The Principle of Positive Feedback , or, Don’t Worry, Be Happy!


OK, in my post about the Meaning of Life, I said that the idea was to =make things happen= in your life. Make it a good story.

Next question: What Sorts of Things Should I Make Happen?

Simple answer: Things that make you feel good.

Why? What? Huh?

When I told a friend about this a while back, he said, chuckling, “uh… NOT! That’s a bad thing, you don’t want to go there man.” This friend was a nice friendly happy fellow at a positive place in his life and has continued to do well (by his own estimation, which is the only one that matters, though I agree).

What he was talking about was, he really would have liked to have been doing cocaine all the time, which he had at one point in his life, but now he thought it was better that he didn’t.

That’s OK, man! See, the point it, you do what feels good to you at wherever you are in the space time continuum. Sometimes it is good (for him, I don’t dig it myself) to do a lot of coke, and sometimes it is better to stop doing what FORMERLY was great for you, and MOVE ON TO OTHER THINGS.

Remember the Meaning of Life, doing the same thing forever makes a bad story, it is anti-narrative, it is life-negative.

This is because things change, we change, and what makes us happiest in the widest sense of the word, however you grasp it at the time, changes.

Let me repeat that, because this is the core of the whole thing: However YOU grasp it at the time.

It is all about what each individual person feels makes THEMSELVES happiest. Not me telling you, not you telling me, but each of us deciding in each moment what makes us happiest within the context of our lives as we grasp it.

I am very happy right now, but it is not so useful for me to tell you what particular actions to take to be happy, because, last time I checked, YOU ARE NOT ME. I’m happy to hang out and tell you my story, and to hear your story, and get inspired or awed or disgusted (but I’ll try to avoid that, I promise) or whatever, but we are different people and I cannot tell you how to live your life.

Now, it is true that I will decide who to spend time with and how to act around them based on whether being around whichever people acting whatever way makes ME happy or not, and I expect everyone else to do the same, and so in this way we can give everyone else feedback on their behavior, and they can try to change it if they think that it is really worth it to them so that they can hang out with me (bad example) or achieve some goal that they suspect might make them happier than they are now (good example).

OK, with me so far? That last bit was important, too. Let me summarize.

1) Ask yourself if you are happy.
2) If you are happy in the widest sense that you care to contemplate at that moment, then keep doing what you’re doing.
3) If you suspect you might be HAPPIER if you did something different, TRY DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
4) After you have tried doing something different, go back to step one. ASK YOURSELF IF YOU ARE HAPPY. If you aren’t, try something else, or try again with what you did, maybe you will do it better next time, or whatever. Just keep going.

I call this, as you may have guessed, the process of positive feedback.

Why does this work?

Very simple. We all have within us a very good sense of whether we are happy or not. It’s standard equipment. It might get a little rusty, but start using it and it will perk up and be as good as new. In fact, it gets better the more you use it. You have your own personal inbuilt guidance system that tells you everything you need to know to live the best possible life you can. Yay!

We do NOT have inbuilt guidance systems that evaluate whether we are being good citizens, serving God, being a good person, being patriotic, or whatever, so we are subject to doubts, excessive outside influence and all sorts of destabilizing and non-happiness making phenomena when we pursue such goals.

If is OK to purse such goals within the greater context of being happy, but please, keep them within that context. It is OK with me if you want to dedicate your life to serving God, or fighting the evil empire, or whatever, as long as you ask yourself every once in a while if it is making you happy, and if it isn’t, just my humble suggestion, please try something different. I can’t guarantee that you will serve God better, but I think it very likely that you will become happier, and you know, I think happy people are better citizens, the evil empire is best defeated by people becoming happier, and God wants you to be happy, really.

That’s the end, mostly. You can stop here if you like :-)

So you see, this is the brilliance, and the nuts and bolts of why they work, of systems like The Secret and Esther Hicks/The Teachings of Abraham.

They are quite explicit in saying that you need to use your own internal guidance system and then make changes in your life, or inside your head, which amounts to the same thing, in order to bring the things that you want to you.

I personally enjoy all the disembodied consciousness mumbo jumbo, but you don’t need all that to make the system work. Because the system is part of your total human package, and all you need to do is START PAYING ATTENTION to how you feel, and DO SOMETHING and then see if it makes you feel BETTER.