You Will NOT Be Happy If…

You focus too much on the things that you want

Goals are good, but you don’t want to be so caught up in the future that you miss the present. Strive for the things you want in life but cherish where you are right now.

You want that nice, new luxury car and that’s great (as long as you don’t think it will bring you lasting happiness. If material things made us happy then all rich people would be happy). Just don’t miss out on the good times and life experiences that are right in front of you.

You want to lose weight or quit smoking? These are great things to strive for, but don’t waste your days waiting to get to that other point.

Your life is right now; Maybe you do need to make changes, but there is always something to be grateful for at the present moment.

Knowing that you have decided to make a goal is exciting enough in itself. Cherish this moment; it is the only one you have.

You have negative talk going on in your head

And this is referring to negative talk about yourself as well as others. In reality though, most of the negative banter that goes on in our head is about us.

We criticize ourselves, think we are not good enough or that we can’t do something. Maybe we think people don’t really like us or we’re not that smart. Maybe we think we don’t look good or we weigh too much or our hair is not stylish. This list could unfortunately go on and on.

This has to stop. It only pushes our self-esteem down further and doesn’t let us enjoy life. What is worse, much of this negative thinking is so automatic for us that we often don’t even realize we are doing it.

In order to stop the negativity we need to be proactive. The good news is, it’s not a lot of work and the benefits are life-changing.

We have to be mindful and aware of our thoughts. We need to do some meta-cognition: thinking about thinking. This might sound crazy, but think about it – you can have an entire negative conversation in your head about yourself (or someone else) and 5 minutes goes by before you realize what has been going on.

At this point, the damage is done! We need to stop and change this habit. It’s not a part of our nature to think this way, therefore we can change it.

Here’s a suggestion: for an entire week, we need to be hyper-aware of the thoughts that flow through our brain. When a negative or unproductive thought comes up, we need to STOP.

As much as we might want to continue with the negative thought (it has become so habitual and comforting to us), we have to stop. This is called ‘Thought Stopping’ or ‘Thought Blocking’ and is used often in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

CBT is a very effective, short term and hands-on therapy that is used to change patterns of thinking or behavior that affect how we feel.

When we have a negative thought, we need to stop it completely or stop it and turn the thought around.

For example, let’s say you have this thought going on in your head:

‘I can’t believe I ate that much food when I want to lose weight. I am such a fat loser, I can’t even stop eating. Nothing will ever change for me.’

This sort of thinking is destructive and must stop. It can be replaced with a thought that is more rational and accurate. For example,

‘I have a goal to lose weight and I will reach that goal. I may have eaten more than I am happy with tonight, but that’s okay. I recognize it and now I move on. I have learned from it and I am stronger. It’s not like this happens all the time, I have been very good about trying to be healthy.’

Our negative thoughts affect our entire being and all of the things around us whether we realize it or not. It is so important to be aware of what is going on in our head and be in control of what we say to ourself (and others).

Read what The Noble Eightfold Path (Buddhism) says about Right Thought.

You worry about what everyone else thinks

This is also a confidence killer. First of all, you have no idea what others think (your negative mind fills in for you there). The truth is most people are so caught up with themselves they don’t think too much of others.

This is not necessarily a good thing for society (self-consumption), but what it means is that people are not that concerned with you. But what if they are? What does it really mean? The truth is that you will really never know and there is nothing that you can do about it.

What is even truer is the fact that people often think something about another person because of their own issues. So, in reality, it is about their own problems.

You need to love yourself and who you are. There are some people that might not like you. This is not only natural but normal.

You are a perfectionist

Being a perfectionist is so bad. And yes, I am speaking from experience. Being perfectionistic holds us back from so much and is actually detrimental to progress.

Many perfectionists never start or try something new for fear that it might not end up being perfect.

Similarly, they don’t finish many projects for the same reason. They end up not doing anything. Or if they do, they will be disappointed and criticize their work because it is not ‘perfect’. This in turn makes them feel bad about themselves and their abilities.

This really is a very sad predicament. There is no perfection – everything can be improved upon in some way. The perfectionist is hoping to attain something that is never attainable, therefore they will always be disappointed.

It is so important to realize this, really internalize it. You can ‘train’ yourself out of being a perfectionist. You can learn to accept things as they are and know that everything is just fine – even great. It is simply not fair, logical or productive to have a goal that is impossible to reach.

You live in the past

So many people think of their life at an earlier time. It’s quite natural. We think of when we were young, carefree, first in love, in college, etc. We may have very fond memories or not so fond memories. Reminiscing is fine, but reliving or ruminating on things past is unhealthy and destructive.

Maybe you want a relationship back, maybe you want your youth back, or someone has died and you want to go back to a time before it happened. Or maybe you made a mistake and you want to imagine going back and making things different.

This is another illogical and unproductive activity (like perfectionism) because it is not possible to go back. That is it. We have to have acceptance of the moment we have.

Wanting the glory days of when you were a youthful cheerleader or first in love will bring you nothing but unhappiness and will never move you to better the current life you have.

Likewise, dwelling on a mistake in the past does no good for anyone. Accept the past and strive to better yourself every day.

Just remember,

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind.     – Buddha