• Maureen
    53
    For example, a baby will get upset or cry when faced with an unpleasant situation, because it is human instinct to get upset or cry when faced with an unpleasant situation. But my question is, is it possible to beat this and to be instinctively happy instead of upset when faced with a universally unpleasant situation, such as getting laid off from a job or being yelled at or ridiculed? I know for instance that you could probably try to be happy under these situations if you happen to think about being happy or remind yourself to react in a happy way even at the time when you are getting fired or yelled at, but I am talking about just being happy or not getting upset without even thinking about it, such as out of instinct. If you were being yelled at and you didn't happen to be thinking about or trying to control your reaction to it, then you would probably just get sad or upset out of instinct, so is there a way or the ability to train yourself so that happiness just occurs instead of sadness without thinking about it? My guess is that it would not be possible to do this because you probably can't change or control human instinct. I suppose the next best thing would be to try to remember to react in a happy way whenever you are faced with an unpleasant situation, but this means you would always have to remember to think about your reaction whenever something unpleasant happened, and if you forgot to do this then the instinct to get upset would probably take over.
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