Yesterday, had my performance review. Not too much of a shock or surprise in terms of strengths and weaknesses & areas for improvement over the last 6 months. I know I gotta be better in my communication and time and priority management. Those are constant things to always be improving I'll continue to challenge myself to strive for perfect, knowing that I may never achieve that.
Where does our feeling of being upset come from? When someone has what you may also be wanting, it's of course natural, and it's also an experience we think or know will give us happiness. But I think even within happiness there is fear-based happiness and love-based happiness. Fear-based happiness is happiness that occurs when we fill up a hole in our life. A mental, emotional, physical, spiritual hole. Vishen's 3 categorizations of experiences, growth, and contribution are independent of this because even within these there can be fear-based and love-based things to create happiness. I may be happy when I learn about something that I put down in the growth category, but is that because I think I may be inadequate in that area or because learning about it creates energy? Aren't those all goals or things that our soul, not the body or mind, want to experience, learn, or contribute? Correct, but the soul will do what's best for it in its transformation of self-realization. It will fill up the holes before there is more added to it. So fear-based happiness isn't bad, it's just a broad spectrum along which our soul journeys. Love-based happiness is there as we start filling up those holes of fear. This type of happiness is not a result of something making us happy, but doing something because we are happy. I think these are just names for what I was journaling about regarding the hourglass model. Experiences, growth, and contribution to make us happy vs experiences, growth, and contribution because we are happy. It's like the chicken and the egg. I don't think you can have pure love-based happiness without our soul progressing over lifetimes from fear-based to love-based. It's like a stance in Tai Chi. From back stance to forward bow. You're shifting weight from your back leg (symbol for fear-based happiness) to your front leg. Our actions individually may be classified as binary but on the whole, it's like this distribution of weight. The knee bend in the legs combined add up to 100%. In the back stance, there is 0% of the knee bend in the front leg and 100% of the bend in the back leg. As we shift weight forward, the angle distribution becomes 10-90, 20-80, 40-60, then 60-40, as more weight is placed on the front leg. The ultimately it goes to 80-20 and 100-0 front leg (symbol for love-based happiness). As we get more glimpses of love-based happiness in our lives and make progress towards that forward bow stance, the less fear-based happiness that exists in us. With that proper weight distribution, we'll feel fully balanced. In the analogy, balanced primarily physically. In the symbolism for the analogy, balanced holistically.
So what happens if I connect energy into this? I think it's logical to say that love-based happiness creates energy. But would the inverse be true? That fear-based happiness destroys or drains energy?
[10 min thinking]
So fear-based happiness means we acquire happiness from something. What happens when we get that happiness from that source? How do we progress from fear-based to love-based in that moment of happiness? Is there a moment where we have to decide one way or the other? Or at least start to make progress from fear to love? And if so, how do we become aware enough of that moment and aware of how to respond? I don't think it's the only answer but I think gratitude plays a big factor in that. Taking a second to be grateful in that time of happiness creates energy. And when we are aware enough to be grateful and create that energy, the more aware we will become of moments like that to be even more grateful. So awareness and gratitude can help fill up those holes of fear and move us from fear-based happiness to love-based happiness.
Really ties into Day 15 of Be Extraordinary as we are to write "I am enough" on the bathroom mirror to remind us of ourselves and our worth and divinity. Another thing is a simple yet effective exercise of Eye Gazing. Just stare into the mirror into one of your eyes and say "I love you" 10 times. In that moment, we become aware and grateful of ourselves, which also helps fill those holes of ear within us and move towards the whole.
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