It is ok to be sad in order to be happy !!

 

These days when I am on internet, especially Facebook, I see a lot of articles on how and why you should not be sad. Most of them a cajoled in beautiful memes or written with inspiring stories. They are beautiful to read and also give you momentary high.

What I have observed is that it also puts pressure on you to be not sad. You start feeling like it is some kind of a crime to not feel happy all the time. Over the time the pressure builds up and you become immune to these messages and you start feeling like you are not living your life correctly at all. This ends up making you sadder.

In the beginning, I was addicted to these messages. I would dig them out just to make myself feel better. But the feeling would last for some time and then I would be back to my normal feeling (which wasn’t sad). One day on a walk in the evening it dawn to me that I was putting too much pressure on myself on not have sad thoughts. That pressure just took the fun away from living and in turn added more sad thoughts.

What I have learned from my journey to happiness is that it is ok to feel sad. What is not ok is to be in that state for long time. We are humans and it is normal to experience plethora of feelings and emotions. We are all going to feel sad some time or the other and most probably few times during the day. Feeling sad means that things around you are not going according to your expectations. It is nothing more than that or nothing less. Like any other feeling, it comes and goes. So instead of avoiding it, we need to learn to deal with it.

So what should I do? Tell yourself that it is ok to have sad moments during the day. They are nothing but the difference between your expectation and surrounding at the moment. Like any other moment, it will pass as well. Recognize that it is a momentary thing and not a lifelong sequence. Understanding these things will help you deal with the moment of sadness. Once you start dealing with these moments, they will start fading away and slowly you will start experiencing less moments of sadness. But it all begins with you being ok with feeling sad….counter intuitive, I know.