There are so many blogs and videos which claim to teach us how to remain happy and positive all the time. Maybe it is possible for few but I believe feeling unhappy on and off is quite natural and happens with all of us.
Difficult circumstances or even a medical condition can make us feel unhappy.
But often a big chunk of chronic unhappiness comes from our own thought process, behavior and habits.
In this blog, I will share five destructive habits that can create unhappiness in your life and also ways to overcome these habits.
Getting Dragged Down by Negative Voices
What we read, watch, and listen impacts what we feel and think. It gets a lot harder to be happier if you live in a sea of negative voices.
Voices that keep repeating to you that life is hard, not worth all the effort, and filled with worry and limitations. Voices that portray life largely from a negative perspective.
How to overcome this habit:
Replace those negative voices with more positive influences and you will see a whole new world open up. Spend more time with positive people, read uplifting books, watch movies and TV shows that make you laugh and you will begin to think about life in a new way.
Start small. For example, you can read an uplifting blog or listen to an audio book while having breakfast instead of watching the morning news on TV.
Comparing Yourself to Others
A very common destructive habit is to constantly compare yourself and your life to other people and their lives. You compare jobs, houses, cars, money, relationships, social standing and many more. Doesn’t do any good, let me tell you.
By the time your day ends, your self-esteem is at rock bottom and you end up harboring a lot of negative feelings.
How to overcome this habit:
Replace this habit with these two habits:
Compare Yourself to Yourself: Rather than comparing yourself to other people, begin comparing yourself to yourself. Notice what you have achieved, how much progress you have made towards your goals, and how much you have grown as an individual.
This will help you become more grateful, appreciative, and kind towards yourself as you observe how far you have come and the good stuff you have done.
Be Kind: How you behave and what you think of others affects how you behave towards yourself. If you judge and criticize people around you, you automatically tend to judge and criticize yourself more.
Be kind to other people, help them and you will be more kind to yourself.
Appreciate positive traits and habits in yourself and others. You will become more accepting of yourself and the people in your world.
Overcomplicating Life
Life can get pretty complicated sometimes and this can create stress and unhappiness. In a way it is true that the world is becoming more complex, but we have the power to create new habits that can make our lives simpler.
How to overcome this habit:
Focus on one thing at a time: It is common to have your attention all over the place. Replace this habit with just doing one thing at a time, preparing a to-do list, and writing down your most important goal on a board or somewhere else that you can see each day.
Declutter: If you have too much stuff, ask yourself: Did i use this last year? No. Give the thing away or throw it away.
Communicate: Humans can’t read minds. So if you want to say something, just go ahead and do it. Communicate and this will help minimize over analyzing and avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, negativity, and conflicts.
Breathe in, breathe out: Whenever you get lost in stress, the past or the future, breathe with your belly for 2 minutes and focus on the air moving in and out. This will calm your nerves and bring your wandering mind back into the present moment again.
Aiming For Perfection
Perfection is almost unattainable. You know why? Because its definition keeps changing over time. Maybe life is perfect for you now because you have a perfect house or a perfect spouse, or the car you always wanted. But don’t you think you will want to get something else without which your life won’t be perfect again. And without perfect results you won’t be happy.
Setting the bar for perfection makes you feel like you are not good enough even though you may have had good results before.
How to overcome this habit:
Aim for good enough: Aiming for perfection usually results in something you picked up never getting finished. Go for good enough instead. It will help you finish what you started with and you can always improve upon once you are done with it.
Set a deadline: Let’s say you want to finish designing a website. If you keep working on it until it is done, you will always find something to change or polish and it will not get done. So is better to set a deadline.
Doing it gives you the necessary kick in the butt and helps you rid of the recurring feeling to polish things a little more.
Getting Stuck in the Past and Future
Dwelling too much on the past, reliving painful memories, missed opportunities and so on can kindle feelings of regret and hurt. Overthinking of your future, how things could go wrong in your relationships, your health, at work can create self-doubt, and create horrifying scenarios in your head.
Not living in the moment can make you miss out on a lot of wonderful experiences.
How to overcome this habit:
It is almost impossible to not think about the past or the future. It is indeed important to plan for tomorrow, set short-term and long-term goals, and learn from your past. But it doesn’t help to dwell on those things.
Do what you like to do: Try spending some time doing what you love everyday. Most of us have jobs that we may or may not like but nothing can stop us from finding some time everyday to do what we love.
Guitar lessons or working out in the gym, whatever works for you, just go for it.
Replace the habits that make you unhappy with more positive practices, and you will learn to enjoy life, be happier, and healthier everyday.
Walk, falter, get back up again, repeat. Getting up again makes all the difference.
