Riding the Roller Coaster

The past few days have been a roller coaster ride for me. One moment I’m happy, the next moment I fell into frustration and the next I’m depressed. Work has been frustrating. I became so emotionally tired.

I started to blame the company, the management, the processes, colleagues and everyone else. I begin to hope for a new job, new colleagues, new management. Maybe things will be better if I change a new environment. I wanted to escape from all these unhappiness, from all these madness and I wanted to look for happiness and peace somewhere else.

Then I begin to wonder, how many times have I experience these before? How many escapes have I made in the past? I have been changing jobs, always in search of a “better place”.

I realized that there is no better place in our outer world. Things and people always change. The things that bring us happiness today, might not bring us happiness tomorrow. For example, my manager praise me yesterday and I became very happy, but today, he reprimanded me and I became depressed and frustrated.

I always thought that I would be happier if I get a new job, or a new bag or a new mobile. But that happiness only lasted very briefly. So I concluded that true happiness and peace couldn’t be found externally.

If we continued to search for peace and happiness in all these things out there, we will always be riding the roller coaster, up one day and down the other. True peace lies in the heart. What this means is that we should practice looking inwards for inner peace.

When we look inwards, we will see that a lot of our unhappiness came about because we are either constantly looking to escape from this unpleasant situation or we are constantly looking forward to new pleasure. When we are here, we wish to be there. We can’t be truly enjoying.

It is time to stop whining and stop escaping. I’ll pack up my emotional baggage and start breathing.