The holidays are here or soon coming, and coming for some will be the holiday blues. Below is a Grasshopper message about unhappiness from Christmas Past. I hope you take the time to get a feel for it.

Speaking from personal as well as professional experience, we wage a war against unhappiness and lose every battle.

The problem is the declaration of war. It would be much more healthy and productive if we learned to peacefully co-exist with unhappiness. It’s like dog poop; it’s everywhere and it will always be around.

Reminds me of a story . . . about 20 years ago I took training in the martial art of Aikido. After being instructed in the basic movements, holds and falls, the most counter-intuitive thing to learn was to step into an attack. Every natural instinct seems to want us to move back and away from our attacker. The objective is to move in smaller circles than your attacker. When you enter their larger circle with a smaller one, you control where the action flows. It’s a simple principle to understand but harder to put into action due to our conditioning.

Our conditioning is to traditionally fight with unhappiness. We have plenty of help. Our entire advertising culture preys upon the conditioning that there is something wrong with being unhappy and offers us a quick fix. The medical and psychological community follows suit with prescriptions and remedies to chase away the blues.

Unhappy does not feel good and who in their right mind would want it to hang around?

We would be better served as human beings to let unhappiness have a time share unit within us. When it shows up, treat it with respect and spend time with it. It is a powerful emotion that can be a driving force to what’s next. But you have to let it take a seat and be with it in order to benefit by the energy it brings.

If you fight it, you are negating its energy field and you never get the upside from the downside. That’s because you are taking sides and making unhappiness be your enemy. Unhappiness is relentless and will keep battering the castle door until it gets in.

Fighting with unhappiness is more destructive and painful than letting it in. You make unhappiness an enemy by resisting it. “Make Unhappiness your Friend” is a book title that probably wouldn’t sell and a practice that wouldn’t catch on, but making it an acquaintance delivers benefits.

When you accept the unhappiness within, you give it free reign to roam around your body where it eventually tires out and takes a rest. If you keep resisting it in your mind, it will tire you out with countless weary battles.

There is something on the other side of unhappiness but you’ll never get there unless you allow it to naturally move through you.

Again, like Aikido, this is counter-intuitive and highly effective. It takes practice and the rewards of peace outweigh the spoils of war.

All the best,

John