Jealousy
|
| | Jealousy is a powerful emotion, capable of distorting your view of the target person. Maybe you are jealous because they always seem to be lucky, or have a bigger and better house.
|
| | Before your immerse yourself in self-pity or frustration, ask yourself if you would swap your life for theirs. A total swap - not just the bits you like. I have done this on many occasions and have yet wanted to do a complete swap. This has suitably tempered my jealousy.
|
Hanging onto emotions
|
| | Hanging onto emotions is something that is quite possibly genetic. That debilitating habit where some ill-feeling lingers in your head for hours or days.
|
| | At the other extreme are those persons that swiftly flare up, exploding seemingly disproportionately to a situation, but for whom, minutes later, all is forgotten. The explosiveness seemingly releasing all ill feeling in one fell swoop.
|
| | One of the difficulties in relationships is of course where one of a couple holds onto emotions and the other doesn't. They will frequently not understand each other, and it is easy to see why.
|
| | As is often the case, there are pros and cons for each type. The hot tempered person is likely to be the healthier, spending far less time embroiled in an emotional state, but the lingerer is likely to be the easier one to live with, since their actions are less extreme.
|
Pleasure
|
| | We actively seek pleasure most days, and often feel that pleasure is the key to life. Sometimes even the process of seeking pleasure can create the converse, especially when we create expectations of pleasure. For example when we go to see a film, we can become less than happy if our high expectations of the film are not fulfilled.
|
| | But pleasure is often confused with happiness. Remember when you were last very happy. It is often when you feel good about yourself. Pleasure doesn't necessarily do that. (Indeed, some pleasures can make you feel guilty). Sometimes, I feel happiest when I have cleared a backlog of tasks that I had been deferring for ages - I feel good about myself rather than having received pleasure from these mundane tasks.
|
| | The fundamental difference between true happiness and pleasure is that the former is more enduring, and the latter is more transient. The pleasure of eating a bar of chocolate is short lived, and doesn't necessarily make you happier. It can lift your mood, but is unlikely to make a significant change to your state of happiness.
|
