but don’t do anything to improve things or wait for someone else to do something. This maintains the status quo, which equals complacency and perpetuates dissatisfaction. It eliminates the risk of failing or being criticized when trying to do something, so they never learn how to manage failure or enjoy success.

• Are quick to judge and criticize others. They are “Arm chair quarterbacks.” Their lack of empathy and unwillingness to get involved leave them with just their imaginations to figure how things should be done. Since their imaginations are based on their own interests and what they deem as right, they are quick to judge and criticize. This ease of fault finding authorizes them to be victims and makes having relationships with them challenging, since they believe relationships are comprised of fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt.

• Use their own beliefs as the frame of reference from which they measure and judge others. They are the standard to which they expect everyone else to live up to. They will say things like, “I would never do anything like that. Why would he?” They have contempt for, get angry with, and put shame on people who don’t measure up.

• Think in terms of right and wrong. They view other people’s opinions and behaviors as being right or wrong instead of being different. When someone disagrees with them, they feel like they’re being attacked for being wrong, so they counterattack with indignation and anger.

• Want what others have, but aren’t willing to do what it takes to accomplish it. Miseralites are too afraid of failure and rejection to go after what they want. Sometimes they are afraid of success because they equate success with perfection. They think if they succeed, they will be expected to be perfect in all aspects of their lives; a task too overwhelming to handle.

• Express their opinions as though they are facts. Because they view the world through a filter of their own feelings, thoughts, and beliefs, Miseralites focus on what they like and dislike and apply it to the world. Therefore, they are strongly opinionated.

• Find excuses why they can’t…. For every good suggestion you give a Miseralite that would make his life happier, he will give you 5 reasons why it won’t.

• Communicate via sarcasm. Sarcasm is flexible derision. Say you give someone a verbal jab and the person tells you he is insulted, you can bend your surly comment into joke. Sarcasm has an undercurrent of contempt and disrespect.

• View life in terms of fairness and are quick to voice what they think is unfair. Life is unfair, period. We complain about unfairness when we aren’t getting what we want or think we should have.

Miseralites want fairness, but they discriminate. They want fairness, but only regarding good things. To be really fair, if we measure what we don’t have against what people do have, we must measure both the good and the bad. Wouldn’t it be fairer if we also had other people’s pain? For example, like that of my best friend and her husband who’ve lost both of their children?

Fairness equals sameness. For life to be fair we would have the same illnesses, the same level of intellect, the same talents and skills, and the same stuff. We wouldn’t need specialists and there would be no competitive sports, no market competition, and no talent shows. There would be no diversity, no challenges, and no striving for excellence. This is not God’s intent.

Our Past, Our Choice

There is no law, rule, or adage that says our lives are supposed to be easy and pain free. That’s what pharmaceutical companies, quick fix enterprises, and overindulging parents what you to believe. We all have aftereffects from our pasts. Maybe we didn’t have any control over what happened to us, but we do have control over how we live with it. God gave us the choice to live the way we want and the ability to live the way He wants and He wants us to live abundantly happy.

We can continue to keep our past alive and make it our identity, thereby perpetuating our victimization; we can carry the burdens of our past like heavy rocks on our backs perpetuating pain and suffering; or we can move beyond our past with forgiveness through God’s love, grace, and mercy using it as a means to help others. It’s our choice.

To Be or Not To Be?… The Miseralite Question

Challenges can make us stronger, wiser, confident, and more faithful or they can make us weaker, imprudent, fearful, and suspicious. We determine the direction they lead us. We all have times when we feel distressed or depressed and are temporary Miseralites. So, we’ll have a pity party, get the support we need, and get ourselves back on track. Do not confuse Miseralites with people who are bereft. Those are situations of loss and grief from which people can heal, recover, and regain happiness. Miseralites struggle with knowing and accepting happiness.

You may be a Miseralite or may live with one. Evaluate your own Miseralite status here.

If you have symptoms of being a Miseralite…

50% of the time, you are a wishy washy. Commit to one side. At least you will have made a choice.
Less than 50% of the time, stay tuned to learn how to be even happier.
Greater than 50% of the time, you have the choice to stay or leave. No need to go any further if you choose to stay, but at least keep this prayer with you, “Dear Lord, I am stuck in the natural. Open my heart, mind, and soul to at least know and accept the spiritual as a way of life so I can live better for others, myself, and you. Thanks!”

For anyone who chooses to leave Miseralite status, stay tuned to learn how to correct your Miseralite traits and enjoy living happy. For anyone who lives with a Miseralite, stay tuned to learn how to live happier with someone who is happy being miserable.

Definition, Description, Parents, What to do

#11 How To Be Unhappy

Mindy Fuchs / 0 Comments

How To Be Unhappy

We are not born happy. We are born to survive and raised to live happy. Our survival instincts develop before we are born and include the emotions fear, anger, contempt, followed by shame and guilt. These are our life preservers. Without them, our lifespans would be shorter. While our instincts secure our existence, they also make us impatient, greedy, intolerant, unsympathetic, and demanding – traits we demonstrate at birth. And, because we do not have a developed thinking brain at birth, newborns cannot distinguish themselves from others, so, their world is all about them. Their attitudes are best described as, “I exist and want to continue to exist. Therefore, I need… and I want…, so make it happen for me right now.”

We are, by nature, self-centered, self-oriented, and selfish, which are defined as, “being concerned primarily with oneself and especially with one’s own desire, needs, or interests; lacking consideration for others, mainly concerned with one’s own profit or pleasure.” These are our natural qualities, but they do not create happy individuals or a healthy society.

Values for Happiness

Happiness and a healthy society require us to be accountable, respectful, honest, generous, charitable, selfless, self-giving, and self-sacrificing. While we know these values are right, we might have been given the wrong definitions. Our parents and other influential people in our young lives defined them for us by the way they behaved. Parents who consistently practice responsibility, respect, honesty, generosity, and selflessness understand what these mean and live their lives accordingly. They teach their children by example, and therefore, give their children a good moral foundation and a healthy view of the world. Adults who abuse children and parents who neglect, abuse, or overindulge their children distort the definitions of these values and show their children an unhealthy view of the world.

Distressing Childhoods

If you were abused, neglected, raised in an insecure environment (including households where parents aren’t committed to each other or their family), raised in a chaotic environment due to a family member’s illness, addiction, PTSD, death, or parents’ divorce, or have parents who never healed from their childhood wounds, you grew up relying more on your life preservers than learning the real meaning of generosity and the other values. When you are raised in distressing conditions, your instincts remain heightened and you remain focused on yourself. Stressful situations can lead to thoughts such as, “I have to save my siblings,” “I have to fix my parents,” “I have to make everyone happy,” “I have to keep myself safe.” Your world is centered on you – how you are affected by the actions and decisions of the people you depend on and how to survive.

