Happiness On Demand

Hello Reader,

Energy, the kind of energy our bodies and minds use for functioning, has been a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot since I was last depressed. I’ve even written about it on many occasions in my journal.

Being depressed felt, to me, like having no energy at all. I was still eating quite normally and sleeping a lot, so it’s not like there wasn’t enough energy available.

So the energy my mind and body needed must have kept leaking somewhere, right?

That's what we'll discuss today and we'll start with a short story.

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I just finished my summer vacation which was very fun and relaxing.

One of the activities I like to do during my vacation is to go running along the seashore. I’m not much of a runner, to be fair, but running helps me relax and clear my mind, and I’d like to think it helps with cardiovascular health also.

I usually run 5k (just over 3 miles), and that’s enough to burn my energy, but this summer, something unexpected has been happening when I run.

Recently, I've found myself running 8, sometimes even 10 kilometres (5 to 6 miles), without feeling like I've had to push significantly harder.

I don’t run frequently enough for training to explain the progress. My body hasn't changed that much in the last few weeks.

So what changed?

I did.

But the progress was psychological, not physical.

My mental well-being has kept improving lately. I'm happier. I'm more at peace. Somewhere along my healing journey, I started noticing that I seemed to have more energy available to me.

All of that got me thinking about something I've experienced countless times with another piece of technology: my phone.

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What if mental well-being is partly about “closing unnecessary background processes?”

Imagine buying a brand-new phone and discovering that its battery lasts only four hours.

You might assume: "The battery must be terrible; it’s broken or something”. But then someone checks the settings and discovers that 37 apps are constantly running in the background.

I bet we’ve all experienced this. We charge our phone overnight, but as soon as we leave home in the morning, we find that the battery has already dropped to 80% and there’s no way the charge will last the whole day.

That’s because most apps are constantly doing something in the background. Checking for your location, checking for new messages, checking for updates, and so on.

So what I’ve found out is that it’s actually a pretty similar deal with your mind.

The mind, especially its central processor, the brain, is energetically very expensive.

So when much of its capacity is occupied by persistent worry, rumination, emotional suppression, and threat monitoring, it's reasonable to ask what that means for how much mental capacity we have available for everything else.

Your mind keeps running “apps” in the background, slowly but surely draining your energy.

Here’s what I’ve found are the most energy-consuming things: (I’ll also explain how to turn them off; “close the apps”, so to speak)

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1. Resentment: the app running an old argument

Our mind holds on to the events of the past as lessons that are beneficial for our survival (or at least were at some point during our evolution) and therefore keeps revisiting painful and irritating memories.

But in the modern world, we rarely need this primal safety mechanism, and the grudges we hold hurt us more than they do good.

What’s worse, the things we have done, or others have done to us, often make us angry. Anger can be a severely damaging mental condition, not only damaging to our minds but also to our bodies.

Now, resentment doesn’t mean you sit there thinking: "I'm going to spend mental energy being angry today." The grudge is “an app running in the background”, that simply remains open whether you consciously think about it or not.

The event might have happened years ago, but the mind keeps reopening the file.

Resentment and anger can occur due to many things, not just what someone else did to you. One of my most popular blog posts explains this in detail. It tells the story of how I was hospitalized due to the psychosomatic symptoms my unprocessed emotions gave me.

Here’s what I wrote:

And the way to “close the app” is forgiveness.

But before you do that, there’s an important distinction to make:

Forgiveness isn't saying what happened was okay. It's deciding you no longer want to keep paying the energetic cost of carrying it.

Dealing with resentment through forgiveness is explained in this blog post right here (this is the post I quoted in the paragraph above)

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2. Unprocessed emotions: unfinished processes

An emotion isn't a problem that needs to be eliminated. Often, it's information that needs to be acknowledged and processed.

Emotions are our first thought about any given situation. Then our conscious mind tries to make sense of that emotion, and those emotions that are brought to our conscious awareness through the many filters of the mind (such as beliefs, habits, and learned thought patterns) are what we call feelings.

But the thing about emotions is that they are truth-tellers. They are signals that try to guide us to joy, peace, and love.

When we suppress our emotions, both what we label negative and positive, we essentially “minimize the window” and leave the application running.

But we all know that minimizing an app isn't the same as closing it.

You can distract yourself. Stay busy. Exercise. Work. Scroll. Watch Netflix. Tell yourself you're fine.

The emotion may disappear from your conscious attention, but that doesn't mean the underlying experience has been processed.

It remains there, seeking to bring itself to your attention, slowly draining your energy in the background until it is acknowledged.

The key to closing these apps is acceptance.

Acceptance is the most important, yet probably the most overlooked step in any healing process.

Acceptance is all about meeting reality as it is, not as you wish it to be. When we resist our emotions, thoughts, or circumstances, we only create extra suffering.

Acceptance doesn’t mean you like what happened or give up on change; it simply means you stop fighting what is.

Because when you accept your pain, grief, or anger, you give yourself permission to feel it fully. This allows the emotion to be expressed and healing to begin.

Acceptance creates space for forgiveness. Forgiveness for yourself, for others, and for life, which frees up emotional energy to move forward.

Here’s a simple but effective exercise for acceptance:

Acknowledge the emotion; don’t try to fight it. Let it express itself in the way it wants to, i.e. if you feel like crying, don’t hold back. If you feel angry, allow that anger to press itself out, but do not direct it at another person.

If you struggle with any emotion that arises, sit down and close your eyes. If you feel like you need help to express (press out) the emotion, start breathing deeply in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Try to engage your diaphragm by pressing your belly out on the inhale and sucking it in on the exhale. Breathe steadily, slowly, deeply while holding your attention on the emotion.

Finally, relax your facial muscles and turn your mouth into a gentle smile. Take a couple more breaths.

This will help your body and mind relax and feel safe, allowing the emotion to pass.

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3. Fear: the app that never stops checking notifications

Fear is another completely normal emotion and an extremely useful survival mechanism that has kept human beings alive for 200’000 or so years.

But fear can be a double-edged sword: it may arise from imagined threats rather than actual life-threatening situations.

So fear is essentially the brain's threat-monitoring system asking:

"Is there something I need to deal with?"

And when you're chronically stressed, anxious, or afraid, the answer becomes "probably" even when you're actually safe.

So the system keeps scanning:

What could go wrong?

What did they mean by that?

What happens if I fail?

What if something happens to someone I love?

What if I'm not prepared?

Your mind becomes a phone constantly checking for notifications that may never arrive.

To close this app and stop constantly checking for notifications, you need to let your mind know that you are safe right now. There are several quite handy tools for handling fear, stress, and anxiety, and chances are you already have my guide for that.

But in case you don’t, you can download "3 Easy Ways to Calm Anxiety and Stress in Just 5 Minutes - Anytime, Anywhere" from the link below:

​Stress Management Guide ENG v2.pdf​

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So instead of trying to find endless new ways to recharge your battery, it's worth looking at what's draining it first.

Resentment. Fear. Unprocessed emotions. Worry. These can "keep running in the background", consuming energy you could otherwise use to live, create, connect, and enjoy your life.

You don't have to close every app at once. Start with one.

Notice what's running, bring it into your awareness, and use the tools in this newsletter to let it go.

Until next time,

Think happy thoughts!

​- Atte

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Happiness On Demand

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