Find and Flip Your Switch of Happiness

Happiness and the State of Being

An unhappy state of being summons unfavorable life events. This is because your unhappiness reflects in your aura. Or more precisely, all your actions, your words, the tonality of your voice, the gaze of your eyes, your facial expressions, the tension of your muscles, your bodily movements, and all your conscious and unconscious choices shift when you’re in an unhappy state of being.

The friend you talk to feels insulted, you stumble over that tile on the road hurting your big toe, get surprised by rain, lose your keys, and miss that all-important business call. Has the world turned against you? No. It simply mirrors your state of being.

How to cope with that? Can you free yourself from unhappiness? How do you get back to a happy state of being? Take the advice of the Angel of Ubud.

The Angel of Ubud

Near the center of Ubud, a small town in Bali, there is a place called 9 Angels & 9 Bambu. An outside kitchen place illuminated by warm light bulbs and bathed in smooth vibrations from a YouTube movie soundtrack playlist. When I dropped through the gate to seek shelter from the heavy rain under the small roof, the man running the place offered me a cup of ginger tea. A man presumably in his 50s and with a heart-opening sense of humor, totally at ease with himself and the present moment.

“How much is the tea?”
“Nothing, it’s just tea.”

Later that day I came back to have dinner, I sat at the kitchen counter and we got into a lengthy conversation. He was preparing different kinds of dishes. Cooking he learned from his mother. A French guy sat down next to me and confirmed that the man once cooked a traditional French dish for him that tasted exactly like the one his grandma would cook. The abundance of food and the laughter of good company spread blissful happiness among us.

“It’s sad that so many people are unhappy.”

Some time passed in silence before I asked:

“So why is it that people are unhappy?”

The man contemplated for a while, his eyes gazing into the distance.

“People choose to be unhappy.”
“So people could just choose happiness?”
“Yes. It’s like a switch. On. Off. Happy. Unhappy. Happy. Unhappy.”

He laughs. The feasting and joking continued for a while before it got late and it was time to leave.

“What do I owe you for the food?”
“Uhm, I don’t know.”

There is no menu. You serve yourself from the buffet or simply ask the man what you’d like to eat. At times he gives his guests a raw egg or some veggies and tells them to just cook it for themselves. He’s got two glass bottles hanging from the roof in which you can stuff Rupiah bills. You pay what you think.

The Switch

Is it easy to flip that switch of happiness? That depends on you. Switch-flipping is a skill. As with every skill it becomes easy once you’ve mastered it. First off it’s one one these hidden switches that integrate seamlessly into the wall of your living room. And once you found it it doesn’t make itself clear on how the mechanics work.

Wise words, but what does that mean? How do you do it? How do you effectively flip the switch? Here’s my take on it.

Finding Your Switch

To find your own switch of happiness you need to recognize the underlying processes that are at work. Happiness is a feeling that arises when the majority of your current needs and desires are met and fulfilled. Likewise, you feel unhappy when the majority of these needs and desires remain unfulfilled.

Unfortunately, your mind does not make a proper full assessment of all your needs and desires at any given moment. Through own or external conditioning your mind is trained to bring certain needs into awareness while others remain obscure.

The current need for food, sleep, and validation for example may be apparent, while the current need for air, sunlight, and water may not. So if your need for food and sleep is unfulfilled in a given moment you will feel unhappy, even if your need for validation, air, sunlight, and water is indeed fulfilled.

Since awareness is a sole matter of choice and practice, happiness is nothing more than an indicator of your level of content with the attributes of the present moment.

Step 1
Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths to connect with your body, and recognize all the needs and desires that are currently unfulfilled. Don’t judge, just recognize.

Step 2
Now start to recognize the needs and desires that are fulfilled in the given moment. In the beginning, this might be a difficult task. Don’t get frustrated if nothing comes up immediately. Start off thinking about simple needs that are usually being taken for granted like water, food, air, shelter, company, and the like. Imagine it as two sides of a coin. Or a balance sheet if you’re familiar with accounting. The objective here is to balance out your awareness both for fulfilled and unfulfilled needs and desires.

Step 3
When you feel complete with your assessment you’ve found your switch. It represents the edge of the coin, the separator of the balance sheet. It is the awareness of all the needs and desires that are currently fulfilled and unfulfilled

Flip Your Switch

Flipping the switch of happiness represents the ability to choose which needs and desires you want to focus on and to assign significance to. Usually, your previous state of unhappiness has left its marks in the form of stress and tension. To effectively flip the switch it helps tremendously to release that accumulated tension first.

Step 1
Your eyes are still closed. You wander with your focus through your body. Start with the head, move down the neck, the left arm, the right arm, your front and your back, down the left leg, and the right leg. Identify the parts of your body that are tense and contracted.

Step 2
One by one actively soften, relax, and release the centers of tension you have identified. Use your breath. Breathe in and with every time you breathe out you send your breath through the points of tension. This is to neutralize your bodily experience.

Step 3
Once the tension has eased off or even resolved, flip the switch by opening your eyes and consciously deciding to perceive the fulfilled needs and desires as equally or more important than the unfulfilled ones.

Learn to flip your switch. Tools like the Gratitude Journal (see below) or meditation practices can help you tremendously to level up your switch-flipping skill. By doing so you create a positive impact in the world. Since your existence represents an external stimulus for the people around you, it will support others to find and flip their own switches. And happiness becomes a choice.

The more proficient you become in this practice, you’ll eventually acquire the ability to flip other people’s switches. Stay humble though. With great power comes great responsibility.

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