If you had overindulging parents, who gave you everything you wanted (under the guise of generosity, but in reality it was because of their unhealed childhood wounds), who made sure you got what they wanted you to have, and were permissive, they kept you at the center of your world – and theirs. You’ll be conditioned to expect that from others.

Being raised in a stressful environment does not make you bad. It just gives you a bad way to view the world.

Note: Not everyone who’s had a less than ideal childhood remains the center of his/her world. Those who have learned to trust and rely on God more than their survival instincts put God in the center and live from that vantage point.

Focusing on Yourself

Inarguably, keeping yourself at the center of your world limits your world view and distorts your reality. It is how you stay unhappy. Let’s look at what happens when people focus on themselves.

When you focus on yourself, you:

Do not have a genuine interest in others → don’t connect well → have unfulfilling relationships → are lonely → are constantly searching for fulfillment
Are consumed with yourself → determine how life should be for you and how others should treat you → are viewed as “bossy” and are frequently disappointed → feel a lot of anger and contempt
Are the center of your world → have a narrow view of the real world → acquire less information → have less knowledge → feel insecure and fearful
Measure how much you should have by what you see other people have → compete with and compare self to others → are more inclined to see what you don’t have → are more aware of the negatives in your life → feel more like a loser than a winner → feel shame
Consider self over others → don’t consider other people’s situations or points of view → don’t put yourself in other people’s shoes → lack empathy → hold grudges → avoid forgiveness → maintain guilt

Notice the outcomes are the same as our instincts (anger, contempt, fear, shame, guilt).

Conclusion: when you focus on yourself, you perpetuate your natural instincts and live in survival mode. Living in survival mode results in anxiety and depression. God did not intend for us to just survive. He wants us to live and be happy. “I came so that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance.” John 10:10.

It takes no effort to live in survival mode. You wake up and you’re already there. Focusing on yourself assures your stay.

Unhappiness is innate. We acquire happiness. Stay tuned for more on how to acquire happiness!

What to do

#10 What Do You See?

Mindy Fuchs / 1 Comment

Most people I work with agree that they are seeking guidance because they want to be the happiest they can be. The process begins with them telling me their stories. Every story is unique, but always includes other characters and emotions. No one can tell a story solely about himself because we cannot exist without the existence of other people, and the quality of our existence depends on the kinds of emotions we generate.

When we tell our stories, we tell them as seen through our eyes, as interpreted by our minds, and as felt by our hearts. We describe the characters according to how they behaved and how they made us feel – the basis for how we view them and ultimately ourselves. The settings for our stories are the circumstances that surrounded us. Since we are central to those circumstances, we have the innermost vantage point from where it is easier to look out than look in. Therefore, when we tell our stories, we focus on our feelings, our thoughts, our expectations, and what happened to us. It’s our side of the story.

We are not one dimensional so neither are our stories. All of our stories have other sides that come from the other characters and observers. These are the sides we can’t, don’t, or won’t see, partly due to our limited knowledge base at the time, partly due to our alert system trying to protect us from additional pain and injury, and sometimes because of stubbornness and pride.

If we haven’t acquired enough knowledge, maturity, or experience to question or challenge other people’s ideas or actions, we will just accept them as the way it is and not see the other sides. This way is easy since it is easier to stay with what we’ve been conditioned to believe than it is to think independently and risk rejection, criticism, injury, or failure. Therefore, we can’t see the other sides.

We can also be blinded by fear, anger, shame, and guilt – our survival emotions. If we’ve been hurt in the past, our subconscious mind remembers it so we can avoid pain and injury in the future as a way to continue to exist. Therefore, we have a subconscious storehouse of painful memories. While our subconscious mind has good intentions, the imbedded bad thoughts and feelings it maintains causes us to have more distress in the present and influences how we view our situations, ourselves, and others, so we don’t see beyond our own pain.

Pride (the self-serving kind) and stubbornness are the most destructive attitudes and behaviors we can have. We should have pride in ourselves, for each other, and in what we do, but not the kind of pride associated with stubbornness. Pride is an extremely high sense of self that puts you above others. When you have this kind of pride, you have it all, including all the right answers. This position limits you from seeing beyond yourself. Mix two parts pride with one part fear and you get stubbornness. Stubborn people don’t want to let down their guard for fear of being wrong, failing, being rejected, being mocked, being criticized, or being disappointed. They won’t move beyond what they are guarding to see other sides. They become controllers, aka “control freaks.” Even if they if they admit there is another side, they manipulate it so it fits into their point of view. Proud and stubborn people won’t consider the other side(s).

Being the observer in my clients’ stories allows me to see their situation from an outside and distant view point. I liken it to an experience my family and I had when we went to one our annual Notre Dame Football games. My husband acquired tickets for what sounded like extraordinary seats. The section had a special name; something like “Field Box.” Thinking we hit the seating jackpot, we were eager to get seated. The seats were field level directly behind the Notre Dame players, who by the way, never sit down during the game. Our seats gave us a prime view of their seats. We were so close to the players, it was like we were in the game, but our position didn’t give us visibility to see what was happening with the plays. There was no Jumbo Tron to watch and we couldn’t stand up because of the people sitting behind us. In order to see where the ball was coming from and going to, we had to twist and turn to look around the wall of players. Being “in the game” limited our view and awareness of what was actually going on. We were more aware of our own misery and did not enjoy the game.

The people who tell me their stories are like my family and I were at the game. They are or were in “it,” and similarly to us, were or are unable to see around the obstacles to know what is going on. Therefore, they are more aware of their own discomfort, which in real life situations includes feelings of fear, anger, contempt, resentment, disappointment, sadness, guilt, and shame. I, on the other hand, am like the television crew in the blimp that hovers over the football field. High above the field, I see the big picture – who’s on the field, where the players are going, where the ball is coming from, and how the plays unfold. This panoramic view allows me to take in more information from which I gain a better understanding of what happened and why it happened.

While we cannot distance ourselves from our own stories, we can look at the bigger picture. When I work with people, I help them do this. After a detailed discussion about the client’s life experience, I ask about parents, grandparents, and sometimes great-grandparents. It’s amazing how this historical view can change the client’s current view. For example, Sally came in because of anxiety and panic episodes. The panic episodes worsened over the past few months, soon after her mother’s death. After a thorough assessment, I asked about her childhood and her parents. She described her mother as “a saint,” and her father as “Satan.” She despised him, describing him as an, “uncaring, selfish, drunk.” She focused on how loving her mom was and how bad her dad was; how bad he made her feel and how he mistreated her. Now, the security and loving part of her life was gone and she was panicked.

