Even the most joyful, benevolent souls out there have encountered some degree of sadness in one way or another in their lives. Sadness takes many forms but at its deepest and heaviest it renders us speechless and wrecks havoc on our vision of ourselves and our place in the world. Just like rose-tinted glasses present us with perhaps, delusional but soul satisfying, glowing view of the world where flourishing relationships abound, similarly sadness bestows on us a gravitas and a stillness of soul, where the world is perpetuated by dark clouds and relationships are draining and doomed. Nothing seems right, within us and out there.
And at these times when we are our most vulnerable, it really helps to remember that both happiness and sadness are a state of mind. The connection between how we feel and act on any particular day or occasion has a lot to do with what we think and draw conclusions from. And it is all data driven. The data in our brain and the neural synapses it generates is not a coincidence nor beyond our realm of control. If we understand that every cell in our body is being continually charged by firing neurons; and neurons in turn are bringing the negative or positive charges from the information we are processing in our brain, we get to understand that how we behave and react to situations and incidents is entirely in our control.
As an example, imagine having a bad day at work.Your boss is coming down on you hard. The deadlines of your deliverables are too close and the workload unimaginably high. You feel downright downtrodden. What do you do? How can you not feel stressed and sick? Well, you probably do feel awful and your brain is legitimizing your feeling awful by telling you, you should.
But what if your brain says to you, OK point in case, things are a squeeze right now, but nothing you can't handle old boy (or gal). What if your brain tells you to rise above it all and march to an upbeat drum. What if your brain tells you to get your swag on and plays the tune in your head you can lose yourself in that gets your adrenenal flowing like a super hero? What if your brain tells you that you will get through this like all the other times you got through? Would you still feel awful and stressed? I bet you a hundred dollars, you will not.
Same is the case with feeling sad. Sometimes we blame feeling sad to outside factors; something someone said or did or did not do. Or factors within us, like not feeling worthy or beautiful or liked or appreciated. When our brain legitimizes our sadness and gives it its seal of approval that yes, people are awful to you, you are not appreciated and you should feel sad - only then it is that we do. But we can turn this around and make our brain say ‘OK so that person wasn't great to you, or appreciative, but do you want to take on their negative energy and feel sad or would you rather set up your positive energy shield around you so their negativity can't get through to you? What if your brain makes an imaginary shield around you that is deflecting all negativity others are aiming at you. What if you keep a score as well of how many negative jabs you deflected by not letting them get to you? Doesn't that make it almost like a game you are out to win? Doesn't that make you sad-proof? I bet you a thousand dollars it will.
The only time feeling sad is legitimate is when you lose a loved one. Then you can allow yourself to lower your shield and weep for the lost one. And that weeping is cathartic, strangely healing and does you a world of good. Because it purges your soul of the heavy burden of love that you carry that can't be reciprocated anymore. You let that love out through tears but let your soul carry only the memory of it like feathers that drift weightlessly and freely.
