Climb the Ladder to Happiness
It knocks spots off the ladder to success!
Prefer to listen? Here’s the recording.
What does it take to climb the ladder of happiness?
What if you could make happiness your goal? What if you knew you could get there, without fail? What if you could soothe your worst feelings, come what may?
Daily, I help clients reach for relief. Faced with huge and ongoing challenge, working through grief, depression and more, they persevere, determined to feel better. And they do feel better. Sustainably so.
Finding and climbing our ‘emotional ladder’ is one of the most powerful tools I know.* I’ve taught it to children (5 and 6 years old upwards) and adults alike. I’ve seen people move from grief to giggling within minutes.
Seriously. As recently as this afternoon…
This inner ladder is like a stairway to heaven. Each rung an emotion, taking us upwards on demand.
Finding your inner stairway to heaven might sound great...
Or, it might make you want to punch someone. (Me, I guess!) I get it. I really do. I’ve felt that way too.
It all depends on your current emotional set-point.
If you’re feeling calm, optimistic, or better, the idea of an inner route to heaven (emotional, not religious) sounds great.
If you’re feeling despairing, fearful or powerless etc, positivity makes you want to puke. It feels toxic.
Toxic positivity. It’s a thing. Forcing cheery, sunny words when it feels like a great big lie. It can do you in — pretending to be happy when you’re feeling quite the opposite.
Our painful emotions need to be honoured…
The problem with positive thinking
We’re supposed to think positively aren’t we? The pressure we put on ourselves… You know… ‘You can’t afford a negative thought…’ and all that?
Some of us struggle with chronic inner conflict — we want to think positively but our conditioning and current reality seem to prevent it.
Affirmations are great (pure, positive, present-tense statements) if you’re already feeling fab. If you’re not, they suck, big time. They make you feel worse than you did before you tried them and then you add failure to the toxic inner mire you’ve learned to call ‘home’…
Trauma will not be denied. To try would be unhealthy on every level. Some situations are fraught with pain. There may be nothing you can do to change that.
If you can’t change your circumstances you may feel lost in grief, or despair, sadness or fear, anger or depression. You may feel powerless to feel any better. Which feels terrible.
It feels terrible… because it’s not true.
Whatever your outer situation, true power is always inside you
Once you have the tools to harness that power you can get yourself feeling better, no matter what.
Once you know about the ladder to happiness, you can climb it any time you like. You will never feel lost in emotion again.
I’m not saying life becomes a cushy, cozy paradise.
Contrast, with its full array of emotions, is the ocean-crossing of life. But you don’t have to be drowned by the tsunami. You can get yourself up to the surface at least — fill your lungs with the sweet breath of relief.
When it comes to our painful emotions we often reach for too much improvement at once.
It’s nigh-on impossible to shift directly from an emotion like despair to one of, say, optimism. It’s too great a reach.
If you’re in despair, anger is a good emotion to reach for. Anger feels much better than despair and it’s much more accessible from there than optimism. Once we get to anger, we can head further up again.
The ladder metaphor makes this clearer.
The ladder to happiness
Imagine your emotions in order on a ladder. Each rung upwards feels a little bit better than the rung below. The ladder to happiness is an ordered list of emotions working from worst at the bottom to best at the top.
Before using this tool, you need to order the emotions in a way that works for you. Each person has their own unique experience. The question to ask with each emotion as you position it is, Does this feel better or worse than the rung I’m on?
Creating the ladder
Here are the main painful emotions to place in order on your ladder.
There may be others to add in, but don’t leave any of these ones out.
FEARFUL DESPAIRING ANXIOUS WORRIED DOUBTFUL GRIEF GUILTY ASHAMED SAD LONELY JEALOUS DEPRESSED RESENTFUL POWERLESS HOPELESS ANGRY FRUSTRATED IRRITATED
When ordering them, start with the one you think feels the worst of all.
So, for example, you might place FEAR at the bottom of the ladder.
Then, you look for the one you think is now the worst feeling once FEAR has been taken off the list.
Let’s say you think that might be GRIEF.
Check… by asking ‘Does GRIEF feel a little bit better than FEAR?’
If the answer is yes, put it above FEAR on your ladder.
If the answer is no, put it below FEAR.
You get the idea.
It takes a little while, but it’s time worth spending.
Some emotions might feel so similar that you want to put them on the same rung. That’s fine.
Once you’ve placed the painful feelings in order, you can then move on to the pleasurable feelings too. You might include:
JOYFUL EXCITED ENTHUSIASTIC EAGER CONFIDENT OPTIMISTIC SUCCESSFUL DETERMINED POWERFUL RELIEVED SATISFIED HOPEFUL FOCUSED
Here’s one possible ladder —from best feelings to worst
JOYFUL
EXCITED — ENTHUSIASTIC
EAGER
CONFIDENT — POWERFUL
OPTIMISTIC
SUCCESSFUL — DETERMINED
HOPEFUL — FOCUSED
SATISFIED
RELIEVED
IRRITATED
FRUSTRATED
ANGRY
RESENTFUL — JEALOUS
GUILTY
ASHAMED
WORRIED — DOUBTFUL
ANXIOUS
HOPELESS — POWERLESS
GRIEF — SAD — LONELY
DESPAIRING — DEPRESSED
FEAR
Start with the worst possible feeling
To soothe an issue that feels bad right now, start with the worst feeling you have about it.
