Smile and Find Peace and Happiness In Yourself

While it was snowing in my living room today, I found a quote, which I really like:

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Is this snow real?

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Yes what’s real or not is an important part of this post. Over the last years I read a lot of buddhism and psychology books about happiness. I started reading those books by for example Matthieu Ricard, Jorge Bucay, Ryan Holiday and others after my father’s early death in 2015. Because psychology was part of my academic studies at university, it always was and is one of the sciences, which interests me the most. Questions like, ‘Does reality exist?’, ‘What is happiness?’ and ‘Where do I find it?’ ‘Can we change our mind?’ always fascinated me. I try to answer them in a very short version. You and shop my favorite books at the end of this post too …

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You construct your own reality

The philosophy of constructivism with its divers directions of thoughts is my specialization. It’s all about the individuell construction of reality. Supporter of social constructivism like Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann think that we construct our own subjective reality dependent on our interactions with others. Our way of thinking, our cognitive developement is influenced by culture, history, language and social context. By perceiving an object we construct this object. Some other philosophers of constructivism like Ernst von Glasersfeld or Heinz von Foerster believe that it is not possible for us to perceive an objective reality. They believe, that the process of constructing knowledge, of understanding, is dependent on the individual’s subjective interpretation of their active experience, not what “actually” occurs. This is a more radical intellectual approach (Radical Constructivism).

Does Happiness Exist?

Anyway, happiness is constructed by yourself, like love also is. You will not find happiness elsewhere like inside yourself. The way you think lets you see this world and the people around you in your own special way, more positive or negative, more egoistic or altruistic. It’s called selective perception. Your individuell perception filters all the information and gives only those to your brain, which are important or relevant to you; those informations, which confirm your imagination of this world. Constructivists like me think, that you can only perceive the world with your individuell bricks, your brain is built of. That means you watch and valuate the world with the help of your individuell neuronal linking in your brain. Your neuronal linking is dependent on your social context, the culture you live in, the language you speak, the education you got, everything you learned and experienced in your life. If there would be no word for happiness, happiness wouldn’t exist in your world.

Change Your Way Of Thinking

You classify and interpret everything you perceive with your senses, everything you see, hear, smell or touch. Culture, social context, language, education and history, everything you learned influence how you interpret something or someone. If you know that, it’s the first step to learn, the first step to change your way of thinking and interpreting. Studies say that there are good news. It’s always possible to enlarge and improve your neuronal linking by learning, not only as a child, but also as an adult. This science is called neuronal plasticity. You have the chance to learn each day by observing everything accurate, your own thoughts and actions included. Each new perception which causes a new thought will cause new neuronal linkings. Even associations will cause new linkings. We only use a very small part of our brain. It’s like a muscle. It can be trained. Yes, there is a chance for each of us to get more wise. 🙂

What Is Your Ego?

The next important thing is the ego. The word ‘ego‘ mostly has a negative meaning in our society. But first it’s the part of you that controls your thoughts and actions like a conductor. It has to find a balance between two very contrary parts of you. The first part is your subconscious id (Latin for ‘it’), which are your drives like appetite, sexuality or death drive, your needs like the need for recognition, but also your emotions like enviousness, hate, faith and love. The second part is the conscious super-ego, which are the rules, values and ethical beliefs your parents, teachers and our society told you as right or wrong, your education. Also your own experiences, you make during life determine your super-ego. Your ego is your consciousness, which finds the balance between these two parts of you. You need it to be a pschological healthy person, which solves psychological and social conflicts. Conscious perception, thinking and also our memory are the tasks of our ego. So your ego is nothing negative, but it’s essential.

It’s important to find the adequate balance between egoism and altruism. That means, if your own life is everything that matters (egoism), you won’t perceive lots of important informations like how others feel and think and how they react to your words and action. You won’t really understand others and you won’t learn much. On the other hand, if only others matter for you (altruism), you will never know who you are, how you think and what you really want in life. So it’s very important to listen, what others say to you, how they react to your words and actions. And on the other hand be an observer of your own thoughts, words and actions.

Be The Master Of Your Mind

The most difficult thing in our society is to observe your own thoughts. It’s part of buddhism to take your time and only watch your own inner speaking and thoughts. It’s called meditation. To observe how your own mind works is really facinating, but could be irritating and difficult first. Your mind can have two states. It can be calm or in motion like the surface of the water. While meditating it’s your task to perceive this state. If your mind is in motion, thoughts are popping up. In daily life you don’t really realize most of these thoughts. While meditation it’s new and surprising how many thoughts you perceive like just emotions or like you hear something or you see pictures in your mind, because of your state of full attention. Meditation should help you to be aware of your kind of thinking, to learn, how your mind works and how you can get the master of your own thoughts. Learn to stay in the present. Let go all thoughts of the past or the future, which come into your mind. Your main task is to calm down the motion of the mind, because in our society it’s nearly always in motion.

You Find Happiness In Yourself

If you understand how your mind works, you will know, when and why negative, pessimistic thoughts come into your mind. You will be able to just consider them as motions you’re constructing by your own and not as parts of reality. Anger, hate, sorrows and fears only exist in your mind. They are not part of reality. They are not real. If you got that, you will be able to let them go better and quicker from time to time. Mind itself is free of constructs. Free your mind by letting go your thoughts like smoothing the surface of the ocean in your brain. Never do stop training that to find your own peace and happiness. Think positive!

Books I Love

I will not mention all the books about philosophy and constructivism here, because it will be too much and too complicated. But here are some of my favorite books about happiness, buddhism and the ego. In some of them you find amazing short stories from all over the world, different cultures and mindsets. You can shop them below in the four different languages english, french, spanish, italian and german as long as they are available:

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Written by Alessandra@HowToBeInStyle
HowToBeInStyle is a fashion, style & beauty blog founded & created by ALESSANDRA, model, lover of photography, art, hippie & retro style, design, tigers & all things beautiful. She loves to share her passion! REAL BEAUTY COMES FROM THE INSIDE