Ah. Glad to hear I over-interpreted. Would rather err on the side of empathy than not.
Context can most certainly influence my happiness. There's still at least one step between context & its influence, though. You just named it: interpretation.
The trick is changing the thought pattern for interpretation. I changed mine on New Year's Eve & it's made all the difference. Here's my take...
Every moment is meeting some set of needs of mine. In the shittiest of moments, the potential needs being met, regardless of my awareness of them, are:
- learning how to better meet my needs and/or how to better empathize with those going through similar shit
- gratitude for either of those needs being met
- gratitude for the opportunity to learn how to better meet my needs
That last one is the default. I can always meet my need for gratitude. And gratitude produces joy, meeting a second need.
I avoid having a single point of failure in my system through also defining a purpose for my life to tie each moment to. There's other bits to it, but these are the most relevant ones here.
Context can most certainly influence my happiness. There's still at least one step between context & its influence, though. You just named it: interpretation.
The trick is changing the thought pattern for interpretation. I changed mine on New Year's Eve & it's made all the difference. Here's my take...
Every moment is meeting some set of needs of mine. In the shittiest of moments, the potential needs being met, regardless of my awareness of them, are:
- learning how to better meet my needs and/or how to better empathize with those going through similar shit - gratitude for either of those needs being met - gratitude for the opportunity to learn how to better meet my needs
That last one is the default. I can always meet my need for gratitude. And gratitude produces joy, meeting a second need.
I avoid having a single point of failure in my system through also defining a purpose for my life to tie each moment to. There's other bits to it, but these are the most relevant ones here.
When I say needs, I'm referring to needs/wants, as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs
This is also a handy list: https://www.cnvc.org/Training/needs-inventory