What Aristotle says about happiness.

It is a sad reality that we all have problems. I am sure this is not news to you.

Some of those problems are physical and we must treat them with a bandage or with a change in our diet. Other times, the cause is much more difficult to trace… there is no blood leading back to a wound. Instead, we feel its effects throughout our lives and search blindly for solutions. We feel around in the dark for a way back to our best life.

My desire as a healthcare professional has always been to help my clients live their best lives physically so that they can excel in all other areas as well. I enjoy watching people regain their freedom! Their energy! Their joy!

And I did not always feel that their problem was physical.

Early on in my career I saw that happy people were healthier in their minds and bodies. This made me curious – what is the relationship between health and happiness? Are they happy because their bodies are whole or are their bodies whole because they are happy? I wanted to ask questions and understand so that I could pass on this insight to all my clients.

But it did not take long for me to become discouraged with the medical system. I saw it was expected of me to treat my patients by giving them a label and a pill even if I wondered that there might be more to the problem.

Then, my mentor showed me something incredible…

She was a brilliant woman – a brilliant psychiatrist. As a young doctor I was fascinated by the way that she practiced. So when one of my patients came to me with a major problem, I asked my mentor for help…

My patient told me she had lost her energy, her interest in life was gone – she felt listless and honestly did not care if she was living anymore. She was not at risk for ending her life, but all of her joy was gone. And she wanted to medicate herself.

My mentor had a theory.

They said to me,

“We will help her regain her happiness with this pill.”

I was confused. I had never heard of a happiness pill before – and word of something like that gets around! But she told me if I would watch and pay attention, I would see her happiness return.

My patient came in one week later and revealed that she had had the best week in a long time. She felt herself coming alive! She reconnected with her friends, she felt invested in her job, and she was drawn back into her hobbies. She asked for a full prescription of my mentor’s medication.

But it was only a sugar pill.

My client was experiencing one of the more difficult kinds of problems. She had become overwhelmed by stress, letting it build and build. Our stress triggers our fight, flight, or freeze response; this causes our hearts to race, our blood pressure to rise, and our immune system to fail.

The more we trigger our stress response, the more awful we feel… the more we retreat from life… making things so much worse.

My mentor could see that my patient had lost her happiness. But beyond that, my mentor could see that my patient was withdrawn; she was disconnected and disjointed; she was stressed and anxious and she had to rediscover her joy – on her own.

Aristotle said it best:

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”

So today I ask my clients this question: “What makes you happy?” They take the chance to stop and assess if they have been making room for those things – if they have been letting stress take over those things – if their perspective allows them to be happy. 

So I will ask you, too: what makes you happy? Do you make room for happiness with your thoughts? Are you overwhelmed with stress or are you allowing yourself to be happy?

Consider yourself this week and make room accordingly 🙂

Make today your masterpiece!

Florina