Staying Happy at the Cost of Sanity

Once Upon a Time..

Once upon a time, there was a dad. He had a pretty typical dad life, his kids went to school and daycare, he and his wife went to work, at the end of the day everyone came home, had a laughs, dinner, bath time, bed time for the kids, Netflix and chill for the adults, but the married kind, where the show plays in the background while you get to the dirty . Like discussing you've permanently ruined your children with the sheer volume of chicken nuggets in their diet, how to optimally load a dishwasher and, if you're feeling real wild, projecting a budget for new base-boards. a pretty sweet gig.

Then, one day, there was a pandemic. And the dad was home with his wife and kids all day. Every day. Oh, and they had to find a way to work and take care of their kids because everything was closed. And, because everything was closed, the kids couldn't go anywhere but the backyard, and it made them stir-crazy. everyone was together, all the time, being grumpy. The end.

, so not the END. But you get it. about every household in the nation is wired to at any moment, regardless of the "quarantine fun!" posts on Instagram (I'm looking at you Susan). It's like an endless summer, except the kids can't play with anyone but their siblings and all the good, married-folk concerts got . As the one-and- Buff Monk, I decided I'd rise above it. I'd change my perception, focus on the positive and look down from my lofty perch at all the peasants struggling to bribe a smile out of a stir-crazy elementary so everyone knows they are totally enjoying their time spent together as a family.

It worked (, I'm the Buff Monk, of course it worked). I was serene in the chaos. The calm, neutral charge in a storm of negative ions. I was using my excess energy to forge a body sculpted out of not granite, but granite from a peaceful that caresses the water that cascades over its edge and guides it into a shallow pool of positive intentions. I did to the ambiance music that's a little too "obvious" for a yoga class.

meditated three times a day to clear the negativity that swirled in and out of my totally-not-stressed mind was so happy. so much happier than everyone else. When my kids threw tantrums, I reminded them that they were in control of their reality, and you know what? My three-year-old totally grasped that concept. We breathed together and maintained an emotionally neutral environment that gave room for creativity and fun to blossom.

Except, There's Just This One Thing

Dad lost his ' mind. That's what happened. You see, I'm a bit of a digital polymath; my work is either from a phone or a computer in a different industries. All those industries were reliant on one, simple thing: sales. Whether fitness, mindset, advertising or brand strategy, my income basically hinged on my ability to show the value of a concept and then trade resources for it. To support my family, I had to sell at a time when 60% of the country was out of work. And my family was in my office. And my meetings started to conflict with lunchtime. nap time. the all-new elementary-school-by-webinar.

I was a walking ball of panic who now, apparently, binged Netflix Kids shows all afternoon because actual family activities led to the conflict I didn't have the emotional fortitude to handle. I had to hold back tears watching Onward. And then got choked up during : Into the . And then welled up during Yugi-Oh! At first, I thought the writing was impressively layered, so it could resonate with kids and parents simultaneously. But, watching lose his blue-eyes white dragon card from his grandfather's deck and vow to avenge his grandfather with honor hit me so , so deeply, that I knew, somewhere along the line, I had snapped.

, I did the most predictable thing. I binged on homemade Chinese food (oh, I should drop those recipes next, they were bomb) and deeply considered all the flaws that make me who I am. Then I ate some more Chinese food (, I made this Garlic-Honey Chicken with quarantine groceries and so good) because, of course, breaking myself down to my most fundamentally flawed building blocks wasn't super productive. Then I sat and meditated, I mean meditated, and this quote I had heard kept swimming in and out of my thoughts:

Many people are waiting for the storm to pass so that they can sail on calm waters. They do not stop to consider that while they are indeed the ship, they may also be the storm.

After a attempts to let the thought pass, I realized why it kept coming up. me, all me. I was creating my own storm and waiting for it to I could be happy again. Then, for the first time in what felt like years but was, in reality, a couple of weeks, I felt peaceful. Actual peaceful, not ambiance-music-while-I-pretend-I-can't--my-kids-fighting peaceful. I felt peaceful because I realized that the thing keeping me from being happy, was my to be happy. I was taking a happy piece from the "normal life" puzzle and trying to jam it into the "Life by COVID-19: Social Distancing Edition" puzzle.

had taken a concept as deep as happiness and scraped the most superficial layer, like the teenage servers at an ice cream parlor (you know what you did). We all know "happiness is cultivated internally." Or at least we know that people like myself will say that when your external environment puts you in a sour mood that affects my life. Like Marcus Aurelius said,

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

Easy , be happy no matter what because you can't change what's happening IRL.

When Life Gave Me Lemons, Stoicism Made Me Cry About It

Except, that strategy made me cry during a movie because I had become so emotionally imbalanced from shutting off the world and my emotional response to it. I couldn't accept that my perception of the outside events that kept me from feeling the happiness and motivation I felt weeks before. I couldn't play Sorry! noon and pretend I wasn't feeling stressed about my monumental lack of productivity and sudden financial insecurity. I was tempted, for a moment, to change my perception of "happiness;" to lower the bar, so being less happy was acceptable. Mildy-depressed happy. It worked when I was a teenager listening to The Used scream about being a fake, it can work as a grown up? Then I remembered I threw away my studded belt for a reason, I didn't like that version of me a either.

