What is preventing you from feeling happy

What is preventing you from feeling happy? 

Happiness is a natural state but it is being covered by negative feelings. What is causing these negative feelings?

Feelings are the body's reaction to thoughts.

So if you are feeling bad, it is because you are thinking negative thoughts. Sometimes we are not aware of the thoughts but only aware of the feelings because the thoughts are very fast. But the feelings linger on. 

To remove the unhappy feelings, we need to identify the thoughts that produce them. And once we have identified the negative thoughts, we need to change them. Changing thoughts may not be so easy if we do not know how to do it.

To change thoughts, we need to look deeper...

What is causing those negative thoughts? The clue is the picture above - of a man being chained to a peg on the ground. Can you guess the message in the picture?

Let me explain...

The chain is the thought. The chain binds you to the peg on the ground and prevents you from getting liberation (happiness). Can you guess what the peg stands for? What are thoughts chained to?

The answer is...

BELIEFS

Your thoughts are chained to your beliefs. If you want to be free, you need to remove the pegs from the ground, that binds you by the chain.  It is difficult to break the chain - just like it is difficult to stop negative thoughts from arising. But if you look for the source of the negative thoughts, it becomes easier.

Just drop the beliefs.

Whenever there is a negative thought, there is an underlying belief that has caused the negative thought to arise.

Next time you are unhappy, ask yourself, what am I believing in that is causing me to feel bad?

Once you identify the belief - ask yourself: Can I drop this belief? What would I feel if I did not believe this thought. Belief is also a thought.

If you find it hard to drop the belief. Ask the next question. Would I rather hold on to this belief and continue to suffer, or would I rather drop it and be free? Which feels better?