How does the basement affect your happiness?

According to The Nine Rooms of Happiness,”The basement is where all your childhood hurts and torments are stowed away in cabinets and under the stairs. You would rather not revisit them, but you have to in order to understand how you think and feel today.”

We all have something in our lives that happened that we will never forget. We may not even realize that we are still reacting to it. We may take that memory and try to prove that person wrong or we may think they were right and become weak in that area.

Fear comes from the basement. Lucy Danziger shares in The Nine Rooms of Happiness how her fear of sharks kept her from  swimming in open water. This was keeping her from accomplishing her dream of completing a triathlon. Once she faced her fear and did exactly what she feared by getting in the water. She began to enjoy swimming in open water and completed her dream of doing a triathlon. This act of courage helped her to face other fears form her past that had held her back. She had the attitude of I overcame that fear, so I can overcome this. She was no longer paralyzed.

I can relate to her story. Though I’m not afraid of sharks, I’m very afraid of coming across as stupid. An individual in my past had made reference to my poor handwriting, poor grammar, and mispronouncing of words. It didn’t matter that I had great grades in school, especially English. Because of what he said I stopped making comments in class and hated writing. My  husband would leave me sweet notes when we first got married. I can’t count the number of times I wrote him a note and then ripped it up because I was sure he would think I was stupid. I now know he would of loved the notes of love and encouragement. I’ve also come to realize that my ability to write isn’t as horrible as I had thought. I have room for improvement, but that will only happen as I continue to work on it.  I find it liberating to face this fear. My confidence in many areas of life have improved as I, at first, forced myself and later came to enjoy participating in class discussions, blogging, emailing, and writing notes of encouragement to those I love.

I love this visualization of the house . The basement “may be the largest room in the house, but it’s also not in the house, it’s under it. That means you can always climb the stairs, turn out the light, and go to any room you choose without taking the baggage with you.”

One last thought to ponder as you explore your basement.

“The past should inform the present, but you don’t want to get stuck in it. You can’t steer the car by looking in the rear view mirror without crashing. To go forward, focus on what’s ahead of you in the road, not what you’ve passed. A glimpse in the mirror can be helpful, but your future lies in front of you. Look ahead.”