While fully in a happy moment you aren’t sad, but that hedonic kind of pleasure isn’t a permanent state of being. Eudaimonic well-being is about experiencing a range of feelings- not just the positive ones. Denying difficult feelings doesn’t guarantee happiness. How well could you experience calm and ease if you’ve never felt stress or pressure? By knowing how difficulties and sadness feel you can experience joy and contentment. It also involves experiencing feelings that you may not have readily associated with happiness, such as purpose, meaning, fulfillment, and altruism. Positive psychology research has found hat practicing proven methods such as mindfulness and gratitude help increase the happiness felt and builds resilience. This means you are better able to cope with life’s challenges and difficulties.
~William Ralph Inge
when we have too many buzz words, try an old habit in new ways……
inquiry for today~ try something fresh in your sitting practice….how will you stay?
Emotional acceptance- perceiving one’s emotions, but choosing not to act on them= lowers negative emotions and increases resilience.
Another way of thinking about this, says Jon Kabat- Zinn is to “put out the welcome mat” for discomfort and pain. This may seem decidedly counterintuitive. “If we recognize the actuality of things,” explains Kabat-Zinn, “then we have the opportunity to apply wisdom in that situation to actually shift our own relationship in ways that may be profoundly healing. Without acceptance, it’s very difficult to take the first step.”
~Jon Kabat-Zinn
