Absence of negative emotions ≠ happiness

The absence of negative feelings does not equal happiness.

That statement is something I need to remember. It's completely logical, but often forgotten. remember, when you are bored or indifferent you are neither experiencing a negative nor positive emotion. 

I've been listening to The Psychology of Depression and Anxiety - Dr Scott Eilers. That's where this reminder came from, but also some other things I picked up on whilst listening to an episode on happiness. 

He talks about how our life experience is all internal, and everything outside is just stimuli. I absolutely love this. He further goes into how it's all about how we translate or interpret said stimuli that give us our life experience. An example he uses is if you're in another country and everyone speaks a language you don't understand. That stimulus means nothing to you unless you can translate it. Sometimes when we have health problems (mental or physical) our translator doesn't work - it just doesn't get the message through to us or it distorts the message so we are not receiving what the message is in reality. 

Anyway, I started listening to this episode for a second time to reinforce some of this stuff. I've listened to quite a bit of his stuff these past few months, and I highly recommend it. It compliments any other therapy you might be receiving too. He also posts it as YouTube videos if you prefer a visual (see below).