To be happy

Being happy is not only for the selected few, it is everyone’s own decision. Today, it is a popular topic and it is often said that “if you want to be happy, then just be!”

In May 2012, we invited the EBÜ members to the conference hall at the University of Tartu library to speak about happiness. The bus driver’s trade can be rather dull and the passengers may not always be the most pleasant people in the world. Considering all this, it is important to take a moment and think, how to be happy and satisfied with your life here and now, regardless of everything else. Prof. Aleksander Pulver, director of the Institute of Psychology at Tallinn University, helped to elaborate on the topic.

Along with stepping out from the Soviet Union we stepped into the individualistic Western culture, and this world is constructed entirely differently than the one we were used to. Questions heard never before were voiced: What is a normal life, what is a good life, and what is right? What is happiness? It is easy to teach others how to live, by saying ‘do that’ or ‘don’t do that’, minus myself. Also, it is necessary to find someone to blame, be it the prime minister, mayor or boss. We cannot forbid such an attitude towards life, but it will not help, either. The general knowledge in psychology is that we, people, carry our problems with us in a backpack. Wherever we go, we always replay what has happened previously – if we walked away from our problems before, we will do it again, because it is not the state’s or organisation’s fault, but our own. We always create the same situation as before. So there is only one chance: if we want something to change in our life, we have to change ourselves.

If I am fighting with everyone, then I cannot blame the bad world, but me, who created this situation. The only reality is the person’s own reality. The way you think is the way you live and no one else cannot think for you.

What makes a person feel good?
There are six different questions and if you answer ‘yes’ to all of them, it means you are happy. I can say right now that there is no such person who can answer ‘yes’ to all of them, but there are those who answer ‘yes’ to some.

Positive relationships. Do I have someone close?
Someone close is the person with whom I can be straightforward and whom I can call anytime. Solitude and lack of closeness are the main problems in Western culture.

Imagining me controlling the events in my life.
Imagining that if I want things to change, they will. The reason they have not changed is because I have not wanted them to. The belief that something depends on me. The company may reach a place where people feel they can turn to the administration with their worries and they will be heard.

Destination in life – do I have an answer to ‘why am I here’?
It is good when the answer includes ‘I’ – I want to do something or get somewhere. By living someone else’s life, the formula includes expected gratitude and, thus, dependence on the externals.

Can I say that I am evolving?
If work consists of only the same things it is difficult to say when is the development happening. It is important to find things in my life that have made me better and happier. The need for change is always present but it is useless to make promises I cannot keep.

I am happy with myself the way I am.
If one is not happy with oneself, they will not change, but look for someone to blame. Either on the outside or, even worse, in themselves. I am happy with myself the way I am. If you have one leg there is no use in dreaming of two. If you want to be beautiful, do not want it if the reflection in the mirror is ugly. No matter what you do, you cannot change into someone else. You cannot run from yourself! Do not dream about things that are impossible. Major part of our problems will be solved once we are happy with ourselves the way we are. I am as fat as I am, and if I want, I’ll get fatter.
Being happy is purely psychological. Most problems can be solved by your own, internally. A person does not behave according to the way things really are, but according to the way they think things are. If you want to be happy, then be! But why is it not so and why people still think that life is unfair? Because life is unfair. There is no point in wanting to change life into what I want it to be, when there is 6 billion people on Earth. The life is what it is and we have what we have.

I can handle my stress.
When there is no stress, the person is dead. Stress is not only a bad thing, but it regulates adaption and every moment in our life requires adapting. Too much stress is, of course, another thing.

There are three ways to handle stress:
First, solving the problem – this can be done in simple situations. If the problem cannot be solved then there are two more options: for instance unloading the emotion. The problem will not be solved but it will not seem as scary, either. If you say it out loud that something is bad then it will be confirmed and it will stop being a bother. Already ages ago people knew that chanting and saying spells helped getting rid of things.
The society needs places where people can unload themselves, internet is also one of those places where people can verbally attack each other, otherwise they would go out to the streets.
The third option, escaping, is dangerous, because it is a one-way ticket. If the environment is changed, for example by moving away, then that is okay because it shows that I have influence. However, if the escape is just deceptive, e.g. the person just withdraws, stops communicating, then it is only the first step towards physical or serious psychological illnesses. If a person starts living like this then it means that they will start living in their own fantasy world and depart from the real world. There is no need to fear stress and problems, however, one should fear not coping with them.

How a bus driver could handle difficult clients?
The bus drivers have a lot of forced interaction and thus it is important to know how to reduce the meaning of unpleasant events for oneself. In order to unload the emotion it is necessary to take the object into pieces and look at these pieces separately. By looking at the situation from aside, as one would look at a film tape, it is possible to get rid of the emotion. Being certain that the situation could be solved aggressively, but I decide to solve it differently.

At the seminary, Hugo Osula made a presentation about the development of the bus industry in Estonia and abroad and about the perspectives of bus drivers in Estonia.