Happiness Seeking or Fear Avoiding?

“When you know what you don’t want, you know what you do want.”
~~Abraham Hicks

I realized yesterday that most of my life has been spent with one eye constantly fixed on the thing I didn’t want the most.  I would identify unwanted and then focus on it.  I told myself that this was helpful and practical, and I suppose that in some ways it can be.  Identifying what you don’t want can help you clarify what you do want.  But I never moved on to focusing on what I did want.  What I was doing was spending the vast majority of my time focusingon what I didn’t want, feeling horrible about it, and then trying to avoid it.

The problem that arose from this is that all of my actions and decisions were then based on moving away from my chosen worse case scenario, and the consequence of that was that as long as what ended up happening or what I ended up getting wasn’t The Big Unwanted, then I was relieved and satisfied.  Even if it wasn’t what I really wanted or even kinda wanted, my mentality was, “Well, at least it was The Big Unwanted!”

Now instead of jumping away from what I don’t want, I’ll jump towards what I do want.  This is just as practical too, isn’t it?  Because when I leap towards what I want, this will automatically be taking me away from what I don’t want.  I might not make it all the way to The Big Wanted, but I’ll be headed in the right direction.  And, most importantly, if I’m focused on what I want, I’ll be feeling much better than when I’m constantly focused on what I don’t want.  

Excitement and hope do tend to feel better than dread and fear.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *