Beyond Emotional Intelligence

8Happiness Is a State of Mind

Happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.

—Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Do you see yourself as being at the helm of how you respond to your mental states and emotions? Do you feel better equipped with strategies to recognize unconducive states of mind and to work with them using any number of strategies we've explored up to this point? As we shift into learning how to spot and work with our own mental models, let's take a closer look at what's operative at the level of what we believe about our mind, our habits, and our ability to transform each.

Breaking Free from Behavioral Inertia

In the same way awareness is a prerequisite for us to do anything consciously, our ability to take actions that create the optimal conditions for shifting our behavior are critical to our ability to bring about meaningful changes to our habits of mind. We've learned from Newton's first law of physics that all things remain inert, at rest, or in uniform motion (in a straight line) unless compelled to change their state. Newton's law goes on to say that only by the action of an external force can the state of inertia be broken or compelled toward a different trajectory of movement. But Newton had objects as his focus and not the mind, human behavior, or habit change. So what does inertia look like when it comes to human behavior? We could describe the human equivalent ...