It’s All In Your Mind ~Maya Georg

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Many years ago I experienced homelessness. I struggled finding an affordable place of my own to rent, and after a string of increasingly unhinged roommates, I ended up out in the cold. I squeezed what I could into a storage unit, gave or threw away what couldn’t fit, and slept where I could.

I was working seven days a week teaching yoga in 4 of New York City’s 5 boroughs. I was exhausted, hauling a suitcase around with me everywhere I went. I called every ‘Apartment For Rent’ sign I saw, and applied for every apartment I got the chance to view. I struggled financially, but also mentally and emotionally. Homelessness was just the last in a series of massive traumas I experienced over the course of the previous four years. (For those familiar with jyotish astrology, I was at the height of my Sade Sati. For those that don’t, it’s 7 years of paying back karmic debts, and I owed big.)

I was on the subway when I received a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I answered, but the signal was lost. I tried calling back, but it would have to wait until I emerged above ground. For the rest of that ride I was elated, thinking I had at last gotten an apartment.

Except I hadn’t. When I could finally call back, I learned the call was completely unrelated to housing. I realized in that moment that I had gone from depressed to overflowing with joy for no reason. Nothing had happened to change my mood, nothing real at least.

It was all in my mind.

The challenges I was facing at that time, and the loss I had experienced prior to that, were great. I had every right to be sad and to grieve. But I had gone past sadness and grief; I was miserable. The stress and strain left me angry and pessimistic, and I was so negative I couldn’t even stand myself.

Up until that moment, I had not realized how my pessimism was reinforcing and perpetuating all of the horrible feelings I was experiencing. I felt defeated, tired, old, and as though nothing could change. Yes, my situation sucked, and, yes, I was suffering, but I didn’t have to stay in the suffering. I could still find joy in my life and the world around me. I could choose to be happy.

And happiness is a choice. Life will never stop challenging us, and time will never stop taking from us. We cannot control either. But we can control how we meet those challenges, and how we release what we’ve lost. Choosing happiness is not easy, especially when life (or sade sati) gets the better of us. But we can try by reorienting our perspective to one of optimism.

Optimism is a feeling of potential, one where we have options and opportunities. And it is real – we all have open doors waiting for us, ones that allow us to change our lives for the better. We just have to be aware that they exist, and overcome the pessimism that tells us otherwise.

Practicing optimism leads to happiness, it lets us feel like we have agency and power of the direction of our life. And like any practice we must keep at it, until the practice becomes habit.

Here are 5 ways to make optimism and happiness a habit:

Notice the good, and give yourself credit when it’s due. When bad things happen they overshadow everything else. We have to make a conscious effort to bring and keep our attention on the good in our lives and acknowledge when we are responsible for those victories.

Find things to look forward to. Make plans with friends, schedule time to practice self-care, start planning that trip you’ve always wanted to take. When we imagine our future as brighter, we begin to take the steps we need to create the life we want.

Understand that things are temporary. This one is hard when you are struggling, especially if you are stuck in the middle of 7 years of bad luck. But understanding that things will always change can help us bear our burdens better.

Laugh. With every new disaster I would tell myself “someday this will make a great story.” I’m still waiting for the day when some of those stories will be good, but, in the moment I could reframe the situation, and laugh. Humor allows us to find moments of joy and gives us a means of alleviating the pressures we may be enduring.

Practice gratitude. Regularly write down the things you are grateful for, tell the people in your life how they make it better, and remind yourself of what you have rather than what you lack. Noticing the good in our lives is vital, but taking the time to appreciate it can help us maintain a more positive outlook.

Happiness only exists in our mind. While some moments can bring us joy, happiness is a state of being that we can cultivate and make a part of ourselves in a way that can neither be given nor taken away. It is a discipline, much like yoga, with some days a struggle and others effortless. But, like yoga, the more we practice the more our practice becomes a habit, and eventually, becomes a part of who and what we are.

So, we start where we are, and we practice.