La sadness it is one of the most common negative emotions we can experience.
People often suggest that it is important to be sad in order to appreciate the moments when we are happy.
To me this seems like an excuse with which to try to justify the discomfort we feel, because we are unable to understand it or let it go.
There are no "bad" emotions.
There is nothing wrong with being sad.
Ma understand your sadness?
Are you able to understand why you feel it, let it go and get well again?
Also because nobody likes to feel bad (and sadness is one of the emotions that make us feel bad).
Today I want to help you better understand sadness to live it in a new way, let it go and don't let it cloud your happiness.
- Where does sadness come from.
- The errors that imprison us in sadness.
- Being sad is not wrong.
- How to let go of sadness and rediscover joy (with practical video).
Let's start!
Sadness - where does it come from?
I often happened to feel sad, until recently.
The moments in which I was pervaded by a paralyzing as well as inconsolable sense of melancholy, emptiness and loneliness were so frequent, to the point that over the years I even convinced myself that it was a hallmark of my personality, or at least something that had settled in me and had its roots in my childhood and in the way I had grown up.
In fact, since I was a child it often happened to me to feel sad.
I attributed it to having been an only child, not having had many opportunities to play happily with children my age.
Parents much older than me, who often took me to visit elderly people who spent their days in melancholy and silence.
No school trips, no parties with friends.
A kind of close cause and effect link had formed in my mind between the way I had spent my childhood and the emotions I often found myself feeling.
I was convinced it was inevitable.
But what does that mean?
That I was condemned to feel sadness forever, until the end of my days, because it did not depend on me but on the events of my life!
Not a bad perspective, right? ?
I tried to reflect on what it means to feel sadness, in what moments we feel it. Considering that for a few months it has been an emotion that it is almost no longer part of me. Something must have happened!
But what?
Sadness undoubtedly has to do with the lack. Which creates a sense of emptiness.
When you feel sad, what do you think about?
- Something you miss.
- To something you no longer have or to someone who is no longer there.
- To something that is about to end or that is over.
But think about it: where are your thoughts going, when you hear this lack, this sense of emptiness?
In the past where there was something that no longer exists today.
Or to the future, even the near future, in which something that maybe you still have now, will end or could end.
You feel sad because as a young man you had so many friends to spend carefree and fun evenings with, but in recent years you often find yourself alone, or alone.
You feel a sense of great nostalgia and melancholy to think back to the boy with whom you shared so many special and intense moments but he left you and now you are no longer together, and you miss him.
The long-awaited, wonderful journey you have been planning and dreaming of all year is about to end and you will have to return to the boring and tiring work routine.
You can also feel sad for no particular reason because you feel your life is empty. Once again there is a lack.
But what, really, are you missing?
- Do you miss friends, or do you miss the joy you felt in their company?
- Do you miss your boyfriend, "that" boyfriend, or the moments of sharing, the experiences you have lived together?
- Are you sad that the journey is over, or are you sad that you are going back to a life where you can't feel positive emotions?
- To a job you don't love?
If your life seems empty, what is it that you are missing?
You miss the fun, the joy, the passion, the enthusiasm, the serenity, all those positive emotions that you may have experienced in the past and that you fear you will not be able to savor again in the future.
One of the least effective but most used strategies for dealing with sadness is to run.
And Serena explains it well.
Running away is useless if you are sad
Whoever stops is lost, says the proverb.
True! Never stop.
You know you'd be sick if you had to, because you know the secret to feeling good is getting results by making everything you believe in concrete.
And lots. Cost what you cost.
But will it be so?
It happens that at some point something is wrong. Happy and satisfied at times, but basically there sadness it is a deafening hum.
You feel empty and understand that everything you have done has been for nothing. A beautiful collection of hits locked up in a medal cabinet hanging on the wall.
A lot of effort, but you begin to believe that you will never be happy.
Yet you never stopped!
But if you run without stopping to live, then yes you are still!
Run, run, run.
You run after your goals, then you realize you haven't taken a step and, now, you feel defeated. One who will never win.
And maybe you've experienced this feeling too.
But do you know what all this has in common?
You have lost hope!
There, stopped to suffer reality. You remain so still that, if you do not move from there, you risk falling prey to anguish, until you end up at the bottom. Lower and lower.
But you can choose!
You can choose to stand and move in a specific direction, and as the anguish goes away, the sadness passes in a snap of your fingers. Almost ?
It then happens that you turn around, look back and find nothing.
Only empty results that were never enough for you.
So, you understand the rules of the game, you were looking for another one, to be taken more seriously, one that you thought would really make you happy. But how happy it never made you.
And how many times have you gone right up against the wall!
Stop, waiting for people who, after all, you knew would never come back. And you hurt yourself even more!
And so there are many reasons why you might be sad, but all related to the sense of lack.
Lack of things, people, possibilities, solutions, alternatives.
Before explaining to you the secret to overcoming sadness, I leave the floor to Alessandra to remind you that there are no "bad" emotions.
Being sad is not a problem, it is a signal
Sadness must remain a spy, a signal, a moment. It cannot become a way of life.
And yet, for many people it is like this.
People who are fine.
People who have never lacked something to eat.
And shopping.
And go out with friends.
But they made sadness their dress.
People who "need to suffer and die a little every day".
I say these things because I realized that I have lived like this for a long time.
