Toughening Up Is The Way To Happiness? Wrong.

Are you tired of being strong all the time? It might even feel like a hat you wear that you can never take off. And even though you want to take that hat off and throw it in the garbage, it seems virtually impossible to do so. It's time we explore what's standing in the way of you letting go of being strong (and your happiness).

The Average Person Thinks Toughening Up Is The Way To Happiness. They're Wrong. Here's Why.

In this article we're going to take a look at what being strong really means in our society and I'll reveal three ways how toughening up tends to play out in our lives and the way we can pivot to experience more happiness.

So what is 'being strong' all about?

In our society strength is wrongly determined by how much you can reject and ignore your nature and push forth and strive and keep going without pausing for stillness to integrate what you experience in life in a healthy way. Its about taking on hardships without uttering a word or having any response unless its positive.

Bypass your natural response.

Any response to hardship or even joy that is expressed through bodily animation, verbal eloquence, natural human mind/body functions is not allowed. It has been co-opted as “wrong.” This goes for culture too if animated self-expression is part of it. It stems from white, patriarchal, colonial dominance and it's not cool.

The normal, natural function of reaction, processing and integration of what we experience has been replaced with robotic behavior as the norm and with a promise of happiness that never comes. It dangles in front of us like the carrot on a rope.

Of course there’s a reason for this. Taking us further and further from our humanity makes us fragmented individuals unable to properly connect to each other in a meaningful way. And that makes it much easier for us to be the cogs on the wheel of productivity which suits the agenda of a very few amassing power and money through capitalism.

It also makes us more productive little worker bees. There are many working class people across America, for example, who are proud that they’ve never taken a day off in their life or that they work hard, non-stop without a break. This is not biologically or socially natural. And there are dire consequences such as high blood pressure, chronic stress, burnout, heart disease, and more

How, exactly are we being strong?

Being strong nurtures a certain mindset that will never allow you to feel sustained happiness or fulfillment. That mindset mainly revolves around these 3 things:

Dependence on External Validation

Admit it or not, pushing through no matter what is partially about the fear we have of what other people may think if we do otherwise. It's about that much needed sense of safety & belonging that we rarely get (because of the next point I'll bring up in this article).

We fear zigging because everybody around us is zagging. So we zag. We conform and to do that, we have to mask, put on our superhero gear and toughen up to push through each day. Whew! Exhausting.

Hyperindividuality

A large part of what "being strong" is revolves around not depending on others and holding that as a strong belief and value. We do our best to do things on our own and never ask for help. There's shame and embarassment layered into asking for support and often when people are in dire need and ask for help, it's like a help-repellent. People don't want to get involved for fear they'll be pulled into some kind of need-help-please vortex.

Well I hate to be the one to break it, but humans are social beings just like our primate cousins. Interdependence is literally woven into our genetic fabric. When we create community with layers of support woven in as a given, that releases so much unnecessary stress and frees us up to self-actualize and strengthen webs of connection and support.

Keeping Up with Capitalism

Otherwise known as keeping up with the Jones's. But let's go ahead and call out the Jones's for who/what they really are.

Honestly most of us are being strong because we feel we have no other choice. If you want to be housed and have any semblance of comfort, you gotta work. And these days work means being a cog in the capitalist machine which challenges our very humanity every single day.

It's a survival thing. And when you're convinced that your survival depends on you being strong, it's almost impossible to acknowledge any proof that shows otherwise.

So what's the route to happiness if it's not being strong?

I'll be uber-honest here and tell you up front that there's no path to happiness though people are making millions off of telling you that there is. There, I said it.

Happiness is a feeling not an external state of being. An emotion. Like all the other emotions. Which means it doesn't last. It comes and goes like waves.

And what you want to do is simply experience that emotion more because it feels effing good! The average person does not want to spend huge amounts of time in sadness or fear, amirite? What works for that is having nurturing, gentle, mindful tools to be able to linger in the joy when it does arrive.

See, we're so trained to hone in on the difficult feelings when they arrive because we absolutely don't friking want them there. And what that means is we feel them more acutely. We are on alert from the moment that fear, anger, jealousy, frustration --- arrives to the moment it goes away.

What if we simply developed a habit of feeling the joy, the serendipity, the surprise, the excitement just as acutely?

When that happens, you start to depend much less on your external situation having to be a certain way that takes soooooo much pushing and struggling to make it work.

You become more aligned with the reality that happiness is an internal experience and no amount of toughening up to make a material situation happen can provide it.

So what's the first step to honing in on the joy and lingering in it? 

Softening. Nurturing your innermost self. And this is exactly what we do in my soft life coaching program, HUSTLE WHO?!.

HUSTLE WHO?! is my 12-week 1:1 coaching program designed for my driven peeps tired of feeling stuck in survival mode. This is your chance to glow up, reclaim your peace, and achieve big wins on your own terms. Let’s make soft your new power move!

Inquire now to nurture yourself, feel happiness more readily, and let go of always 'being strong.'