1000 Words On: Okay-ness (the new happiness?)
The balance, the equanimity, comes from self-awareness enough to regulate the three aspect of our inner life, and self-acceptance enough to keep from getting in our own way with too much judgment or low self-worth. Okay-ness is the result.
Douglas Holwerda
“How are you?” asks my friend. “I am okay”, I answer. “Only, okay?” she says. “Perfectly, okay”, I say with a smile. Perfect okay-ness is a state of equanimity. It is not an emotional state, but rather an internal condition that represents the balancing of our emotions, the ordering of our thoughts and the experiencing of physical sensations. Okay-ness includes all of what we feel, both desirable and painful. It includes the degree to which we are conflicted, confused or content with our thoughts, as well as the range of pleasures and pains our body holds. Perfect Okay-ness accepts all of our inner life, while finding the stability to rest, to be relaxed.
It is not unusual to measure life according to “happiness”. It is what we wish for people for birthdays, New Years, and at weddings and births. It is nice to wish happiness for others. We may even pursue it ourselves, believing that the right job, the right house, the right amount of money, the right clothes, cars, looks or friends will add up to a “happy” life. It’s not bad as a fantasy, but when we become more realistic about how life is, we might give “happiness” it’s proper place in the collection of internal experiences that include the challenges of pain and suffering as well. Is okay-ness is the new happiness …a more realistic version? Will there be a day when we say to someone…”I wish you have an okay Birthday!”?
If we are willing to consider trading in happiness for okay-ness as a realistic aspiration, it might help to understand what is within the realm of our control. Let’s start with the concept of balancing, the action of attaining equanimity, three aspects of our inner life …emotions, thoughts and our bodies. Each of these is a source of information that tell us something about the ways we are experiencing life. Together they create a composite. They influence each other, particularly when one or more is unregulated.
We are emotionally congruent when the intensity of the emotion matches the circumstances that influence them. For example: we feel degrees of fear depending upon how we perceive a danger or a threat or we feel degrees of anger depending upon how we perceive something as not fair or not right. It is when the emotions become intense as a result of past experiences (i.e. fearing dogs from having been previously bitten), or interpretations that come from distorted thinking (all dogs are unsafe), that they are unregulated. This is when our balance is in jeopardy. Intense, unregulated emotions dominate our thinking and result in a loss of accurate perspective. When we are regulated, we accept everything we feel because it is accurate and useful.
Thoughts can also take us off-balance. We can attach ourselves to beliefs that clash with choices we are making. This creates cognitive dissonance, where we rationalize our actions rather than changing our beliefs or our behavior. Fixed beliefs make it difficult to integrate new information as we experience life. They narrow our version of the truth into channels of either/or thinking, usually right and wrong or good and bad. Cognitive distortions can come from the underpinnings of low self-worth, a belief that we do not deserve an okay life. The inner world of our thoughts can be a messy place, particularly if they are fueled by shame, guilt, anxiety, fear, anger below the level of our immediate awareness.
Our bodies are sources of information that connect directly to what is going on with our emotions and thoughts. Our nervous systems and our brain functions represent the influences of our emotions, especially when they are intense, as well as our thoughts and beliefs. Our posture is a direct reflection of how we regard ourself, and the degrees of our insecurities. Our physical wellbeing comes from the value we place on ourselves, the ways in which we take care of ourselves.
Regulation of each of these three systems comes from self-awareness and self-acceptance. Knowing ourselves is the ability to pay attention to our inner life as we go through the process of living. We can be in touch with what we are feeling. We can recognize when our beliefs become too fixed or when an emotion is influencing our thoughts too intensely. We can recognize what our body is telling us about our emotional state, when we are feeling stressed or how different we think and feel when we are relaxed. We do not choose the emotions or thoughts or sensations we have, but within the power of our control, is our ability and responsibility to regulate ourselves.
Self-acceptance keeps us from getting caught in the traps of self-judgment. Self-awareness tells us what our inner life is experiencing. Self-acceptance keeps us from expectations that we should be someone different. Self-acceptance gives us the freedom accept what is true in the present, to learn from life as we live it, and to have permission to discover our whole true self as we go about the process of living.
The balance, the equanimity, comes from self-awareness enough to regulate the three aspect of our inner life, and self-acceptance enough to keep from getting in our own way with too much judgment or low self-worth. Okay-ness is the result.
When I am perfectly okay, I am free, unburdened by unnecessary limitations. Okay-ness means I am empowered to represent myself, honestly, openly, accurately, often spontaneously. Rather than needing to push past the filters of self-limitation, caught in my own inner life, I am able to live a life that reflects what I value, asserts my will in the direction of what matters to me. Okay-ness does not put me above or below anyone, but rather helps me to see my place in it all. It helps me to accept the world around me much like I have learned to accept my own inner life. It is what is.
“Only, Okay?” “Perfectly, Okay”, I say.