I asked Sally to tell me her parents’ stories. She talked about how loving and kind her mom was despite all the tribulations she endured. Unenthusiastically, she talked about her father’s history. He was one of the older children raised in a large poor family. His dad, a heavy drinker, abandoned the family. He had to help out with the finances. Apparently, they went to church, which she added, “Seemed to do him no good.” He was a firefighter, got married and started a family. Then, he was stricken with a serious illness that impaired his health so he had to quit his job. After being off for a long time, he got a less than rewarding job and at that point, started drinking in excess. His bitterness and mean spirit, especially when he drank, caused a great deal of trouble for the family and especially Sally, who at one time adored him. He sorely disappointed her.

I reviewed the story with Sally from my distant point of view. Looking at the big picture, we first talked about first responders; how there isn’t a whole lot of people who choose that field, how they don’t get paid very well, how necessary they are for our existence, and how the people who do that kind of work do it because of their passion for it. Their desire to help people is so great that they are willing to lay down their lives for others – a most selfless characteristic. “No one has greater love [nor stronger commitment] than to lay down his own life for his friends.” John 15:13

We went on to talk about how disappointing it must have been for her dad to have the job he loved taken away from him. His life was filled with losses (and these were the only ones Sally knew about) – the loss of his father, the loss of his families’ security, the loss of an infant daughter, and the loss of the job he loved. How does one overcome these severe losses? Loss always adds grief. When we talked about the grief process, we agreed that he could have easily been stuck in the process. In those days, therapy wasn’t popular and there weren’t the kinds of resources we have today for help and support. The cultural attitude was to “man up” and move on.

Grief is a miserable process. The denial, bargaining, anger, and depression phases of the grief cycle are inescapable when we suffer a loss, no matter how big or small. We grieve when we are disappointed and we are disappointed when we don’t get what we want. Sally’s dad didn’t get what he wanted and needed – just like Sally.

Sally and her father were more alike than she cared to admit, but after she looked at the bigger picture, she felt more compassion and empathy for her father. It didn’t change her situation and she still had to correct the effects from how she was treated, but compassion and empathy allowed her to forgive her father and gain more peace and satisfaction in her life. She was happier.

When you tell your story, what do you see?
Stop, look, and listen. Stop focusing on yourself; be an independent thinker. Don’t let past pain prevent you from gaining insight; look at the bigger picture. Listen to the views of others, not to approve or correct, but to gain knowledge and wisdom because “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18

Seeing all sides paints a happier picture.

Development, Parents

#9 What’s Your Story?

Mindy Fuchs / 0 Comments

Our core beliefs, or what I call our internal belief system, are what we think and feel about ourselves based on the physical, verbal, and emotional information other people gave us. These other people first include our parents, then anyone in our lives who is bigger or important to us.

Our stories start before we are born, but we typically stick to telling only what we know, what we experienced, and what we’ve seen in front of us. We tell our stories to ourselves more than anyone else as we reflect on past experiences to try to resolve, makes sense of, or overcome them. But, when we share our stories with others, we often tell them only the parts that make us look valuable, look good, look important, or look loveable – the very things we want to believe about ourselves, but don’t. If you want examples, check out some of your friends’ Facebook posts.

Every day, in addition to my own, I bear witness to stories of abandonment, neglect, rejection, abuse, and traumas – life threatening events people had in the war zones of international conflict and the war zones of domestic conflicts where they grew up. I’ve heard accounts of sexual, physical, mental, and emotional abuse perpetrated by fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, grandfathers, grandmothers, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, uncles, aunts, cousins, step-parents, and half, step, and foster siblings. The perpetrators were people the victims knew and were supposed to be able to trust, honor, and respect. The victims were robbed of their joy, peace, love, and freedom.

In order for children to grow, they need more, not less. When people mistreat children, they take away more instead of giving more to the children, leaving them with a deficit in value, importance, and love. These children develop more bad than good feelings and thoughts from which they create their internal beliefs. Some examples: Parents who neglect or mistreat their children by not providing them with physical and emotional needs give their children the message they aren’t worthy of existence and the children develop the belief that they aren’t valuable. Children who are constantly criticized, believe they aren’t good enough. If either or both parents are alcoholics or addicts, children realize they aren’t important. If parents sexually abuse their children, the children develop intense negative beliefs, one being that they are not valuable loveable human beings, but are objects for other people’s pleasure.

Even if you didn’t experience traumas like the ones I mentioned, no one is exempt from pain and tribulations. We all have experiences that leave us with bad thoughts and feelings. Maybe you were bullied in school, insulted by your peers, or got involved with an abusive boy/girlfriend. Even witnessing abuse of a sibling or parent can cause you to have the same bad thoughts and feelings as the victim, thereby creating bad internal beliefs.

Some people have good childhood stories that allowed them to have good feelings and thoughts and create good internal beliefs. However, no one can escape vulnerability, times of susceptibility when negative messages creep in and develop into bad feelings and thoughts. We all are subject to attacks on our belief system that can hamper our happiness.

Abuse and neglect are not always overt. Parents who spend more time on their electronic devices than making eye contact, having meaningful conversations, and showing interest in their children are neglecting their children. They are neglecting and denying their children’s emotional needs. And, by giving children more access to their own electronic devices, parents are taking away their children’s ability to identify their own emotional needs. Any lack of emotional needs in children or adults results in feelings of dissatisfaction and unhappiness. I will talk more about emotional needs in future posts.

Once we create our beliefs, they take root in our subconscious mind where they exist right along with us. This existence is protected by our survival instincts, so whenever there is a threat to our beliefs, we naturally fight, flight, or freeze to save them. These are the deep whispers we hear alerting us to be wary and the internal cringes we feel when someone does something good for us or something good happens to us. Test yourself: what happens to you when someone gives you a compliment or gives you a random gift?

We don’t usually tell other people about these alerts, but our behaviors reflect them. We minimize or dismiss compliments, tell people, “You shouldn’t have…” when they give us a special gift, or steer clear of someone after she has been generous to us and we can’t afford to pay her back. Instead of giving people the joy and humility of our gratitude, we take away the joyful feelings and good thoughts because we believe we are unworthy or underserving of goodness.

What do you tell yourself and others? How has your history determined your internal belief system? What’s your story?

