New year, new path part 2: How to let go of striving

If you read other blogs, you’ve probably come across many with the theme of high achievement, where they interview Olympians and businessmen to extract the secrets of their stellar success. There’s an inherent bias of course with this kind of reporting as there’s thousands and thousands of people just as talented as them who didn’t make it for whatever reason - mostly luck and their starting position in life. But we are consistently presented with the idea that we need to be more than we are, that somehow we’re not enough next to these supermen and women and we could be like them if we only hustle more. 

We’re also bombarded every day in Western culture with things that we need to possess or achieve in order to be happy. The advertising industry is built on this idea - buy this car and you’ll be more attractive, buy this drink and you’ll have a great time. We have to buy something, we have to do something, we have to be something else in order to be happy. Needless to say, this is not great for our mental health and tends to build the vague sense within ourselves that our lives aren’t enough and we become dissatisfied with everything around us. The idea of striving for more is portrayed as a positive thing in the West, but it’s a recipe for suffering.  

 Happiness is a practice, its a way, its a path we walk every day rather than something that is bestowed on us when we have enough possessions or we’ve risen to a position of power. What we might find, in fact, is that when we achieve what we think we have to to be happy we feel a fleeting sense of elation replaced by emptiness. Emptiness that we try to fill with consumption. We then look for the next thing to strive for and get caught up in a cycle of dissatisfaction. Does Elon Musk or Novak Djokovic seem happy? I would argue that rather than be envied, we should feel sorry for those who have had a constant drive to achieve imposed on them. 

 So how do we walk the path of happiness? The first step is to let go of those things we think we need, we call them attachments in the practice. To let go of them we need to identify them, and we can recognise attachments when we feel fear, anger or sadness. Underneath these difficult emotions is something we strive for - for example if we feel anxious about public speaking (like I do) then its because we’re attached to what people think of us. Identifying these and meditating on them can start to release us from their grip. 

Once we start to surface and let go of the things we think we need to be happy, we can start do the actual work of being happy, which is grounding yourself in the present moment through practising meditation, enjoying the world in front of you through focusing your awareness and feeling gratitude. Gratitude is the one common psychological trait among happy people. All of us feel a certain amount of gratitude at specific times - like when someone does something unexpected and nice for us. But to develop your mindfulness practice you need to fully experience your world in this moment and feel gratitude as much of the time as possible.

We can be grateful for the important things in our life - the people we love, or our health. Practicing being thankful works in the same way as our usual mindfulness, training our minds with a guided meditation or stopping every so often during the day to notice what's going on. Its in these moments we can draw happiness from the world in front of us, whether big or small. This might be sitting down in a comfortable chair, walking in the park or when you see a bird land in the garden. If you train your awareness regularly you can be more attuned to these small moments of happiness and let go of the idea of needing to me more than what you are or anywhere else than right here, right now.