Perhaps proclaiming opposite ideals, but in the last corner of my being the most secret and precious place was dedicated to sadness. Because you never know something bad will happen.
Because it is easier to live sad and worried about something that could be, probably will be, given the many bad things that happen, rather than to recognize that I have never lacked anything and that I can immediately start living the present to the full.
That I only need the courage to smile.
And that won't spare me future troubles (as sadness wouldn't spare me), but, at least, I'll only experience them once.
With the mental habit of sadness, however, I live them a thousand and a thousand times, I constantly rummage them in my brain and heart, until I squeeze the last drop of juice.
It is not very healthy.
Living sad is like saying: I can't, I'm not up to it.
Kind of like abdicating. Little responsibility, but also little taste.
Sadness is also laziness, retracing roads already trodden, thus avoiding the effort of tracing new ones, made up of our creativity and uniqueness.
I remember a man I knew years ago, a true charismatic leader followed by tens of thousands of people. One day he said: “Everyone asks me what I have, which allows me to be as I am; I have nothing more than you, nothing, if not my yes ".
My yes.
What is the opposite of sadness?
In my opinion it is love.
And loving cannot start except by accepting.
Say yes, embrace, welcome.
Say yes, I am here, I commit myself, I do my best.
With joy.
So, to start taking off the dress of sadness I followed two main directions:
- Whenever my face is painted with sadness, I am reminded of to smile.
- Whenever I project myself forward in time and worry about what's going to happen, I force myself to stay focused in the present and to engage my brain in find the thousands of opportunities and activities that the current situation offers me.
It's just a beginning, but like all beginnings, it tastes like happiness.
But I'm not satisfied with just offering you a start.
The word returns to Megumì, to show you how can you stop being sad.
I am sad: what can I do?
A girl told me that she was showered with great sadness as she looked at the photos that relatives and friends had sent her in large quantities.
It is something that actually happened to me too.
Those photos portrayed carefree, joyful moments. How do such cheerful photos arouse a feeling of sadness?
It depends on the direction you are looking at.
If you think about what you don't have (“well, they have fun, they are together, but I have no one”) it will be inevitable that those thoughts give rise to sadness in you.
I often felt a great sadness in looking at the photos that my Japanese uncles or cousins ​​sent me.
But how?!
With so much love they shared with me beautiful moments which they wanted, even if at a distance, to share with me, and I felt sad?
What was I looking at?
What I was missing.
What I thought I was missing?
My cousins ​​both married with many children, large and cheerful tables where several families gathered, the thought that I would have liked to be there with them instead of here in Spain where I have very few relatives ...
Instead of being grateful to have them in my life too, grateful and happy for their gesture of making me "participate" in some way, of making me feel like one of them in the important moments of sharing, I was missing the opportunity to be happy, looking in the wrong direction.
And that direction, you always choose it, and you can do it at any time.
If you stay in the present, rather than letting your mind wander into a past that no longer exists or a future that is yet to come, if you look around you and observe all the wonders you can enjoy, the people you are surrounded by (how many there are). I'm in the world!), all the opportunities you have, to love and give your contribution, aren't you starting to fill that "void"?
That emptiness that nothing and nobody, apart from you, can really fill, because as well as you create your sadness, depending on the direction you are used to looking, it is always you who have the power to start building a wonderful kaleidoscope of exciting colors within you.
Instead of thinking about a vacation that is about to end, why not get started put care, passion and love in the work you do, every day?
In each of the daily chores that perhaps today you carry out absent-mindedly and almost with a sense of annoyance?
Why suffer for the removal of one person, when there are thousands of them they are waiting for your smile, your hug, your word?
In every moment of your life, if you just look away from what you lack, what you don't have, you will be able to notice the endless opportunities that surround you, and just waiting to be noticed and grasped by you.
And this you can always do, at any time, in any situation and at any age.
For example, my aunt is nearly ninety years old. She was self-sufficient until a few months ago, she lived a truly rich life, full of enthusiasm, of passions, surrounded by wonderful friends.
Since, due to an illness, she has been deprived of her strength, of her autonomy, she has fallen into great sadness, fear for the future, anxiety, and also everything that previously gave her joy, often now leaves her indifferent. .
It is very common for me to say: “Before it was not like this”.
I say it was first different. There were just other things before.
But now there are others. The opportunities are always there.
So I always try to shift his attention to what he still, despite everything, can still do.
- To walk, even if accompanied.
- To read, albeit with more difficulty.
- Listening to music, which she has loved all her life, even if with movies it bothers her to miss several lines.
- Have the company mine and my husband's even though most of his friends are gone.
- Don't have physical pain, even if it may not have the strength and energy of the past.
If you feel sadness is taking over, ask yourself: "What can I do now?"
How can you give your contribution, how can you make a difference in someone's life, what can you do that is beautiful and interesting?
Turn your gaze towards the direction of joy, of presence, of opportunities and begin to fill that "void" that depends only on you to fill with happiness.
We usually think sadness happens.
Instead we choose it in the many ways we have seen so far.
And to let it go you have to move (look) towards what I call "The 10 Laws of Happiness", ie the rules that govern your positive emotions.
If you applied these laws now, if you did it in every moment (the "present" you read about and live in), then sadness would leave room for joy, gratitude, love.
Do you want to try?
Well, to conclude, then, I show you a video in which I explain what these laws are: you will discover that they are all available to you today, and that require nothing more than your desire to live them.
Let this journey begin.