Telling the same story over and over is like a fish story. Each time you tell it, you can embellish certain parts of it to make it less boring or to make you look more impressive. Pay attention to how you feel and what you think after you tell your story, especially when you tell it to yourself.

We have exclusivity for our stories, so we write them as we see ourselves, others, and our situations. If your history includes actual or perceived threats to your wellbeing, if you were denied physical and emotional needs, or you witnessed hostility, your story will be tightly focused on you – what happened to you, making the other characters in the story out to be villains. Going through life reciting this kind of story limits your compassion and empathy, steals your joy, and perpetuates distress. It does not make you happy.

Despite your conditions, the messages you got, and the beliefs you developed from those messages, you can change the way you tell your story that will give you peace, gratitude, joy, freedom, and satisfaction. Stay tuned to learn how to tell your story so you can generate happiness!

Definition, Description

#8 11 Characteristics of Happy People

Mindy Fuchs / 1 Comment

Before we move on to understand why we developed certain core beliefs, how our core beliefs affect our lives, and the challenges of changing our core beliefs, we must have a destination in mind.

This post describes 11 characteristics of genuinely happy people that you can target as goals. To learn more about how to do these, refer to the Essentials section.

Happy people…

1. Are more responsive than reactive
We are reactive when we behave based on emotions. Because our emotions are illogical, irrational, and quick to change, they are unreliable. Imagine first responders going to the scene of an accident and behaving according to their emotions. God put our thinking brain in front of our heads – maybe His way of telling us to think first.

Happy people use their thinking brain first to think through situations and let their emotions follow as additional input, giving them the advantage of using both mind and heart so they can make better decisions and behave more appropriately.

2. Expect and prepare
Happy people expect the best and know for that to happen they must prepare. Good preparation requires hard work and sacrifice. If you’ve ever performed or taken exams, you know what it is like if you didn’t prepare. You simply hope for the best. Even if the outcome is good, you feel more lucky than satisfied. Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Happy people, like people who constantly live in fear, anger, shame, and guilt (aka non-happy people), desire pleasure, but unlike non-happy people, they plan and prepare for it instead of impulsively seeking it. Pleasure for happy people is an addition to the joy they already have. Pleasure for non-happy people is momentary relief from their misery.

3. Live with gratitude
How important is gratitude? Jesus thinks it is very important as demonstrated in Luke 17:11. While on his final journey to Jerusalem, Jesus met ten men who had leprosy. From a distance, they called out, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests as proof they were healed. They left and when one of the men saw he was healed, he turned back and praising God, he threw himself down at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?”

Gratitude shows more than appreciation. It shows reverence. We typically say, “thank you” when someone does something kind for us. Happy people don’t wait for someone to be kind to them. They find things to be grateful for. They revere God and are constantly grateful for all that He has and continues to give them.

When we find things to be grateful for, we focus on good more than bad, complain less, learn to welcome and accept all good things, and open ourselves up to receive more. The more we have the less we feel the deficits when bad things happen.

4. Practice discipline
Happy people respect and obey man’s laws, but honor and live God’s laws. They view discipline, not as punitive and restrictive, but as a means to wisdom. They routinely practice physical and emotional self-control. We have the ability to eat just one chip and happy people use this ability. They don’t lie by saying, “I can’t eat just one cookie…,” and don’t use excuses as permits to do or have what they want; such as, “I shouldn’t have dessert, but I worked hard today.”

Happy people are willing to do what is right and just despite how they feel at the time. This can be challenging since our emotions are so strong, but it leaves us with fewer regrets and freedom from shame and guilt.

5. Are well defined
Happy people do not have open borders. They secure their boundaries with honesty, trust, responsibility, respect, and empathy. And, they regard other people’s boundaries in the same way. They don’t allow other people into their business and don’t take care of other people’s problems without getting clarification first. They aren’t afraid to ask for help when they need it and are generous in helping others.

Happy people learn from their histories and do not let their past define who they are. They determine who they are by what they value, not what they do.

Happy people are true to themselves and others. They don’t need to pretend or impress other people to be accepted. They want people to like them, but give people the opportunity to make that decision themselves.

6. Are realistic
Happy people know we don’t always get what we want and how to manage disappointment. Even though they don’t like disappointment, they have the grace to manage it. They know reality and truth go hand in hand. They know there is another side to a story and consider that to make sound judgements. They use their imaginations more for productive creativity instead of suspicion and assumption, especially in regard to relationships.

Happy people know “always” “never,” and “everyone” are extreme and difficult to prove, so should be used judiciously or with an adverb or qualifier to make explanations accurate and truthful. Example: “If you say, everyone [at work, at school] plays on the computer,” that can easily be disputed and difficult to prove. Therefore, it isn’t true nor real. It just makes you feel okay about doing what you know you shouldn’t.

7. Understand the real reason for shame and guilt
Happy people realize shame and guilt are used for protection of self and society by preventing people from acting in pure self-interest and giving people a conscience to do what is right and just. Shame and guilt are not tools to get other people to do what you want or mechanisms to punish; that’s manipulation. While guilt can motivate us to do the right thing, shame is more destructive.

Happy people know we need shame and guilt, but only as a check to keep us in right standing with God and others.

8. Are compassionate and empathic
Happy people have learned to be comfortable with other people’s discomfort. This allows them to be more supportive and helpful rather than feeling like they need to hurry up and fix someone else’s problem. Happy people listen to other people and what they need. Then, provide those needs instead of giving others what they think is best or telling others, “You need…”

Compassion is an awareness of someone’s pain and suffering that moves us towards the desire to help. Empathy is the capacity to understand or relate to another person’s thoughts, feelings, and condition as he experiences it.

Compassion and empathy bring us closer to each other. Happy people value others and relationships. Therefore, are compassionate and empathic towards people they know and don’t know.

9. Love others as they love themselves
Happy people know we can only give what we have. If we love ourselves, we have love to give others. They also understand God is love and for us to truly love one another, we must know God’s love first. Many people haven’t given much thought to what love really is.

When I work with couples, they often define love in vague terms and think of it more as something that is magical. Many times they don’t even remember the promises of love they made to each other when they got married. Many of us should learn what love is. If you want the best definition of love, read I Corinthians 13.

Love is not all sweetness and light. We correct and punish children because we love them. God sacrificed His son, who suffered for us because He loves us. This shows us love can be painful and requires faith and trust to truly be fulfilled.

10. Fear less
We all feel afraid. It’s a natural instinct to survive, but over using fear does not make us survive better. It makes us need to survive more by provoking our other survival instincts – anger contempt, shame, and guilt. We cannot live happy lives if we have an overabundance of these.

