Nobody consciously chooses to be unhappy, but you can cause yourself a lot of misery by engaging in negative mental habits. The outcomes we experience in life are often the result of our habits.
Eliminating counterproductive habits from your life is the first step to experiencing true happiness.
Make an effort to eliminate habits that negatively impact your happiness
- Having unreasonable timelines. Nearly any goal is reasonable. Unfortunately, it’s common to overestimate what can be accomplished in a certain amount of time. Interestingly, most individuals underestimate what’s possible over longer stretches. Be sure your timeline is reasonable.
An overly optimistic estimation will leave you feeling defeated when you’re unable to attain your goal on schedule.
- Holding a grudge. Focusing on negative events creates unhappy feelings. Taken to the extreme, a grudge can lead to engaging in negative actions to get back at someone.
- Holding a grudge has been described as drinking poison and then expecting your enemy to suffer. Let go of your negative feelings toward others!
- Spending too much time in the past or future. It’s challenging to be happy if you’re regretting the past or fearing the future. Learn from your past missteps and avoid dwelling on them. Avoid worrying about the future.
- If you foresee potential challenges ahead, calmly prepare solutions. If you live in the present moment, being happy becomes much easier. Embracing a victim mentality. It’s common to search for excuses for our negative experiences. We often try to justify staying in our current circumstances. You may very well be the victim of some unfortunate situation, but it’s your responsibility to work your way out of it.
- Taking responsibility for the happenings in your life is powerful. Countless individuals have overcome incredible odds. You can certainly be among them!
- Comparing yourself to others. Everyone starts with a unique set of talents, skills, and experiences. Avoid comparing yourself to others. If you want to make a comparison, compare yourself to your recent past.
Are you heading in a positive direction? If so, you probably have a good reason to be excited. If not, it’s time to get busy making some changes.
- Failing to learn from failure. Failure is rarely enjoyable, but it can be a useful experience. Learn from your failures and apply the knowledge to your future attempts. Failure can be a great tool for moving toward success. Repeating the same errors will provide the same results. View failure as a learning opportunity.
- A lack of gratitude. Things are rarely as bad as they seem. Regularly reminding yourself of this can demonstrate that your life might be more wonderful than you realize. Use spare moments to mentally list the things that fill you with feelings of gratitude. It will allow happiness to enter your life.
- Settling for low standards. It’s possible to become comfortable with poor results. On one hand, you might be unhappy with where you are. On the other hand, trying for more seems scary.
- You’re unique and capable. You can have a wonderful life. Increase your expectations. There’s no reason to settle for less.
Certain habits make it more challenging to experience happiness. Identifying and eliminating these counterproductive habits can create the necessary space for happiness to enter your life. Enhance the quality of your habits and you’ll experience a more positive perspective on life. After all, everyone deserves to be happy.
