By Dina Aldabbagh

You have to choose to look away from the things that bother you and choose to look at the things that delight you. It is a choice. It may take effort — at least, consciousness, at first — but it’s the only way. The world is too full of opportunities to pull your mood in any direction. You must guide the direction.

Whatever you look at…is your experience. That’s your life. That’s what your senses are being occupied by. If you look at the things that bother you, you will be bothered. But, you can also ignore them. Yes, pretend they don’t exist.

You can, and should, cut these things that bother you off from your attention. All you must do is…move. Go somewhere else. Look somewhere else. Put in your airpods and listen to a sound you like. Fill your senses with that which pleases you — and starve the bothersome things of life. 

You are its lifeforce. If you give it your eyes, your ears, your time, and your mind, then you are the being that permits it to still exist. To you. These things may still be in the stratosphere that surrounds you, but they are not in your home. 

These things will exist, that’s the truth. If you have a preference for anything, you can imagine at least the equal amount of its opposite available in the world. You must ignore it. If you want to be happy, you have to choose to overlook it. You have to choose to make it unimportant.

Change your focus. As quickly as possible, shift where your attention is. Everything is temporary and it can be as temporary as you wish, as long as you’re willing to look away. It’s as simple as that. You, alone, have complete power over what gets your attention. The kindest thing you can do for yourself is to be unmercifully brutal with how quickly you cut off your attention from the bothersome things of the world.

All you must do is say a simple, “I don’t have to think about that,” and then look elsewhere. You must occupy the senses with something else. 

Jovan Byford wrote something in his paper “From ‘traitor’ to ‘saint’: Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic in Serbian Public Memory” that truly stood out to me. In a section titled “Repression as Replacement,” he outlines how sociologist, Irwin-Zarecka, said in 1994:

“Aspects of the past are forgotten by not being invoked, spoken about and remembered in public. They become ‘repressed’ by being ostracised from commemorative ceremonies, museums, and books. Significantly, in narratives of the past, because of their chronological order and organization, it is impossible merely to omit an embarrassing episode or period of history.

Silences have to be ‘dressed up in words.’ That which is ‘willfully forgotten’ must be replaced by a suitable substitute.”

Irwin-Zarecka discusses an aspect of the human psyche that is always at play: we must replace the space that we wish to remove. It cannot be left vacant. Human beings need something to focus on. It’s your responsibility over your own life and your own happiness to choose what occupies the space. 

I’m telling you that you must “willfully forget” the things that bother you and replace them with a sufficient substitute. Anything. Anything that is capable of taking your attention — at least for long enough that the emotional bond of irritation is weakened between you and that thing that bothers you. 

That’s what you really need: the bond to weaken. A travel buddy once said to me in a conversation on a bench, on a hill, overlooking the Pacific, “The way we feel about people is a habit, too.” That’s what you’re really dealing with: the habit. The habit of caring about that thing. The habit of being bothered by it. The habit of noticing it. You don’t need to never think about that thing again, you just need to go long enough that the glue that binds your experience to that thing loosens. 

To choose to ignore one thing and pay attention to another is really the choice to be happy. Taking ownership over your attention is just taking ownership over your emotional experience — i.e. your happiness. 

The world is filled with quicksands all about you, trying to suck you down. Lightly child, lightly. Walk through every day as lightly as possible. Take their comment lightly. And the traffic lightly. And bumping into the table you always bump into lightly. And take the tears lightly, and the existential questions you have about your life, and the uncertainty. 

Remember your best times lightly, and hope for the future lightly. Work towards that desire lightly, and let go of the disappointment lightly. Lightly keep your attention on it all. Move through the world with an aloofness that resembles naivety. Let your lightness about it all make everyone question how unserious you are. If you know something they don’t. 

Your attention is your life. Sometimes heavy things will ask you to look at them. That’s okay. Look for a second. And then…lightly look away. Lightly let something else substitute in for your attention. 

There’s never any final destination — you certainly will have times that feel heavier again. When these moments come, though, let them be as temporary as they can be. Let the panic attack be a moment. Let the sobbing be a night. Let the anger be a car ride. And then, when you’re blessed by another transition — a class starting, clocking in, plans with your friends beginning, the day ending, the morning beginning — allow the thing at hand to take your attention, and change your mood. Allow it to steal your awareness.

No matter how hard the previous moment you just had was, allow the next one to rob the heaviness. Let the joy of the next thing rush in. It’s often right at the doorway, in the transition to the next moment of life, just waiting for you. Pay those moments of change your attention. Let the hard times come to an end. Maybe not completely. Surely, they’ll find you once again. But for the moment, let something else steal your attention.

Life is cyclical. Nothing will ever be the final solution to anything. Sometimes you think you’re past something, and then you find yourself sobbing about it again after the most random, little reminder of a very specific aspect of it. Let those times come without judgement. And let them go just as fast. 

The more you let the waves wash onto the shore and pull back into the ocean in their rhythm, the more you notice that that specific wave doesn’t hit you the same anymore. In all these hard moments of life, it’s helpful to remember that it’s just a moment. It’s not a prophecy. The moment will end. Let it.

To be happy, I’ve learned, is less about making something happen that makes you happy, and more about letting something stop happening that makes you unhappy. Let it end. This is a skill that needs to be practiced in order to be mastered, like anything else, but eventually you will notice yourself much more equipped at letting yourself be happy — rather than “making” yourself happy.