Seeking, finding, maintaining and safeguarding our well-being is something we spend most of our time on, whether we’re conscious of it or not.
We seek pleasures, be it pleasant sights, sounds, tastes, sensations or moods. We surround ourselves with friends and loved ones. We satisfy our intellectual curiosity. We enjoy art, music or food. But our pleasures are fleeting. If we achieve some success, our feelings of accomplishment remain vivid and enjoyable for an hour or a day, but then they subside. And the search goes on for the next source.
We also avoid pain. We plan, we prepare, we decide the risk is not worth starting or continuing or finishing a task we initially decided to tackle. We let go of certain people, and hold on to others (or at least, the idea of them) for too long, whichever hurts less for now.
But while pleasure and pain may be the mainstays in our concept of happiness, many thinkers over the years have pondered whether a deeper source of well-being exists, one that is beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Well-being—not happiness—that does not depend on having your favorite outfit, or something to look forward to on the weekend, or if you can postpone that uncomfortable conversation with your friend or co-worker.
In other words, is it possible to be in a state of well-being regardless of whether good things have happened or bad ones have not?
Is there more to life than pleasure and pain?
Most of us live life as if the answer is “no”. But yes, there can be more, and there is. In the present moment.
Being present–when we simply observe, accept, release–and recognizing thoughts for what they are and that they come and go points to our awareness and the fact that we are not our thoughts. It also means that the objective isn’t to pay more attention to pleasant thoughts, or less to unpleasant ones.
The frantic state we often choose to live in, hopping from thought to thought with lightning speed, affects how we experience things, and determines how we live our life.
What is attention, exactly? Neuroscientifically speaking, it is giving priority to certain information over other information. Dr Amishi Jha, researcher, psychology professor, and author of Peak Mind states that we need attention to think, to feel, to perform, to connect with others. It is compromised when we feel threatened, or by stress, or by negative moods. And while it may seem counterintuitive, attention is not drastically improved by positive thinking.
What works, according to research findings, is awareness. It helps break the ruminative loop we often fall into, and reframe or de-frame the framework into which we’ve cornered ourselves. Instead, awareness pulls attention away from thoughts that keep us stuck, making it easier to let them go.
If we were to get serious about transcending beyond the pleasure/pain seesaw, a step forward would be to move past the boundaries of thought, of recognizing their fleeting nature. Even if we practice and only glimpse such peace of mind for a handful of moments, it can be enough to reassure us that there is more available to us.
Awareness reminds us that we are active participants in how we direct our minds. How we shape our habits of attention is how we get closer to a state of well-being that moves beyond happiness and into lasting fulfillment.
Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash
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