How to be REALLY happy.

         

This past week I was listening to an interview with this world renowned psychiatrist. He is the author of many self-help books that have sold in the millions. He runs a special clinic, and many have been helped by his unique treatment. The premise of his cure is to treat mind disorders, like that of depression without medications, using cognitive therapy.

In this interview he speaks of the importance to identify the grossly exaggerated and distorted negative thoughts, recognizing and isolating this self-inflicting damaging energy and containing its detrimental effects.

All this makes lots of sense in the eyes of the Torah as well. The evil inclination, the inner soul put there to test and challenge us, only has its power through lies. G-d is truth, and his Bible is truth. Dealing and living with truth, means living and dealing with the way things really are, and in the long run will always be helpful to a person.

Through the power of forgetfulness which temporarily makes us forget the truth, and through the power of lies and exaggerations, the evil in the world is brought to life and flourishes. That is why when we speak of the future times, the Bible says, the spirit of impurity will be lifted from the world and all will see and recognize “the truth”. The opposite of truth, light and joy, is the sprit if impurity, darkness and depression.

This psychiatrist is saying in this interview, that after decades of practice, he has come to discover the power of motivation, which may be even stronger than, identifying the dark and destructive thoughts.

So years have passed and now he realizes that there may be another approach which brings even better results. HELLO?

The Bible emphasizes again and again the greater strength there is, in faith, trust, and optimism.  More than anything else, the greatest positive blessing in a person’s life, the channel that opens everything that is good, is a focus on what’s good and uplifting, as opposed to getting involved deeper in the dark thoughts that bring a person down.

The expression repeated again and again, is that it’s easier to get rid of darkness by putting on the light, than it is to chase the darkness out. “A little light dispels much darkness.”

Another speaker, a Health psychologist was saying in a speech, she has “a decade of demonizing stress to redeem.” Something she had been teaching for the last ten years may be in truth more harmful than good, in light of “her” recent scientific discoveries.

She had been teaching all those years that stress is harmful to our lives. 43% of the people who thought stress can kill actually died, while those who didn’t think so, where no more likely to die than anyone else, all things being equal. The “new” science of stress teaches, that how you think about stress matters.

If we decide to see stress, not as harmful, but a sign for our bodies to respond to a situation with greater attention, if we see stress as being the trigger to activate positive results, we can actually gain from stress rather than be hurted by it.

HELLO? Once again.

The Bible teaches us that there is nothing in the world that happens by itself. It’s not possible for anything to happen without G-ds intervention. And since G-d is the source of all that is good and kind, “all that G-d does is, for the good.” Or the other expression is, “this too is for the good.”

Everything that appears stressful and worrisome is merely a test. It is up to the individual to interpret the stressful occurrence in the positive, and then the outcome is a greater individual than before the stressful event.