Since I didn’t get to the other quotes I wanted to talk about in my last post, I’ll continue that here.
One of the keys to Happiness is having a bad memory~ Rita Mae Brown
I liked this because it speaks directly to what I know to be one of the activities people can do to increase their happiness level.
What this quote is really saying is, the more you forget about what has happened (most likely the bad things) and focus on the (hopefully good) things that are happening now, the happier you will be.
The happiness activity I was thinking of was: Avoiding social comparison and over-thinking. Specifically this quote speaks to the “over-thinking” aspect.
How many times have you laid awake at night replaying in your head all of the “stupid” things you did that day and kicking yourself for it. Or perhaps you had (what you think is) a bad date and you come home and start going over every little thing that you did and that he or she said in response and finally decide that it will never work.
Over-thinking is a disease and it’s a killer. Having a bad memory is the cure. Or perhaps it is not a bad memory specifically that you need but a selective memory.
Actually we all have a selective memory. Unless you have a photographic memory and can remember EVERYTHING that happened exactly, chances are you will only remember bits of what happened, the bits you CHOOSE to remember.
The question is which bits are you going to choose to remember, the bad bits or the good bits.
Now someone with a particularly pessimistic view of things may say, “but there were only bad bits, I can’t remember the good bits because they weren’t there”.
Wrong.
There are always good bits of things that happen to us, even if they are small things.
If you choose to focus on the good memories only – chances are you won’t suffer from over-thinking, because there really isn’t anything to over-think, just nice memories to enjoy.
As for the rest of the bad things that may have happened? That’s where the bad memory comes in. Forget them, they will most likely never serve you.
So I guess I might modify this quote a little to say “one of the keys to happiness is having a bad memory of your bad memories”.
I’ll continue to do some posts on other favourite quotes so stay tuned.
Until then – keep laughing and having a bad memory.
Ha ha ha … wait, what was it I was laughing about? I can’t recall. Good thing I don’t need a reason to laugh … ha ha ha …