Overcoming the Screaming Heebie Geebies

So you want to be happy and you just can’t see beyond your frustration and lack of time, right? Life has lost its sparkle, you just seem to get busier and busier and you just want some peace and to be happy.

What if I told you that you could have that TODAY? Would that be worth taking the time out to read further?

So what does make you happy and why should you even try to be happy?

Professor Ed Diener, the world’s foremost expert on the science of happiness and life satisfaction, says that “happy people are healthier, they have more friends and better social relationships, they are better citizens and they are even more productive at work. So we know both from experimental studies and from longitudinal studies that it’s causal, that happiness is making people better off.”

In a talk Michelle Bridges, health and fitness guru, gave at the Happiness and Its Causes Conference in Sydney this month, she says that 40% of our happiness comes down to the choices and actions we make and take every day. So think of the choices you are making. Did you know you could actually choose how you want to feel and that it’s probably the only thing we really have control over?

We all have moments of feeling down, flat and even downright miserable, it’s called being human. But we don’t have to live there. I will confess I used to go to that place quite often, I even had a name for it; I called it the ‘Screaming Heebie Geebies”. It used to creep up on me (often at 4 am) when I thought about all the things I had not achieved in my life, when I had a problem that I was avoiding dealing with and when I was so focused on myself and my problems that I couldn’t see any way out. But I discovered a new way of thinking…new things to focus on and new tactics to get out of my unhappiness. I won’t say I am on top of the world all the time, that would not be something I could maintain, but I do live at a higher level of happiness and if I do get down on myself, I know how to recognise it and get back to a happier place straight away. The ‘Screaming Heebie Geebies’ are a thing of the past!

So what do I do? As soon as I feel like I am going down that path, I change how I am sitting or standing. I put my shoulders back, straighten my back, take 3 deep breaths and look upwards to the ceiling. This alone changes my ‘state’. I then think of 5 things I have to be grateful for in this moment…things like, ‘I’m grateful that I am alive, I am grateful I can stand (or see or hear or any of the other senses), I’m grateful for my family and people who love me, I’m grateful I live in a beautiful country and I’m grateful for all the things I have in my life’. It doesn’t matter what you are grateful for, it might even be something as small as being grateful for having a brain to think. The important thing is that you have changed what you are focusing on. I then break out into a smile and a deep hearty laugh….even if it is fake, laughter is one of those things you can’t fake for too long before it becomes real.

Give this a go and let me know how well it worked. Do this regularly and I can tell you it will come more naturally each time you have a go.