Right or Happy...Pick One

 

 

Everything we believe, we believe to be ABSOLUTELY RIGHT, otherwise, we'd believe something else.

 

Seems pretty obvious once you see it written, but you may never have thought of it that way.

As if to thicken the plot, what we believe also dictates how we feel. Since our attitudes about people and events generate our emotional responses to them, it therefore follows that we believe our feelings are just as right as we are. That's not all. The fact that we've practiced our attitudes, beliefs, and feelings over a lifetime, means we are very loyal to them.

It is very common to get stuck on our rightness and lose sight of our real human objective, which is to be happy. Many people believe that being right IS being happy. If we're lucky, we eventually learn that our rightness may be limiting or restricting our happiness.

Our rightness about effective recovery from significant emotional losses often limits our ability to complete relationships that have ended or changed. Many of the ideas and beliefs that we were taught about dealing with our losses are incorrect and unhelpful, but after practicing them for a lifetime, they can seem to be very RIGHT.

For example, we were all taught that "time heals all wounds." But time does not complete anything that is emotionally incomplete in our relationship with someone who died. If we believe, with tremendous rightness, that time is going to heal our emotional wounds, we are destined to wait forever.

Time does not heal. Time goes by. It is the correct actions taken within time that can help complete relationships that have ended or changed. It is essential to take a new position of rightness about which actions are most helpful to achieve effective long-term recovery from loss.

Another example of a belief that you may have learned and practiced is "keeping busy." As a response to the conflicting feelings caused by loss, keeping busy can be a dangerous short-term distraction. At the end of a busy day your heart is still broken, and the relationship may still be incomplete. Keeping busy does not complete relationships. People are often as right about keeping busy as they are about time healing wounds.

In a prior column about familiarity, we said, "Familiar is not necessarily good, it is only familiar." By the same token, "Right is not necessarily good, it is only right." We tend to develop a ferocious loyalty to our rightness even though it often leads us to horrible squabbles with our mates and friends. If you think about most of the fights you've had, you will realize that both sides clung fiercely to the rightness of their position. Even in the aftermath, either party may have stayed on a position of rightness and refused to apologize, thereby extending the fray.

It may be time for you to examine some of your beliefs and attitudes about recovery from significant emotional loss. How you process the conflicting feelings caused by loss is dictated by what you believe. You must ensure that you have effective new ideas that can lead you towards happiness, rather than keep you stuck in rightness. So sneak on over to your local library or book store and pick up a copy of The Grief Recovery Handbook and acquire some better ideas for dealing with loss of all kinds.

Yes, we know there are those who will ask, "But can't I be Right AND Happy?"

We can only respond with a big smile and the comment, "So far, we haven't been able to find enough evidence to support that idea, but we're still looking."