Fear denies us trust, faith, and confidence and weakens love. Happy people stay the course. They are not afraid to live by God’s laws.

Happy people feel afraid, but don’t let fear dictate their lives. They maintain their trust and faith in God, in themselves, and with others. They rely first on God for strength and discernment. They know they are smarter than their emotions and trust they will know when they should be genuinely afraid. They see more good in others than bad. They believe the best more than they fear the worst.

Happy people fear less and trust more. Note: I will discuss more about fear in a future post.

11. Choose to believe the best
Our subconscious mind keeps records of injury and harm and our natural instincts for survival include the emotions of fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt. Therefore, we have a lot of negative information that is easily accessible and negative emotions that are easily stimulated. This is the way we survive. It’s like having an army of oppressors ready and waiting. If we are led by this battalion, we will view others and the world more as foe rather than friend.

When we choose to believe the best, we trust God, ourselves, and other people, allowing us to be happier and have happier relationships.

Happy people choose to believe the best. They do this by stopping and thinking first. Before they feel disappointed, afraid, or angry at someone, they will think, “He must have had a good reason.” This makes the whole situation better.

Choosing to believe the best prompts us to love more, trust more, and be happy more! Note: I will discuss “choosing to believe the best” further in a future post. Stay tuned!

Development, Physiology

#7 Core Beliefs: The Seeds of Our Inner Self

Mindy Fuchs / 0 Comments

In this post, I identify common core beliefs, how we develop them, and describe how they affect our happiness.

Our core beliefs are what we think and feel about ourselves based on the verbal, physical, and emotional information other people have given us and the way we interpret that information. These beliefs are formed, developed, and stored in our subconscious mind, the core of our existence. Our core beliefs are the seeds planted deep within ourselves from which we grow our lives.

We get information from our parents even before we are born. Mothers and fathers, who esteem each other and their unborn children, care for each other with respect, honor, kindness, generosity, and love, creating a safe and secure environment in which their children develop. This sends messages of love and security to their children. Mothers and fathers, who don’t esteem their unborn children or themselves, by abusing drugs, alcohol, and each other during pregnancy send very negative messages to their children.

Unborn and newborn babies have active subconscious minds that take in information and store it for possible future use. It may be good, bad, or neutral information, depending on how it is received.

After we are born, we continue to fill our subconscious minds with information through the direct and indirect messages we get from our parents and other people in authority. These folks influence how we think and feel about ourselves by what they say or don’t say to us and how they treat us. Some examples: if our parents don’t tell or show us they love us, we will believe we aren’t lovable. If our parents devalue us by calling us names, neglecting us, or abusing us, we will believe we are not valuable. If parents’ expectations are too high or they compare us to others, we will believe we aren’t good enough. These are a few common core beliefs.

Besides people giving us information, we put information into our subconscious minds ourselves through repetition. Just like we learn to do things by practicing until we can do it without thinking, we can repeat information to ourselves until it turns into a subconscious belief. We do this indirectly when we don’t understand something and constantly mull it over in our mind.

The feelings and thoughts we get when we do this become embedded in our subconscious mind forming a subconscious belief. For example, say you were the youngest child in your family and your dad left after you were born. You wonder why he left after you were born and why he didn’t leave after your siblings were born. You play the scenario over and over in your mind, trying to make sense out of it, but you can’t. You feel like it’s your fault and think you caused a bad thing to happen. Human beings want to understand why things happen because it satisfies our curiosity and alleviates future concern. But, in this case, you don’t have all the information and don’t know why your dad went after you were born. You use the information you do have (your feelings and thoughts), as you try to come up with something that makes sense to you. But, instead of coming up with an explanation you understand, you just keep rehearsing the same feelings and thoughts. Your subconscious mind holds the information so that you are convinced what you feel and think is true and it becomes your reality. You develop a deep seated belief that you are shameful, bad, and cause people to be unhappy. Imagine how you would behave if you believed this about yourself.

Children also develop core beliefs from the indirect messages they get when they hear bits of scary information or they don’t understand, such as news reports or when they overhear parents talking. Case in point: Clementine is a sweet six year old girl who all of a sudden refused to go to school. For the past several months, she’s refused to sleep in her bedroom because “the bad people will come and get her,” but her fear has escalated. Clementine’s parents thought it was just the childhood “monster in the closet” phase and tried to reassure and comfort her each night, only to find her on the floor of their bedroom or in bed with them each morning. Further investigation revealed that Clementine’s refusal to sleep in her own bedroom started soon after she woke up one night as her parents were watching the late night news. She came out of her bedroom into the living room just as a story about a girl being abducted came on. The girl’s family was on television crying and pleading for the girl’s safe return. Clementine’s parents didn’t realize she heard and saw the report. They gave her a drink of water and sent the sleepy little girl back to bed. She appeared undisturbed until the following night. Clementine knew something bad happened to the girl on the news, but didn’t know what abducted meant. So, she filled in the gaps with her five year old imagination. This led her to think something bad might happen to her end even her family. She became very afraid.

Because she didn’t understand exactly what happened and didn’t know the whole story, she kept rehearsing the story in her mind, trying to make sense out of it and create an ending she could handle. She repeated her thoughts and feelings until her subconscious mind took the information in and accepted it as truth and reality. This became a core belief for Clementine and she lived accordingly. She believed she was unsafe because the bad people were going to come and get her and her family, so she always wanted to be with her parents.

We continue to develop core beliefs while our brain continues to mature (into our mid 20’s) from information people who are “bigger” or important give us. Abusive relationships, middle and high school bullying, an alcoholic partner, sexual abuse from a person in authority, and untreated traumatic events can leave us feeling afraid, guilty, ashamed, insecure, and unacceptable. If we experience these kinds of situations, we often replay them over and over in our minds because we are too afraid or ashamed to talk to anyone about it. Sometimes, when we do try to talk about it with someone, we’re told to keep it quiet or made to feel it really wasn’t “like that.” This compounds the situation so that along with fear and shame from the trauma, we doubt ourselves and the truth. When we replay these events in our minds, we also relive the same negative emotions and they become our norm. We give them energy and life while they exhaust us and kill our joy.

It is easy for our core beliefs to be negative. Because our subconscious mind focuses on survival, it stores the hurt we’ve experienced and remembers what “not” to do as a way for us to avoid physical and emotional pain. We remember things like, “don’t touch the hot stove,” “don’t jump down the stairs,” and if we were really hurt in a relationship, we may be reminded to “not get close to anyone.” Therefore, subconscious thoughts and feelings naturally flow in a negative direction.

