Attention determines happiness

Where you focus your attention determines your happiness.

This idea struck me so hard today. I was walking home and got some bad news. New I didn't expect, disappointment, something I wanted I didn't get. I was upset because I thought it was a sure thing. Something that was so minor, but I obviously care about on reflection, my ego was hurt when it didn't happen.

On my walk home, I was thinking about this news the whole time I was walking, and it made my mood stale.

This is because I focused all my attention onto this one outcome, a result that I didn't like. I can't change the outcomes, so why was I marinating on it, because all this attention to the situation was only making my mood worse.

It makes me think about Buddha and how life is suffering, or that what we hold onto, and try to keep ends up hurting us more. Think losing that promotion, or not getting that dress, or losing a game. Or even more harshly, losing a loved one. The more we care about that thing, the more it hurts when it is taken from us.

This is not to say, don't attach to things, be heartless and more psychopathic. No, I'm just stating a fact, the more you hurt the more we mourn the more it tells us that, that thing mattered.

Pain is a wonderful guide; it tells us that something is wrong, that something needs to be healed, not fixed, but given attention. To figure out the why behind that pain.

Initially, I didn't think it mattered that I didn't get what I wanted. However, when I was rejected from it, my feelings made it clear that it did indeed matter to me.

I just find it interesting that what we give attention to affects us in more ways than we can fathom.

Pain is a wonderful thing, because it tells us what matters to us, and we can choose to pay attention to it, or if we ignore it. That pain might or might not subside, and at the same time if we ignore everything to avoid pain, then our lives will be void of all meaning and purpose.

It's OK to want something, and it's OK to be disappointed if you don't get it.

It's also OK to have feelings about things that might seem trivial to others because that trivial thing matters to us. And that is what is important.

Understand that. Grow from that, and learn that it is OK to feel and learn and evolve from those teachings.

That is life, a wonderful roller-coaster