Sorry, I’ve been scarce! I’m a little under the weather, but I have a newsletter for tomorrow and I found this…
“…It’s hard to accept flaws when you believe it can all be idyllic. When you realize there are limitations, everywhere, all the time; this allows you to become content with things that are imperfect. This is so important as we get older. Just think about it. Not everyone can have a spokes-model wife (or husband). Or be one! Even if they can, the situation is fleeting.
Happy people come to terms with this. If you are 80% happy with your husband, that’s all that is reasonable to expect…”
I wrote that for a client. Things do break out (over time) to 80/20.
Are you 80% happy 20% not? Or is it the other way around? How perfect do you expect your life to be?
I love this thanks for broaching this subject. I would venture to say I am more like 85 to 90% happy and 10 to 15% unhappy. I just don’t have time to waste on being unhappy to me life is way to short for that.
I can’t speak for my husband but since he had his stroke on the 5th of September 2013 he has been struggling with happiness. I was told once by another stroke victim that once you have had a stroke, you either laugh, cry or are mad 90% of the time. It is looking like my husband is going to be mad at least 70% of the time so far. Those that are angry usually have not come to grips with their new condition.
It’s the other way around. I only expected 50% happy and 50% not. Maybe one shouldn’t have such low expectations.
Yeah, I’m also wondering if my expectatiions are too low. I always imagined 50/50, too. This gives me hope then, if 80/20 is really possible.
In my last relationship I was probably 75% happy, 25% not. My partner said he wanted out because he was 80 to 90% happy with me and he needed the whole 100%. I told him he would never find it, but he said he needed to look anyway. l never told him I was only 75%.
Excellent post Elsa! I am probably 70-80% happy with my husband, depending on the day and how things are going. I think this is wonderful. Yet, I still get hung up sometimes on the part that’s not working. Why is this? I know that I’ve got it good, that my life is good, that he’s overall a great guy. Yet, the parts that don’t work cause me so much pain/frustration, wondering about and there’s really no good reason or benefit from thinking about it. I have resolved to be thankful and happy with what I’ve got, rather than what I haven’t. It really isn’t so bad, so why does my mind keep trying to convince me it is? Either way, I’m staying. Thanks for the great topic Elsa!
I think it’s people people are told they can and should have whatever they want, when they want it…as if this would be good for them?
Why don’t I just sit and eat ice cream all day long? Hey! That’s an idea. 🙂
Thanks for this, Elsa. I had this thought earlier today:
Reading a synastry chart can’t tell me if someone is my ideal mate or not. It can merely tell me what kind of mate she could be in my eyes. It’s a matter of understanding whether or not I would be happy and content with the kind of mate I see.
Not sure anyone should have high expectations of happiness or perfection. The gods might not tolerate.
Again reminded of timeless line from “The Philadelphia Story” — “You’ll never be a first class human being until you’ve learned to have some regard for human frailty.”
As applied to self and others equally.
That I so true
I mean is so true, sorry.
What a sad, sorry way to think!!!
It’s not true!! Wife/husband, life, relationship, family, career it can be 100% happy!!! 24/7 happy!! LOL
Please don’t think 80/20 is reasonable. That’s the biggest lie!! Haha!! It’s funny too.
It’s your opinion or experience about 80/20… Lol what a smart mathmetical way to put things. Clever 🙂 but hopefully most humans have had a better experience.
In my experience it’s been 99.9 happy some days and 195,342 happy the majority of days!!
Not sure about the percentages. But if I have nothing to work for, work towards, what’s the point? Pleasantville? That’s just a movie. I mean I do make time, when possible now that I am doing the 40 hour week work thing, to experience the utter bliss of life. That’s my 100% time. But I have to deal with the physical reality of maintaining my existence too. It’s the balance game. I don’t know about anyone else, but that bliss time, it rocks, but would it be possible to experience without the not-bliss to compare it to?
