Hello, my name is Roman Russo and I’m the author of Optimal Happiness, and sometimes I’m negative and express negative emotions. So, am I truly happy? Hearing this, some people may outright call me unhappy, a liar, or a fraud. However, I will disregard these opinions and say that I am optimally happy and here is why I think so.
To begin, let’s unpack what Optimal Happiness really is. It is being 99% happy and knowing how to turn a negative emotion into a positive one. This being said, it is completely possible, natural, and within reason to be unhappy 1% of the time. This is because occasionally the world’s negativity catches up even with the happiest people among us, but a true happiness master does not linger in a negative state for very long.
So, even if you will even see me negatively, know that I have chosen to be so, all the while knowing how to turn that negativity into positivity whenever I choose to do so. I’m staying negative because of a personal choice at that moment, as, for example, negative emotions can sometimes feel good. However, at the same time I know that I don’t want to stay negative forever, as we pay a tall price for every moment we continue to be negative.
Moreover, I want to caution everyone against wanting to feel negative, as only a true happiness master can do it correctly. Most people are likely to misuse “wanting to feel negative because it feels good to feel negative,” and end up being negative 20-50 (or more) percent of the time.
In addition, it is virtually impossible not to say something negative. For example, I oppose all sorts of negativity due to my job as a happiness coach. By opposing it, I’m being negative toward negativity. If one of my students isn’t doing something correctly, I can tell them that they are doing it wrong, which some people may perceive as me being negative, but I’m just using negatively framed words to convey information, without actually feeling negative.
Here I am expressing negativity without becoming negative myself. At this point, people sometimes say: “Aaaah, I got you. You say you are a happiness coach, but you just said something negative. You aren’t supposed to have any negative opinions whatsoever, otherwise you aren’t happy?”
To explain this further, I often use the example of someone finding five dollars on the floor. This is meant to be a positive occasion, but this doesn’t oblige people to feel positive especially if until then they felt rather negative. On the other hand, someone can lose five dollars and still feel positive. Therefore, it is true that saying something positive doesn’t automatically make us happy, just as saying something negative doesn’t make us unhappy.
Again, I’d like to caution against misusing this information, as most people become what they say or how they feel. So if they express a negative emotion, they become negative.
Lastly, I remember a story about a famous zen master who would regularly become angry and shout at his students. However, this is a contradiction, as aren’t zen masters supposed to be always zen (aka neutral or happy)? In response to people calling him out about this outburst of negativity, this master would say that “you know I’m still alive while I’m still getting angry,” illustrating that his relationship with negativity was not the same as most people. He could become angry without becoming negative, which isn’t possible for most people, but is certainly possible if you know how to do it.
And this is exactly what we teach here at Optimal Happiness – how to be 99% happy despite worldly negativity, expressing ourselves negatively, and controlling our emotions so they don’t control us. So, if you want to learn how to do this yourself, contact us and we will help you join the elite 1% of the happiest people alive who are familiar with this information.
