Can You Really Make Someone Else Happy?
With Valentine’s Day in just a few days’ time, we all start thinking about our loved ones and what we might do to make them happy. Make them happy? Now that’s a thing. Can you really make someone else happy or do you need self love first?
In my view, the answer to that question is yes and no. Let me explain …
Have you ever heard the phrase ‘happiness is an inside job’? It’s a sentiment that is seldom taught in schools. It is rarely taught to us by our parents or other significant people in our childhood years. On the contrary, consciously or sub-consciously, we are taught that we should look outside of ourselves to find happiness. Society in general and the people we look up to reiterate this thinking and criticise attempts to focus on ourselves. When we don’t feel happy in the moment, we can really start giving ourselves a hard time mentally and emotionally with negative self talk.
In our heads we start asking questions which bring us down. Questions such as:
- why does this always happen to me?
- why can’t I be happy?
The negative thought processes then kick in. We overthink. Our thoughts go around in circles and we lose perspective fast.
‘I’m Fine’ Does Not Mean a Person Really is Fine
We can go in a coffee shop or other social environment and see other seemingly happy people. It is often an illusion but we don’t see this. People do not go into a coffee shop and declare ‘I’m unhappy’. What would happen if you were to ask everyone in the coffee shop if they are truly happy? I mean truly happy. Once you got them beyond the stock ‘I’m fine’ response, you’ll find many people start moaning about the state of their world. Others will reply that they are very happy but talk about things in the material sense or of things and people that are outside of themselves.
The thing is, it is very often the case that unhappy people will ruminate in their heads about not being happy. They will get stuck in a vicious cycle of asking question after question after question. All thoughts will have negative overtones. This is when mental conditions such as anxiety and depression begin. Thoughts such as ‘people say I am not good enough’, ‘everything I do is wrong’ … and the cycle continues like so.
Can this be stopped? Of course it can. It all begins with self-love. Learning to love yourself and being kind to yourself is where it starts. I don’t mean doing this in an arrogant, conceited way, but in the true meaning of love. When you love yourself, the person who you truly are, inner happiness is easy to find and embrace.
The things other people do, or circumstances that arise, become small matters to either deal with or let go of instead of the insurmountable mountains that they once seemed. Your mental processes understand that these are things you have little or no control over. Once you can accept this you then can concentrate on your own well-being and loving yourself for who you are. This allows you to be truly happy in every moment.
The Path to Self Love
But, how do you get to that point? One of the best ways is through meditation, though for some this can be hard to learn and find the time to practice it regularly. An easier way is to release the blocks to your happiness. These might be things such as anxiety, depression, past trauma that invokes emotions when those negative thoughts cross your mind. All these things can be effectively ‘treated’ with the help of a trained Hypnotist. In a state of hypnosis, you can detach the emotional triggers from the memories that cause them.
Once you give yourself the gift of self-love, by releasing those negative thoughts and emotions, loving others becomes easy and happiness grows and grows.
