This Could Be Your Most Important Decision: Learn How to Live a Happy and Meaningful Life in Your Current Situation
I encounter countless individuals living in desperation, frustration, and stress, feeling as though they’re living someone else’s life. What unites them all is a profound sense of emptiness and yearning, as if something essential is missing. Whether they’re students, retirees, entrepreneurs, CEOs, wealthy or struggling, healthy or ill – this feeling remains remarkably consistent across the board.
The core issue is that most people can’t quite identify what this emptiness represents, or how to fill it to feel complete. In this article, I’ll share insights on how it’s possible to live a happy and meaningful life regardless of our current circumstances.
The English word “fulfill” originates from the Old English term “fullfyllan,” meaning to fill, complete, or experience a sense of completion. True fulfillment emerges when we fill the void with what our heart and soul truly desire. This leads to a sense of wholeness and a deeper inner peace and tranquility.
During the initial years of my journey toward recovery after experiencing a life-threatening burnout in 2003, my primary focus was finding solutions to my major health challenges. I became so fixated on my problems that I often found myself frustrated, irritable, and difficult for my loved ones to be around. Life was filled with numerous wonderful aspects, yet most of my attention was directed toward what wasn’t working well.
Wrong Focus
Frustration, resignation, irritation, and sometimes desperation often completely overshadowed the fact that I had a wife whom I loved deeply and who loved me back, that I lived in a charming and idyllic 220-year-old house built of clay and wood where deer grazed outside my office window, that I wasn’t entirely bedridden, that I had caring friends who supported me, that I had a job allowing me to express my creativity and work on my own schedule, that our dog was healthy and always cheerful, that I lived in a part of the world free from war and famine, that I had enough money to cover my expenses – and so much more.
Despite all this, I focused more than 90 percent of my attention and energy on what wasn’t going well in my life, even though 90 percent of it was exactly what I had always longed for.
In other words, I placed disproportionate importance on the 10 percent of my life that wasn’t ideal, which led me to invest most of my energy and attention on the negative aspects. This created a cycle of stress and frustration, leaving me with little capacity to appreciate what was actually good. The negativity overshadowed gratitude and made my life appear darker than it truly was.
How much focus and energy do you devote to your problems and challenges compared to the good things in life that deserve your gratitude? My experience unfortunately shows that far too many people I interact with often forget or take for granted the positive aspects of their lives. The good news is that most people can change this perspective at any time.
“Think every morning when you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.”
Dalai Lama
The Two Emotional States
A crucial foundation for creating a fulfilled life is being guided by the heart rather than the ego’s shadow aspects with their fear and anxiety, which have different objectives than meaning, happiness, and joy. We primarily experience two types of emotional states in life – enriching states and suffering states.
Enriching Emotional States
The first category comprises enriching emotional states where we fill our lives with what our heart and soul yearn for. These states are driven by the heart’s primary emotions such as happiness, passion, love, courage, empathy, care, and compassion.
In these states, we consistently treat ourselves and others with kindness and respect. When we’re in this state, knowing the right course of action comes naturally, and all types of interpersonal challenges become easier to resolve in a loving and respectful manner.
For instance, when facing a disagreement with your partner while in an enriching emotional state, finding a loving and respectful resolution feels effortless. We can only experience a truly complete life when we exist in these enriching emotional states.
Suffering Emotional States
These states are driven by the ego’s secondary emotions, including fear, anger, hatred, frustration, jealousy, greed, anxiety, competitive fear, and worry. In these states, we often treat ourselves and others poorly, and our communication skills deteriorate, causing conflicts to easily escalate. A disagreement with a partner, boss, or employee can quickly turn into a loud and disrespectful confrontation.
In my book Beyond Positive Psychology: A Journey From Burnout to Enlightenment, I delve deeper into the fascinating topic of emotional states and how we can become experts at managing them quickly. Below you’ll find a small excerpt…
Free Yourself from Suffering Emotional States
Your expectations about a situation often lead you into a state of emotional suffering. When you anticipate that your boss might have an issue with something you’ve done or haven’t done, it creates a particular emotional state within you. The same happens when you expect your partner to be angry when you get home, or when you feel you haven’t performed well enough at something.
A simple yet powerful method to liberate yourself from a suffering emotional state is to replace your expectations with gratitude. Here’s a practical and quick exercise to help you break free from suffering emotional states:
The Pattern Interruption Technique
This is one of the simplest and most effective methods for transforming suffering emotional states within seconds. This technique can prevent you from falling into a difficult-to-change emotional state of suffering. (Think about a conflict you’ve experienced and how long it took before you felt free from the ego’s secondary emotions.)
Step-by-Step Process:
- When you become aware that you’re about to enter a suffering emotional state, press your “mental pause button” – consciously stopping yourself from sliding deeper into negativity. It’s like hitting pause on a video player.
- Take a deep breath into your lower abdomen and direct your attention to your heart center.
- Observe the thoughts floating around you while maintaining your heart-centered focus.
- Reflect on what you value and feel grateful for in your life, or what truly matters to you.
- Ask yourself this question: “In relation to what’s genuinely important in my life, is it worth continuing down this negative emotional spiral of suffering right now?”.
- Perform a brief exercise to reconnect with a rich emotional state centered in heart-based primary feelings (see below for an example of how to do this).
- Press your “mental play button” to resume living in your current situation.
