'Sir, i am most of the time sad in my life. Why?...Is life a mixture of sadness and happiness?...Can't we have only happiness?...Are contrasts important to understand the value of positives?'

Dear all...THIS IS FOR ALL...Why are we sad?...Is life both a mixture of happiness and sadness?...Why so?....How to be happy always??

All of us have some issue or the other at any time which bugs us. The issue is either from OUR BODY or OUR MIND or inside these two. Body and mind influence each other positively or negatively.

We have three types of minds inside us. CONSCIOUS MIND is the superficial part which makes us AWARE about what is happening around us at that moment.

Some mental contents are not currently at the level of AWARENESS. But they can reach to the awareness level fairly easily. This is called PRECONSCIOUS MIND.

Mental contents that can be brought to awareness only with great difficulty are in the UNCONSCIOUS or SUBCONSCIOUS MIND which generally affects the state of our conscious mind and makes us sad. e.g Many say 'I am not happy. I don't know if i am sad. But me and my life are not alright. I don't know the reason. I suppose life is full of both sadness and happiness. Hmmmm!!'

All the mental processes or covert (unseen) behaviours that occur in these three minds only manifest as overt observable behaviours by movement or muscles of various parts of the body. If these minds process issues that are positive and in a positive manner, then positive behaviours occur and positive emotions emerge as the resultant. This is good for our body, minds and our social relationships as it leads to peace, happiness, good physical-mental and social health, contentment and self-actualisation path. This leads to good life and living.

But what happens?

Most of the time we are sad. Our conscious mind is not healthy for a short or prolonged time or repeatedly. Why?

All of us have an unconscious mind. All the evils (i.e things that are bad for us as per our perceptions...not just those defined by society as evils!!) in what our body sensors sense from our surroundings go inside our unconscious mind, beyond the control of our conscious mind, and they influence all that our conscious mind mulls and munches. Unconscious mind is the main reason for the state of our conscious mind.

Feelings held in the unconscious mind are often too painful to be faced. So, our body and mind come up with DEFENSE mechanisms to protect us. e.g sometimes we resort to DENIAL because we are unable to accept a tragic event as having occurred and keep on stating that it had not occurred.

But truly the defences are wrong and cause more harm than good immediately or progressively or in a long run. They affect our body and mind. So, we get affected more and more, suffer, cry, feel sad, feel frustrated and do not know what to do.

When we use the therapeutic approaches, we bring to surface the deep true feelings which are unknown to us and residing deep inside the unconscious mind (the crap, garbage and evils which have gone inside) we can experience them and understand them. Once we become aware of what is really going on in our mind, then the feelings will not be as painful.

So, the crux is....

We have created a society or way of living (culture) around us which has more evils i.e negatives to our body and mind. Let us define our life and living our way of living, i.e our culture, our CONSTITUTION OF LIFE in a way that will keep our body and mind happy and healthy without affecting others an society and within the legal framework. Blaming others and society or culture is not a solution.

Let our PERCEPTIONS OR UNDERSTANDING about everything be positive. Nothing is right or wrong or correct. 'anything perceived negative is not correct/true/right for US'...that is all!...

Brain always processes information, converts the raw data sensed by the sensors and then stores that as the LEARNING experience. If these are negative, then any time we see or come across or experience the same life situations, or people or relationships, the brain retrieves the same negative learning stored and causes negative thinking negative behaviours and negative emotions. So, we feel sad or frustrated. Let us UNLEARN and correct the stored perceptions into positives so that brain always perceives positives and we are always happy and healthy, our relationships are good and we always think good about people important for us.

Let us know the methods, by which we can bring to surface the deep feelings residing in the conscious mind, so that we experience them, understand them and feel light and less painful.

Peacefully yours...Rams...Health Psychologist!!