Well I am older so I understand this, and my life has been so much worse …so
I would say I am 95% all around happy and 5% not? I have all I need. My loved ones are healthy and working. I have work and a roof over my head and love from family and friends.
Today wasn’t great as I was screamed at by a loon…but that’s her cross to bare.
My husband seems honest as far as I know so far over 18 years…who knows, he may change. People do. Then I will be 95% in his backend with a boot…..but I am happy with him. He is a nice person, giving and loyal…a little lazy at home but ….there is my 5% 🙂
But……. I don’t expect perfection out of anyone …I am in no way near perfect so who could I place that kind of pressure on.????
A for real loon. Like the waterfowl loon. That is too funny. If it was a human loon well then I know how that is. I don’t blame the loon either. But if I am in a situation where I have to deal with someone loon I do have to decide how I am going to deal with that for myself. I know I am learning alot with this NN in libra stuff but it is alot of work.
I’m 20% happy and 80% unhappy. But when I compare my life circumstances to others’, I feel selfish, because I have it made. I really do….but I’m not happy. When I compare my life to the majority of others lives, I can see I have it “better” than 80% of people. When I think of “better”, I think: I’m not with someone who treats me bad; He really really tries to be a good person and a good husband; and I’m not poor and I’m not disabled, I’m not without support. I mean, I have it made. But there’s *something* fundamentally wrong with how I *feel* about my life.
“”Happy”” is the neurochemical dopamine circulating in your brain. Let’s keep that in perspective!!
So called ”Happiness” is only meant to be fleeting not lasting…like the first lick of an ice cream cone… heaven at first…. then after 8 licks you forget and your mind wanders.
We are not physically built to be in a state of happiness 80% of the time. The day your cortex takes over your limbic system spells contentedness but it’s also a life’s work.
So the question is: how or when does the cortex kick in?
Identifying when and how happy happens, being aware of it and working to maintain that state, would that work? It might be like a programming of the brain toward that state of being? I am thinking happy or sad takes energy, I like the middle where contentedness is just a steady buzz. That of course, would be running tandem to the day to day stuff I am contending with.
God, if we just lived in the middle all the time, life would be boring as hell. We all want to have something to strive for: a reward. Going after the reward…maintaining that reward. I agree about the ice cream, but what happens if we never tasted a certain kind of ice cream before and we’re tired of the one we’ve got, so we want to throw that one away so we’ve got room for another ice cream? Or what if we got vanilla and we never even liked vanilla; we wanted strawberry all along. Cause we only had a a tiny taste of strawberry before, and we want more strawberry.
We just stick with vanilla, even though if we have to eat it another day we are going to be very very sick?
The brain will never stop trying to
promote your survival. (Period)
The Cortex *CAN* (key word) kick in the instant moment you become aware. That’s your chance…The moment you become aware of the reactive state (that includes the happy state). Our neurochemicals are so powerful,….. MORE powerful then the cortex **unless real effort is made** to curtail the reactive state aka: neurochemicals… (ie: Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphin, Oxytocin) And sometimes the cortex cannot even take over the physical reactive state of the limbic system.
This is what we are all dealing with!!
What happens when Pluto’s got hold of you, and he’s got a gun to your head? He’s telling you, “Go after that ice cream, or I’m gonna shoot you dead.”
Pluto is pure evil…
He don’t care about the cortex.
I sure didn’t mean to say have a boring uneventful life. Like that is possible. There is still the nervous system and excitablity. And inspiration, that’s a good one. I’m not dead. Yet. It is more like acceptance of what is, and dealing with situations head on instead of getting all spasmodic about it and going off the deep end. That’s my take at the moment.
And I will not kill anyone to get my hot fudge sundae. Yum yum.
Oh and if you cave in to the tyrant, there is always saturn’s consequences.
I think I understand now what you are saying. Those trips through hell and back. I don’t know about evil, but it was hard hard hard. There were various reasons for those trips. What doesn’t kill ya, makes ya stronger.
