Mental health and happiness
Mental health is not happiness itself, but an obligatory prerequisite of happiness. Short experiences of happiness are possible even against the background of mental unhealthiness; lasting happiness is possible only in a mentally healthy person. Happiness is an experience characteristic of people with a high emotional tone.
It is necessary to take into account that many people have quite enough of mental health, and for them the experience of happiness is pleasant, but no more.
Like a man, for example, wants to eat something meat, and cakes are good for him, but rather unnecessary.
Happiness and psychotherapy
People think that problems prevent them from being happy. But if they take away their internal problems, they will be happy. No, restoring mental health and removing blocks of happiness doesn’t guarantee happiness yet. There is a further way ahead, and if it is necessary to go on their own: to adjust their lives, master a positive outlook on life and make a piggy bank of keys to happiness.
How to move towards the ability to be happy?
First, determine your level on the Emotional Tone Scale.
Emotional Tone – Low.
You cannot move yourself from serious minus to sharp plus, it causes protest, dissonance and breakdowns. The preliminary task is to move oneself from minus to neutral, and only after mastering neutral as a base, to move oneself towards positive.
If your state is predominantly at the level World is hostile, much less World is fearful, your happiness is not close. In this state you should not seek happiness, but to put yourself in order, to correct your mental health. Maybe you can cope with yourself, maybe you will need psychotherapeutic help. Set a goal: to move yourself to the level of Peace is ordinary. Again, this should be your goal, and it’s not always a quick fix.
Emotional tone is high.
If your condition is at or above the level of World Ordinary (World Good or World Beautiful), you have normal mental health. Be careful: in this situation, setting a goal of “Achieving Happiness” would no longer be right, it gives the suggestion “I’m not happy” and already moves you away from the goal. You can set a goal to be attentive to happiness, to remember to include it, to support it, to create a base for it.
For the mentally healthy person with a high emotional tone, it’s more right:
- To turn on happiness in the morning is as natural as washing your face in the morning.
- Use the strategy of “Happiness is not a difficult goal, but a habitual lifestyle and natural way of going.” See Happiness as a Lifestyle.
- Set higher goals for yourself, where happiness is a necessary condition for achieving them.