If you don’t start low enough on the ladder, you’ll find an unaddressed emotion will come up later in the process. Like a child demanding attention, each emotion needs its soothing. Each one wants to be seen and heard.
Tears may well up as we touch on feelings like sadness or grief. Allow your tears but keep moving upward. You’ll be amazed how soon your tears turn to smiles.
Acknowledge your painful emotions
With each emotion, starting at the bottom and working your way up the ladder, write a sentence or two to connect with the emotion on each rung.
Start each sentence with I feel rather than I am. This keeps you detached from the feelings. The emotions are NOT who you are. They are energy-in-motion — moving through you.
Here’s a ladder on the feelings around losing a soulmate, I’ve used one like it recently:
I feel fearful because I don’t know how to handle life without my soulmate.
Check — are you connecting with the feeling of fearfulness? If so, move on. If not, write another sentence to generate more of it.
I feel despair when I think of never seeing my husband again.
Check — do you feel a little bit better in despair than you did in fear? Even if you’re only feeling a tiny improvement, you know you’re on your way.
I feel so sad and lonely when I see his empty space on my sofa.
I feel so powerless. There was nothing I could do to keep him with me.
You don’t need to write much. Just a few words to activate the emotion. Don’t get caught up in the storyline.
I feel anxious — I don’t know how I’m going to face life’s challenges without him.
Don’t try to find solutions or work out what you will do. This tool will get you feeling better. Feel better first. Then let solutions come.
I feel worried — how will I cope?
You may not feel an emotion relates to you. Have a go at writing from that feeling anyway. If you did feel like this, what would you say?
I feel ashamed of being so weak. I wish I felt stronger.
I feel guilty about focusing so much on myself. It’s like no one else exists right now.
I feel so resentful of others with their partners and families so close.
Don’t edit your thoughts. Don’t temper them with empathy. Make no attempts to ‘be positive’. Be as ‘negative’ as possible.
I feel jealous of other couples’ happiness. It’s not fair.
Don’t try to be accurate. It’s not about telling the truth. It’s about releasing emotion. If anything, exaggerate the way you feel. Make it more extreme, the stronger the better. Just for a moment…
I feel so angry that this has happened to me. I feel angry with life for being so full of s**t
Anger is pivotal. It is crucial to express it.
If anger comes easily, let rip at this point. Write a whole page of ‘I feel angry because’. Write more if you want.
Swear. Be outrageous. Say vile and awful things. Let the inner monster out. Anger gives you energy to break free. It is the bridge to feeling better.
If you are uncomfortable with anger, imagine an actor you admire who plays anger really well. Imagine them playing this aspect of life on your behalf, with raging anger. Write words they would speak.
Then move on…
I feel frustrated because this feels so awful and I just can’t seem to move on.
I feel irritated when I think of how hard it can be just to get through the day.
Now reach for an ‘Enough is enough’ type feeling. A ‘F**k that!’ moment. You might say something that brings self compassion… ‘It’s been hard. It’s no wonder I’ve felt so bad.’ Take a deep breath in… and out.
Then go for relief.
I feel relieved that I’ve made it this far up my ladder. I love the feeling of relief. I feel a lot better than I did when I started.
I feel satisfied — to think that I started with fear and now I’m feeling relieved, that’s a good job done! Good for me!
Your statements near the top of the ladder will be focused on the inner work you’ve just done.
I feel hopeful that I’ve made a lasting difference here.
I feel optimistic that doing this work will shift the way I feel about life.
I feel confident that I can do this work and feel better whenever I want.
I feel eager to see the impact this will have when I do this every day for a while.
I feel excited at the thought of feeling better each day. Even a little improvement feels so good and I’ve already improved my feelings more than I’d thought possible…
I feel joyful as I realise my power to feel good no matter what. I love the idea of being able to enjoy life more each day.
Just keep going…
Once you’re on your way, you’ll feel the improvement.
Initially, you may only be able to move your emotions up one or two rungs on your ladder. That’s ok. It’s still an improvement from where you started, right?
If you’re in the heart of something intense, it may take a few days of laddering to clear the emotions at the bottom of the ladder.
A child I worked with compared this process to emptying the trash can. If you have an issue that’s felt really bad for some time, this is the perfect tool to use. (It’s a great tool to use with kids in general. If they can’t verbalise their emotions, offer to do it for them and let them correct you. It’s so powerful.)
As with all our inner work, it’s not a magic wand. It’s a powerful tool that brings benefit each time you do it. The more often you do it, the more the benefit builds. Over time, the way you feel about this issue really shifts.
Inner work isn’t easy. But it’s so worth doing.
Some of us can run with these tools without help. Others need support to get started. If you want a hand with this tool, get in touch, I’d be only too happy to help you.
*This tool comes from ‘Ask and it is Given’ by Abraham-Hicks