I said evil, but I don’t really mean it like most consider it. I meant it in the way Eve ate from the tree of knowledge. Temptation. Seeking knowledge and experience. Desire.
I think that’s Pluto…our deepest desires. Near impossible to fight them.
I think its a choice. You get to decide. You can decide to be miserable and keep that ball up in the air or understand that it all comes from that thing you think with.
No one is ever going to be happy all the time but you sure can control a lot of it with your noggin!
I think I use to waste time and sabotage myself with my own thoughts. When I decided my thoughts and where they wandered had a great deal to do with it, I made an effort to change.
I am not giggling when I am tired…I work hard and get tired often, but I make a solid effort at understanding for me, it all comes from where I let my head wander
I also believe practicing gratitude really helps. There are people all over the world looking for clean drinking water and they are holding starving children. Most of us have never or will never have to live such a life. How can we all be so damn unhappy?
where the head wanders . . . how true. I did alot of body training in my lifetime, but was always afraid of messing with my brain. It’s not the mind, it’s only the brain. I own it. It’s mine to program as I like. Discipline that darn thing.
Notch (” But if I have nothing to work for, work towards, what’s the point? Pleasantville?”) and Jo (“…like the first lick of an ice cream cone… heaven at first…. then after 8 licks you forget and your mind wanders.”) made great points. In the beginning, a relationship, or a career, is exciting, but eventually when the mundane maintaining routine sets in, some of us have a burning need for a new quest, a new thrill. That doesn’t mean we have to chuck out what we have in search of a replacement — some can channel that drive into creative pursuits or a passionate cause. Artists, inventors, activists, writers, researchers, travelers, etc. often only hit their stride with a secure occupation or supportive partner providing structure and freedom.
…even-keeled is key…
When you go up know that you will come down!!…have goals and projects and things to look forward to…. be creative…but be even-keeled about it all.
We should replace this happiness state that is pushed by our culture and replace it with contentedness.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM Saturn In Sagittarius
I met a woman today who has been married for 40 years and is planning her escape. She married young, under the gun with baby on the way at 18. She feels she missed finding out herself as she went from her parents house to setting up house with her mate. She says she can’t die not knowing who she is. It hit me kinduv strange. 40 years and all. But at least she knows it is not about her mate, even though she finds him mentally abusive. She knows it is about herself.
ah ha. Apologize for taking up so much space here but I found my imperfection percentage. I am in an intense customer service environment with intense team mates because that what it takes to do this job I guess. I was telling one of them that with 99% of the people I interact with on a daily basis it’s a two way conversation. It’s that 1% that I sometines let take me dooooowwwwwn. Sometimes I leave myself too open and get led to the slaughter. I think it is an issue I have had to deal with in this lifetime. Like the confident forceful person who knows everything and I was like oh this person knows, good, they’ve got it all figured out, I don’t have to, and I blindly follow and then I end up in a mess. I think that is where I was when uranus opposed mh pluto. It was a major cluster f*ck in every area of my life. The moral of the story seems to be that I need to think for myself. I would like the forcers to go away, so I don’t have to deal with it, but it is most likely that 1% imperfection ratio that I have to deal with. It obviously works for them and I accept that it is their schtick, like I am sure I have some kind of schtick too. And goodness gracious, when I put something out there, I certainly don’t want anyone else to blindly follow me either. I can think and analyze a specific problem to make a workable solution, but socially I have to stay on my toes and pay attention. It is seeming like alot of work and I just want it to go away, but it is my 1% and I have to embrace it. Bleahhhhhh!!!!!
Happened to read this and thought of this thread. I was regrettably guilty of this when married, it’s so easy to fall into. But I also know that what is too easy, available, obsequious, compliant, the ubiquitous vanilla, can lose its luster, become boring, even contemptuous. A very fine line of balance…
http://beginwithyes.com/the-hamburger-meat-moment-i-wasnt-treating-my-husband-fairly-and-it-wasnt-nice/