We talk a lot about happiness, about how to achieve this state and stay in it longer. In the end, it's about how to be happy always and not miss it for a second.
Happiness is a very ephemeral concept: everyone knows about it, sometimes they feel it, but only a few moments pass and you are no longer sure if you were happy. Or was he happy, but compared to what?
So, what are the common ways for everyone to feel unhappy? Henrik Edberg, author of The Positivity Blog, has counted 7 main ones so far.
Everything is always difficult if you are a perfectionist. It is very difficult for such a person to achieve a state of happiness, because even the path of achievement must be perfect. There will always be someone who, in the understanding of a perfectionist, is still in some way better than a house, apartment, career, family, hairstyle, in the end. Moments of happiness for such a person are very fleeting and rare — only when he felt that he had done something perfectly, and until he saw that someone had done it even better.
Man is a social being. We cannot completely renounce other people and live as hermits, listening to no one and nothing. Those with whom we communicate have quite a big influence on us.
How can you be happy if people around you constantly say that life is a terrible thing and mostly unfair and cruel?
It's one thing when such things are said in a matter of fact (the situation in the country, the crisis, etc.), but it's quite another when such thoughts and opinions are predominant and relate to absolutely everything. It is better to avoid such interlocutors and exclude this information noise from your field. If this is your inner voice, then you will have to seriously work on yourself.
Everyone knows the rule «here and now ». By focusing on thoughts about the future or the past, we lose the feeling of the moment that is happening in the most important time, in the time «now». We are almost always fixated on something negative, and much less often we remember pleasant moments. Usually these are thoughts about why something didn't work out for us, why we were rejected, why we didn't do the right thing, and what was right at that moment in general.
Old grievances, failures — all this bites off a juicy piece of our sense of happiness "here and now".
How can you be happy remembering and analyzing failures? There is a time for everything — we were sad, analyzed, drew conclusions and are moving forward!
The other person always has something better, even if in other aspects of life it may be much worse than yours. In general, constantly comparing yourself to someone is not a very good habit. And the more often you have been better, the more painful it will be if someone turns out to be better than you. Often people generally begin to compare themselves with a huge number of others, and everyone will definitely have something better. As a result, your self-esteem may fall below the baseboard. And if this happens often enough, then an appointment with a psychiatrist and the loss of friends are provided for you.
You don't have to go far — go to your grandmother or stand in line, where there are many pensioners and aunts of pre-retirement age who get the main news from TV broadcasts and radio.
As a result, all the talk about the fact that people are constantly stealing, killing, being fired from work and «the best» friends are stealing other people's husbands and wives from under their noses. Then a standard monologue follows on the topic « There was no such thing in the USSR ». But normal people treat this calmly and with slight apprehension, realizing that this is part of life. Grandma lives in this every day, and this news is life itself for her.
Yes, you can't envy the lives of our grandmothers, but we still have the strength to change something. For example, stop obsessing over everything negative.
Before you do something, you always think: What will people think (say)?».
It may seem to you that you are the focus of some people's attention, and by violating standard boundaries and standard behavior, you will trigger a condemnation mechanism.
If you are trying to do something new, you are doing it secretly from your society. You may think that you are the source of the negative reaction of others, absolutely without thinking about the fact that maybe someone just had a hard week. Constant glancing back and a sideways glance at others (what will they say, how will they react?) very clearly hinders personal development. And if it hinders development, it means it prevents you from being happy.
Life is a very interesting thing and at the same time incredibly difficult. But the most interesting thing is that most of all the difficulties and insurmountable obstacles we create ourselves. Some are simply fixated on the algorithm «if, then» in its most negative manifestation.