Then I thought about the storm, I knew I was causing the storm, but what was the storm I was causing? How could I stop myself from swirling into a self-destructive cyclone and be more available to my family and, , to myself? That's when it hit me. It wasn't the storm that was the problem, my inability to accept the storm.

Expecting that any day now, the shut-down will be lifted, we'll be able to go places and do and buy steak on sale was making me miserable. At the same time, trying to sail in a storm the way I'd on calm waters was bringing more water onboard than I could bail on my own, tearing my sails to shreds and bringing my metaphorical ship dangerously close to being dashed against the jagged rocks of a desperate reality check.

Understanding that concept is a necessity to be happy without bending with the breezes of fortune, in whichever direction they happen to blow. What I've learned during the shut down, though, is that walking the principle of that particular talk can't be a product of denial. Sure, superficially, beneficial to discard the thoughts and emotions that "don't serve you" and cultivate the happy, loving vibes that feel all warm and fuzzy. And with some perspective work, you can try to rearrange some not-so-warm-and-fuzzy vibes into warmer and fuzzier vibes.

"I'm stuck in a house with small children for the next 6 hours" can be transformed into the warmer, fuzzier: "I get to spend time with my children and no one else for the next 6 hours." And if that's where this ended, how would "STFU" flash through your mind? Yeah, because we both know that sentence means the same thing: small children, 6 hours, limited entertainment resources.

I'm not going to list the "Top 10 Home Activities for Kids Under 10" or break down how getting laid off is actually a positive thing if you think about it. That is, in my humble opinion, some new age mumbo-jumbo that will, at best, make you crazy. Can we go back to the storm and ship metaphor? Metaphors make it easier for me to organize my thoughts.

Putting Your Storm-Face On

If you're sailing in a storm, ignoring the storm is a bad idea, agreed? You have to sail differently, we've basically covered this, but let's go a bit more in depth. Trying to re-frame and discard negative emotions is the same as trying to stop any water from getting in your ship. The rain is pouring, the wind is blowing and the waves are towering: there's going to be water in the ship. If you choose to ignore the water and put on your "happy face," you will drown. If you sit in the water and let it pool, you will drown. You have to acknowledge the water and accept that not conducive to your survival before you can bail it, bucket by bucket.

Whether you have kids at home during the shut down, got laid off, had your place of work closed by mandate, are working more than ever or are feeling isolated and , ignoring the convoy of emotions that escort those events into your reality doesn't serve you any more than the emotions themselves. Neither does sitting in them as they collect and pool until you can't breathe. Peace and freedom come from giving yourself permission to sail through a storm with your storm-face on.

"It's like a finger pointing at the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all of the heavenly glory." - Bruce Lee

You don't have to "find the good" in what is an inherently difficult scenario. You don't have to give yourself over to the spiral of negativity either. Identifying with emotion renders you helpless, a victim. It absorbs your attention and you act on its will, both in fighting it and feeding into it. Trying to fight and stamp down an emotion that you don't want to feel draws your energy and focus to it and makes it all but impossible to experience the little gems hidden within your reality- that is to say, reality without the lens of fighting to an state of being.

Energy is Energy.. is Energy

Remember that emotion, positive or negative, is a form of energy, like physical energy. I know it sounds hippy-dippy, but hear me out. Replace "man, I'm stressed out" with "man, I have a lot of stressful energy" and see how begin to widen. When someone has too much physical energy, most people will exercise to get it out, to let it run its course. When people have too much energy before bedtime, they'll read a book or watch some TV to let the energy run its course and dwindle. There's no personal identification with the energy, it's merely something that is happening that can be with in different ways without fierce mental and emotional combat.

The same is true with emotional energy when instead of identifying with it, you step back into the role of the observer. Once you've acknowledged the energy's presence, you can choose to let it run its course without operating out of it. like you can choose to act spastic or not with too much physical energy (thanks for the memories, Bang!), you can choose to let emotional energy to run its course and dwindle without drawing from it to guide your thoughts and actions.

Look, it's not magic. True efficacy takes work, there's no quick-fix. But you can find a surprising amount of relief in letting yourself feel anxiety without judging yourself for it. Acknowledge that it exists and that nothing fundamentally wrong with you, as a parent or otherwise, for having anxious energy when are uncertain. The same rings true for feeling sad, angry, irritable or any other emotion stemming from this storm of unprecedented uncertainty and broad sweeping negativity.

"Bravery is not the absence of fear, but the action in the face of fear." Mark Messier

Happiness, the real, internally cultivated and deeply resonant joy pointed to by Stoics and the great thinkers like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Queen Poppy, isn't a matter of will power, but of courage. Allowing your internal reality to hinge on a precariously balanced tower of external preferences is as easy to do as to collapse. Happiness isn't a denial or "re-framing" of the present either. It's presence. And sometimes, you have to be brave to be present. You can choose to have that energy without operating out of it. You can choose to exist in a stressful environment without stress owning your thought patterns and resultant actions. can choose to have the courage to look yourself in the eye and say "yep, I have anxious energy right now, and it's not awesome. But I still am."

At least, that's what worked for me. I'm still not getting as much work done as I should. I still have anxiety about my lack of productivity as I set up a HotWheels track in the middle of a Thursday afternoon and how that could impact our standard of living this year. And that's OK, that energy can be there because, , it should be. But, like I can slam two Red Bulls and resist the urge to go buy a time-share, I can have that anxious energy without missing all the beautiful little that are happening here, right now.