This natural inclination makes it very easy for us to focus on the negative aspects of life or the “n’ts.” These are the “I can’t…” “I’m not…” “You shouldn’t…” “I don’t…” “You won’t…” ways we feel, think, and communicate and stem from common beliefs such as, “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not valuable,” “I don’t count,” “I’m not loveable,” and “I can’t do anything right.”

When we focus on the not’s of life, we limit, cheat, and deny ourselves of happiness. There is no peace in “I don’t…,” no joy in, “I’m not…,” no love in, “You won’t…, and no satisfaction in, “I can’t…”

What are your core beliefs and how do they affect the way you live?
We all know what our core beliefs are when we pay attention to ourselves. It’s the feeling and thought that pop in our head when good and bad things happen to us and others. If you feel bad when something good happens and feel good when something bad happens (especially to others), your core beliefs are coming from your survival emotions.

Core beliefs that come from our survival emotions make us behave like we are living in the jungle in survival mode. We are greedy; in survival mode the more we have the better off we are. We are suspicious because in survival mode we know everyone else wants what we want. We are impatient because in survival mode, there’s no time to wait around. It’s eat or be eaten. We are self-centered because to survive you must think of yourself first. We lack respect since the more dominant you are, the better you will survive. We are envious because in survival mode, we don’t want others to have more than we have. We are undisciplined because in survival mode there are only two rules, survival of the fittest and might makes right. To translate these into more civilized behaviors, it would look like this: if feel that you are not valuable, you may try to compensate by gathering a lot of material goods; if you feel like you aren’t loveable, you will probably be suspicious of people who show you kindness; if you feel like you’re not good enough, you might continuously try to impress others.

The first step to being consistently happy is to recognize your core beliefs and how they affect your behavior. Pay attention to yourself — your feelings and thoughts when good and bad things happen. Also, pay attention to the words you use when you talk and how you feel when you use them. After you realize what you believe about yourself and how it makes you behave, then, you can decide if and what you want to change. My next posts discuss why and how to change core beliefs, the challenges for making changes, and how it creates happiness. Stay tuned!

Definition, Development

#6 Our Core

Mindy Fuchs / 0 Comments

When we are conceived, our soul energizes to life. We are energy sources that emit and elicit love and joy. With that same unawareness, we can also frustrate, anger, and exhaust people. Think about the way infants unconsciously generate unconditional love in others, yet cause stress and exhaustion.

We never outgrow these subconscious abilities and after our conscious mind develops, our abilities double as we can do these things subconsciously and/or consciously. Each one of us is very powerful in bringing about certain emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in others and in ourselves. For example, we frustrate, anger, and exhaust other people and ourselves when we are stubborn, need to be right, need to be in control, want to get back at people, are perfectionists, are anxious, feel insecure, can’t handle being told, “No,” and are poor listeners. Why do we feel and behave like this?

While our genetics predispose us to certain tendencies, mostly, we do these things because of what we feel and think. Despite the fact that perfectionists and control freaks know they cause stress and frustration, they continue their behaviors; not because they want to be unhappy or make other people unhappy, but because they’re trying to make other people and themselves happy. When I ask clients why they need to be perfect, their typical response is, “I don’t know. I just do” or “I feel like I have to.” Then they fortify their feelings with thoughts such as, “I don’t think I’m good enough unless I’m perfect.” They have no logical explanation and admit their need to be perfect is how they feel about themselves and reinforced by their thoughts. This is also true for the other behaviors I mentioned. We know these behaviors do not create happiness, yet we do them based on our feelings and thoughts – on what we believe.

What are beliefs?
We all have knowledge, emotions, and beliefs. They differ, but are interdependent and necessary for us to live well, connect with others, and be happy. When we are young children, we have more emotions than beliefs and more beliefs than knowledge.

Knowledge is acquired externally. It is understanding and awareness; familiarity gained by experience of a situation, and is factual. Knowledge is information we gather, process, and store in our conscious and subconscious minds.

Emotions, as defined by the English Oxford Dictionary (online), are strong feelings derived from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others; are instinctive or intuitive feelings as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge. Emotions are inherent. Beliefs are a combination of thoughts and emotions we create, integrate, and store in our subconscious mind, and refer to with our conscious mind. They are something we accept as true or real despite having no proof; they are visceral.

Beliefs are created internally. Since we start out having more beliefs than knowledge, our beliefs make up our core – who and what we are and that becomes our guidance system to happiness.

Where do our beliefs come from?
Parents and adults provide children with information and teach us life lessons that add to our knowledge and shape our beliefs. Children have a natural desire to learn. So, even if parents don’t openly teach us things, we just pick up information. We consciously and subconsciously do this by watching parents’ and caregivers’ behaviors and listening to them talk.

When parents directly tell or show us what they think or feel (believe) about us, we believe it and therefore, it becomes our belief. If they give us good information, we’ll have good beliefs. If they say or show us bad things about ourselves, we’ll believe we are bad. If we don’t understand what parents or adults say or do to us, we will create beliefs about ourselves based on how we feel and the knowledge we have at the time. For example, if a parent uses a word his young child doesn’t understand, the child will interpret its meaning based on the parent’s tone, facial expression, and body language, and create her belief on what she knows, thinks, and feels, namely the belief she is good or bad.

Children also believe they are valuable by being valued by their parents. Any behavior that devalues children, especially abuse and neglect, causes children to create bad beliefs about themselves. This includes parents’ increasing lack of attention to their children because of greater attention given to electronic devices. Imagine the feelings and thoughts you might get when, as a child, you are sitting at the table eating with your mom and dad, who stay engrossed in their cell phones, and their only communication to you is, “Sit up and eat right!” or “Stop playing with your food!” or “Don’t spill your water!”

Parents teach us their superstitions and beliefs about other people, the government, and God by overtly talking to us about them or covertly through us overhearing them talk and watching how they behave in regard to these topics. Our innocence, dependence, and natural desire to learn make us impressionable and susceptible to their beliefs so we naturally adopt them and they become what we believe about the world until we mature and are independent thinkers enough to use our reasoning skills so we can challenge and evaluate their credibility. Then, we can choose our own beliefs and we can change the ones we’ve come to know.

The beliefs we have about the world and others are easier to change than the beliefs we have about ourselves because they are external. The beliefs we have about ourselves are internal. Even though the feelings we get come from other people’s words and behaviors, we create our beliefs with our own emotions and our own thoughts that come from our own subconscious mind.

Our beliefs are a part of us. They belong to us and we are less inclined to give up what belongs to us. So, once we develop our beliefs, we hang on to them.

