Feeling good (mood)

RICHARD: ‘feeling good’ is an unambiguous term – it is a general sense of well-being – and if anyone wants to argue about what feeling good means … then do not even bother trying to do this at all http://actualfreedom.com.au/actualism/vineeto/selected-writings/investigatefeelings.htm

RICHARD: [..] ‘feeling good’ each moment again over extended periods is thus not an emotion per se but, rather, an affective mood – as in, ‘I’m in a good mood today’ (and, conversely, ‘I’m in a bad mood today’) – just as ‘feeling happy’ moment-to-moment, for the remainder of one’s life, is also an affective mood (e.g., ‘I’m in a happy mood today’) as it would be simply impossible to sustain an emotional happiness day-after-day week-after-week, let alone being passionately happy, due to such being both emotionally draining and, usually, a conditional happiness anyway. http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-method.htm

RESPONDENT: (…) How is the method best done – should I examine the feeling and find its trigger while experiencing it, in order to get back to feeling good?

RICHARD: If you have a tendency towards being an intellectual/ abstractional-type person then … yes.

RESPONDENT: Or should I get back to feeling good and then figure out why I last felt less-than-good?

RICHARD: If you have a tendency towards being an emotional/ passional-type person then … yes.

http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-method6.htm

[Richard]: What the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago would do is first get back to feeling good and then, and only then, suss out where, when, how, why – and what for – feeling bad happened as experience had shown ‘him’ that it was counter-productive to do otherwise.

What ‘he’ always did however, as it was often tempting to just get on with life then, was to examine what it was all about within half-an-hour of getting back to feeling good (while the memory was still fresh) even if it meant sometimes falling back into feeling bad by doing so … else it would crop up again sooner or later.

Nothing, but nothing, can be swept under the carpet.

http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/articles/thismomentofbeingalive.htm

• [Co-Respondent]: I can’t thank you enough for reiterating how to use HAIETMOBA?. I have read it fifty times, but this time it clicked. There is something to watch out for, which is the feeling of upset. I am just used to living with my upsetting feelings by ignoring them or repressing them, because I shouldn’t get upset … you know? … it’s not right to be upset, etc. So to go looking for the incident like you suggest wasn’t working because … I’m always upset! due to repressing or analysing why I shouldn’t have the bad feeling. I mean, where would I start? When I saw this about myself I was happy and from there I was able to locate an upsetting incident that day.

• [Richard]: Good … and once one gets the knack of it (it does take diligence and application and patience and perseverance in the beginning) it all becomes such fun to find out, each moment again, how one ticks.

One thing I did, way back when I started doing that method, was to make sure I would never, ever, tell myself off for slipping back into the old ways – after all ‘I am only human’ and it is bound to happen from time-to-time – and instead I would pat myself on the back for being astute enough to notice that I had slipped back and thus get on with the business of being happy and harmless again … and feeling good about myself for being able to do so.

It is important to be friends with oneself – only I get to live with myself twenty four hours of the day (other people can and do move away) – and if I am at war with myself, disciplining myself, telling myself off, I am alienating the only person who can truly help me in all this. In short: be nice to yourself, not nasty … there are already enough people doing that anyway

http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-pride.htm

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  • Seeing the silliness

    If so, do you further comprehend that anytime you felt good/will feel good does not mean a thing if you are not feeling good now … that a remembered occasion/an anticipated occasion pales into insignificance if you are feeling bad now?

    If so, is it not silly to waste this only moment you are ever alive by feeling bad … when you could be feeling good?

    RESPONDENT No 23: What about when I find out what happened to end feeling good and I see that it is silly to keep worrying about it yet that doesn’t stop the worrying and I am not back to feeling good?

    RICHARD: Two things immediately leap to mind … (1) you value feeling worry (a feeling of anxious concern) over feeling good (a general sense of well-being) … and (2) you have not really seen it is silly to feel bad (a general sense of ill-being). What I would suggest, at this point, is to feel the silliness of feeling bad (in this case feeling anxiety) … then the seeing (as in a realisation) might very well have the desired effect (as in an actualisation) of once more feeling good.

  • Diminishment

    [..] what ‘he’ had twigged to [..] was how it was far, far easier and simpler to stay in a good mood come-what-may – preferably a happy mood of course – than claw ‘his’ way back up to feeling good, again and again, after having habitually reverted to type.

  • Basic Resentment

    Furthermore, for such a sensitive, affective and cognitive human being who is also at all thoughtful about life, the universe and what it is to be living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are, any such idea of ‘feeling-good-for-its-own-sake’ ̶ let alone enjoying and appreciating being able to experience that general feeling of well-being (as in, an engaged relishing of feeling good and, thus, intimately approving being alive/ being here, by virtue of that personal delectation of ‘feeling good’ per se) as well – is a betrayal of all what they fervently hold intellectually dear, about the world in general and the human race in particular, as for them life itself is, essentially, a bum rap (an unjust punishment) when all is said and done.

    RICHARD: Okay then … generally speaking, an ‘aversion’ to be going about one’s everyday/ workaday life with a general feeling of well-being (a.k.a. ‘feeling good’), for the remainder of one’s life, stems from a basic resentment at being alive – of being in the sublunar realm as a sensitive, affective and cognitive human being with people as-they-are in the world as-it-is – as is epitomised by such expressive plaints as ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ or ‘It’s all just a sick joke’ or ‘Life’s a bitch with death at the end’ and so on.

  • Armchair philosophising/ psychologising

    • [Respondent]: ‘There is also confusion as to what should be done as soon as I find myself feeling less than good. Sometimes I read that I should get back to feeling good quickly before investigating the feeling, other times I read that I should track back and investigate first in order to feel good.

  • Actualism Method

    It is really very, very simple (which is possibly why it has never been discovered before this): you felt good previously; you are not feeling good now; something happened to you to end that felicitous/ innocuous feeling; you find out what happened; you see how silly that is (no matter what it was); you are once more feeling good. —Richard

    RICHARD: [..] what ‘he’ had twigged to [..] was how it was far, far easier and simpler to stay in a good mood come-what-may – preferably a happy mood of course – than claw ‘his’ way back up to feeling good, again and again, after having habitually reverted to type.