This straightforward exercise has helped hundreds of my clients and students develop a different relationship with how they respond in challenging situations. While we all have the free will to choose our reactions, we often can’t control what happens to us. The challenge lies in the fact that most of our behavior is largely controlled by our subconscious mind.
The Pattern Interruption Technique is a powerful tool for reclaiming some control from these conditioned responses. Initially, you’ll need to practice all the steps, which might take 1-2 minutes. With practice, you’ll eventually accomplish this in just seconds.
«Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.»
Mark Twain
Fill Yourself with Rich Emotional States
The simplest path to filling yourself with rich emotional states likely comes through gratitude. Unfortunately, I rarely encounter masters in the art of actively filling their hearts with primary emotions based on gratitude throughout their daily lives.
But is this practice limited to Zen masters or Buddhist monks who have trained for decades? The answer is definitely no. With just five minutes of daily practice, you can develop the ability to consciously activate your heart’s primary emotions like joy, passion, and love whenever you desire.
5 min. Exercise to Become a Master of Gratitude
Step 1:
Write down a list of the most important things you’re grateful for in your life (minimum 20). Consider creating a page or document where you paste images representing these items. You’ll also need a notebook or journal that you might call “My Rich Emotional States” or “My Gratitude Journal” to document your experiences with this exercise.
Step 2:
Each day, spend at least 5 minutes doing the following:
a) Find a quiet space where you can relax without interruption for at least five minutes.
b) Take 3-5 deep breaths into your lower abdomen while focusing your attention on your heart.
c) Visualize or imagine a situation that represents one of the things you’re grateful for in your life right now.
d) Immerse yourself deeply in this situation and try to relive it until you begin experiencing the emotions connected to it. For instance, recalling when you met your partner might evoke intense feelings of joy, warmth, gratitude, and love.
e) Once you’re filled with these primary emotions, move to the next item on your list and repeat steps c and d.
g) After about 5 minutes, conclude the exercise by taking a couple of deep breaths into your lower abdomen before opening your eyes and gently stretching.
h) Write a few words about your experience in your “Rich Emotional States” journal.
Initially, steps c) and d) will require the most energy and focus since most people aren’t accustomed to doing this consciously. You might need 5 minutes to focus on a single situation at first, but gradually you’ll be able to access these primary emotions more quickly. Remember, this isn’t a race against time. Take whatever time you need.
A common mistake many people make is to simply write down their gratitude list and read through it once a day or occasionally. This approach has minimal impact since merely reading something rarely generates primary emotions. Our intellect has limited influence over our emotional states. I strongly recommend following all the steps in this exercise to achieve optimal results, and remember that practice makes perfect!
Mastering Emotional State Shifts
After practicing for several days or weeks, shifting emotional states becomes easier. Eventually, you’ll develop the ability to experience and feel rich emotional states like gratitude, joy, and empathy whenever you choose. This way, you’ll become less controlled by the automatic behaviors driven by your subconscious mind. You’ll then be able to utilize this skill during step 6 of the interruption management exercise.
Does this mean life will become a bed of roses and you’ll always be filled with heart-centered emotions? No, absolutely not. We’re all human and aren’t here to be infallible. Like me and most people I know, you’ll occasionally slip into suffering emotional states, either willingly or unconsciously, sometimes before you even realize it’s happening.
Be kind to yourself and remember that practice makes perfect! For me, achieving 80 percent success is good enough, allowing room for failure in 20 percent of cases. Pursuing perfection is itself a path to suffering.
Living a Happy and Meaningful Life in Your Current Situation – Your Most Important Decision
Several years ago, I made a decision that became one of the primary reasons I live the extraordinary life I have today. After weeks of experiencing numerous painful emotional states, I paused and asked myself this crucial question: “Is everything that creates my frustration, desperation, and anger – things often completely beyond my control and influence – so important that I’m willing to limit or destroy all the other good things in my life?”
What broke my heart the most was seeing my amazing wife Maria, who was doing everything possible to support me, beginning to fall ill from all the stress. My frustration and desperation were palpable each time another attempt, another treatment method, or another specialist failed to help improve my condition. I felt like a fly repeatedly banging its head against a glass window, unable to break through.
My obsession with getting healthy overshadowed everything else until one day, I stopped and questioned whether my goal of becoming well – something I might never achieve – was truly the most important thing. This realization hit me like a bolt of lightning!
Perhaps instead, I should try my best not to let my frustration, anxiety, desperation, anger, or the constant pursuit of solutions destroy my life?
Cahnge Your Life in 90 Days!
This revelation led me to develop the course “Change Your Life in 90 Days”, which distills the most effective insights I’ve gained through two decades of trial and error. In this course, I don’t share all the times the fly hit the glass, but rather the moments when it found its way out – helping you avoid making the same mistakes I did.
One of the most significant changes I’ve made over these years, which has profoundly influenced every aspect of my life, has been my daily quest to find meaning, joy, and happiness in the small moments and fill them with rich emotional states. For me, this is true fulfillment. Deep inner peace and meaning are just two of the many outcomes.
«The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.»
Dr. Viktor Frankl, psykolog
Want to Learn More?
I wish you all the best on your journey. Life can be wonderful to live if we choose it ourselves and get the right help! If you want to learn more about this and other topics to create a better life, you’ll find several exciting online courses and articles at www.wanvig.no.
Almost all problems can be solved – and often the solution is closer than we think! I wish you the best of luck on your path toward good health, joy, hope, meaning, and the life you deserve! I hope this article has been a source of inspiration and motivation!