In addition, the subconscious mind, being a powerful means for existence, takes in our beliefs and incorporates them into our existence, coding them to be the way we exist. Our beliefs become our truth and reality. They are our core.

Physiology

#5 Getting to the Core of Happiness

Mindy Fuchs / 0 Comments

Apples develop from their cores. After they mature, the flesh around the core is used, and the core is discarded, except for its seeds that can be used to produce future fruit. While we can’t compare apples to oranges or humans, we do have something in common – a core.

Our core is also our innermost part. It is our primary brain, our spark of life, our soul. Instead of our core finding its way to a compost heap, it remains deep beneath our flesh (our outward appearance and behaviors) and the seeds from it, our beliefs and behaviors, produce future fruit (attitudes, actions, and people).

We know that the first area of our brain, our primary brain, develops less than a month after we are conceived forming at the top of our spinal process. During fetal development, our brain forms by tissue folding over itself forming a convoluted pattern of layers. The conscious part of our brain develops over and around our primary brain making our primary brain sub-conscious and the core of our existence. It controls our vital functions and a lot of what we do and believe. It is the center for our natural instincts, which are linked to our emotions of fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt. These life preserving emotions prevent us from doing things that could harm or kill us and can be used to dominate others and secure our existence.

Our instincts and these emotions are animalistic, but God gave us “complete authority” over the animals. He gave us a thinking brain so we can reason, create, and problem solve; so we can live well. He gave us a subconscious mind so we can exist eternal and a conscious mind so we can exist our way into eternity. He gave us both so we can have pleasure and be happy.

To get to the core of happiness, you must first understand your own core. Let’s take a closer look at the core of our being by comparing our subconscious and conscious minds and how each contributes to our happiness.

Subconscious    Conscious
Active before birth    Active after birth
Survival priority Living well priority
Reacts Responds
Source of emotion    Source of reason and logic
Auto-store memory Manual memory
Never sleeps Routinely sleeps
Infinite Finite

• Active: In my previous post, I explained how our subconscious mind develops soon after we are conceived. It is our spark of life and is dedicated to keeping us alive. After we are born, our conscious mind becomes overtly active. By age 4, we develop conscious memory and our subconscious mind takes on a more covert role. It remains active, but gets fed by the information our conscious mind puts in it. Our subconscious mind does not mature much further after age 4. Therefore, it is like us at age 4; our inner child, who has no concept of time, believes what it is told to be truth and reality, and interprets communication very literally.

• Priority: Once you have something you really like, you don’t want to give it up. We like existing and our subconscious mind’s priority is for us to do just that. When we are threatened in any way, the subconscious mind is alerted, readies our bodies for action, and causes us to behave in ways that allow us to survive. It does not consider how these behaviors affect other people and our relationships. Since the subconscious mind is focused only on its owner, these actions to survive can make the owner look like he/she is being selfish.

While our subconscious mind’s priority is for us to exist, our conscious mind gives us the ability to figure out how to live well and make life enjoyable. We problem solve, create new ideas, and reason out issues with our conscious mind. It gives us the ability to gather information so we can make better decisions and allows us to filter through information so we can be understanding, accepting, and patient with others, giving us the ability to form happier relationships.

• React/Respond: To stay alive, we must be quick to react. But, to live well and long, we must learn to respond to certain conditions. When we are threatened, our subconscious mind reacts. But, our conscious mind has us think about possible outcomes and effects so we can determine a better course of action.

We typically associate reactions with something negative and responses with something positive, e.g., “He had a bad reaction to the bug bite.” “He responded well to the treatment.” When we react, we base our decisions on emotions and usually regret the outcome. When we respond, we think through the situation and are more often happier with the outcome.

• Emotion/Logic: Our gut instincts that come from our subconscious mind are linked to emotions that cannot be explained. These natural emotions are fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt. Everyone knows these, but they are difficult to describe. We have them to preserve our existence. Clearly, they are not happy feelings.

Our conscious mind takes longer to develop, but has a larger surface area. Therefore, we have a greater capacity to think. Our ability to think gives us the freedom to make choices (free will). We can choose how to behave, what to have, and how to feel. We can choose to be happy.

• Memory storage: Our subconscious mind has auto-save and takes in every bit of information it encounters. Because it is our alert system, it takes in information through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. If the information is non-threatening, it’s filed away so we can call it up if we need it. If the information is interpreted as painful or a threat, it’s kept readily on hand as a reminder and means to avoid pain. Childbirth is an exception to this. If women remembered the pain of childbirth, they wouldn’t continue to have children, and we would become extinct.

Storing information happens before we are born. Since this information is stored before our conscious mind develops, it is subconscious memory. Did you ever know something and not know how you knew it? Most likely, you took in the information before you were born or consciously aware. I will talk more about subconscious memory in future posts since much of what is stored in our subconscious mind has a direct effect on our happiness.

To save information in our conscious mind, we must think about it. Many times we use associations, such as images, abbreviations, or mnemonics to help us remember the facts.

• Sleep: If our subconscious mind slept, so would our vital functions and that would be the end for us. Therefore, it never sleeps. When we sleep, we are unconscious, meaning the conscious part of our brain is resting, but information continues to be transmitted by the subconscious mind – we dream. When we dream, our subconscious mind reacts to the information it stores. If the information is threatening (a nightmare about a dangerous experience we had), the subconscious alerts our body to react for survival. We will unconsciously feel afraid and go into fight/flight mode. Our heart rate and breathing will get faster and we’ll sweat (the reaction our bodies have when we fight or flee). After we wake, our conscious mind can reason out the situation, assess for danger, and we can go back to sleep.

• Infinite/Finite: How do you measure imagination, creativity, emotions, all the information we take in on a daily basis? You can’t. Our subconscious mind is infinite as our soul is eternal. It has capacity beyond our awareness. Our conscious mind, however, can only comprehend so much information. We have a finite degree of comprehension and intellect. We can quantify our level of intelligence, but we cannot quantify the senses of our subconscious mind.

It is in both our subconscious and conscious minds we find the means to and core of our happiness. We must maintain a good balance and a good relationship between them in order to maintain a good level of happiness.

My next post shows you how to see what’s in your core and how it determines your direction for happiness. Stay tuned!

Physiology

#4 First Come, First Served

Mindy Fuchs / 0 Comments

We are not born happy. If we were, we would lie content and peaceful in our cribs and never draw our mothers’ attention to get fed or comforted. We would rely on the guess work of our mothers for our existence as they would have to guess what we needed and when we needed it. We could, in all probability, die. Instead, we use a negative form of communication to get our mothers’ attention. We cry and scream.

We instinctually know we need to eat to survive. There is a part of our brain that tells us if we don’t have food, we will cease to exist. Feeling hungry alerts us to our need for food. This alert also lets us know there is a threat to our existence if we don’t eat. So, we intuitively cry and scream for attention and as an expression of our fear and anger.

The part of our brain that alerts us to threats is our primary brain. It’s the first part to exist, beginning to develop less than one month after we are conceived. This area of the brain regulates heartrate, breathing, digestion, alertness, and wakefulness. It also houses our survival instincts and emotions, which include fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt – feelings that preserve our existence. Since our primary brain came first, it is natural that it is served first, making fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt our natural primary emotions.

Our primary brain is also responsible for our primary knowledge. We instinctually know good, bad, joy, and sad. We know respect, honesty, truth, and accountability are right and just. However, this inherent knowledge isn’t activated until our thinking or logical part of the brain develops and most of that brain development occurs after we are born. This part is referred to as our conscious mind.

When we are born, we have about 100 billion brain cells (neurons). Brain activity does not come from the neurons themselves. It occurs when neurons connect to each other via electrical impulses (synapses). We have fewer connections before we are born, and at birth we have about 2500 connections per neuron. These initial connections control our vital functions and instincts. As neurons mature, more synapses are formed. By age 3, we have about 15,000 connections per neuron. As we mature so does our brain, making more connections until we are in our mid 20’s and can continue to make new pathways as long as we are able to think and are mentally stimulated.

Many of our neurons have predetermined connections that will be made as long as we get the right kind of stimulation. Good intellectual stimulation (reading, writing, arithmetic, and vocabulary) will form more connections in our thinking brain and make us more consciously aware, gain better problem-solving skills, and develop the ability to reason. Conversely, if we are not intellectually stimulated during our developmental years, our conscious mind’s growth will be stunted.

Since our primary brain is located under our conscious mind and was here first, it is like our brain’s foundation. Therefore, we refer to it as the subconscious mind. Unlike the conscious mind, we are not aware of what information the subconscious mind has in it or what information it sends out. The subconscious mind directs our behaviors and attitude without our conscious awareness. For example, we give little attention to things such as walking, gestures we make while talking, our facial expressions and mannerisms, and verbal expressions we use while speaking. We do these subconsciously.

If our subconscious mind is overstimulated it will develop more activity and we will overuse our primary emotions. Overstimulation of the subconscious mind happens when we do not feel safe and secure, when we are threatened, in danger, and rejected or abandoned and making us feel fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt.

Since our subconscious mind came first, our primary emotions are naturally the first emotions that come to us during challenging times, and can easily come first even in good times, such as when we dismiss compliments or This is true of people who have anxiety.

Unlike the animals, we have a subconscious mind and a sophisticated conscious mind. Our subconscious mind’s focus is for us to survive and our conscious mind’s focus is for us to live well. We need both to be happy. If we have too much activity in one or the other, it throws off the balance that allows us to be both intuitive and logical. Too much subconscious activity makes us overly fearful, overly angry, overly ashamed, and overly guilty. Too much logic makes us overly reasonable (unemotional) and disconnected from others.

We not born happy, but we can choose to be happy and therefore, must learn to be happy. We must balance our intellect with our emotions and in doing that we must think first. God put our thinking brain in front of our heads and our emotions behind. He also reminds us the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Perhaps His way of telling us to think first and let our emotions follow.

We choose to be happy by choosing to be peaceful in difficult situations, to be joyful despite the behaviors of others, to love people who aren’t lovely, and choose to believe the best. We learn to be happy by serving the one who came first – God.

Definition

#3 Our Spirit, Our Happiness

Mindy Fuchs / 0 Comments

God is spirit, meaning He is not a mortal, material being. Even though we are mortal, material beings, no one can deny that each of us has a spirit within us. 1 Corinthians 6:19 confirms this “… your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is within you.” Science agrees. Using quantum physics, math, and biology, researchers confirm a spirit exists in us. This spirit is our soul. It’s the spark of life that originates when we originate in our mothers’ wombs.

Less than one month after conception, babies’ brains begin to develop. We cannot think or reason at this stage, but we quickly develop instincts. Like any living creature, once we exist, we don’t want to cease to exist, so we develop survival instincts. It is here in our primary brain that we have these instincts.

Our primary brain is responsible for controlling our life sustaining functions, such as breathing, heartrate, and digestion, it stores information (memory), and is part of the mechanism for alertness, arousal, and wakefulness (essentials in identifying threats). We are alerted to threats even in utero and react in ways that allow us to survive. This is demonstrated by 4D ultrasound images of fetuses whose mothers smoked. When the mothers inhaled the smoke, the fetuses clearly responded by making facial expressions and touching their faces with their hands – perhaps an instinctual move to shield themselves.

Our primary brain is the life giving and life keeping part of the brain. It is the basis of our existence, where our spark of life (our soul) resides. It is not the area of the brain where we have conscious thought. That part of the brain is built over the primary brain and develops after we are born. The conscious part of our brain is where we think and reason, form thoughts, opinions, ideas, views, and values, and solve problems. When we are conscious, we are awake, alert, and aware. Our primary brain, being the base of our entire brain and beneath our consciousness, is called the subconscious mind.

While we have natural instincts to survive that come from our subconscious mind, we also have inherent knowledge that develops when we are able to think. Philosophers argue for and against the idea of inherent knowledge, but research done by a group in Switzerland supports we possess natural knowledge and confirms what we can deduce from Scripture; that God is complete knowledge. And since God’s spirit is within us, we have knowledge in us.

Our inherent knowledge includes the fact that we know the existence of good and bad, the existence of happiness, and the need for cooperation. It also includes abilities we have, like the ability to be patient, to be accepting, to love, to practice self-control, to be compassionate, to be kind, to be responsible, to forgive, to trust, to do good, and to learn. This knowledge that leads us to happiness.

We must have both instinct and knowledge to live well and be happy. I equate our spirit of life with our subconscious mind, but our entire spirit must come from both our subconscious and conscious minds. If we had only instincts, we would be like the animals. We would live in a state of alertness and arousal. The emotions related to our survival instincts are fear, anger, and contempt. Living with only these emotions does not promote happiness. Conversely, “knowledge alone makes [people self-righteously] arrogant.” (1 Corinthians 8:1)

To be happy, we must rely on and attend to our spirit. We must synchronize and integrate our instincts with our knowledge. More on how to do this in upcoming posts.

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