There’s plenty of subtle threats to our mood and happiness in this life. If you identify and mitigate these threats, you’re going to have a far better time when it comes to maintaining and enjoying your happiness.
In a time when a lot of us are locked up at home, with minimal human contact, it’s of paramount importance to make sure that you’re doing everything you can be doing to look after your own happiness and productivity. We get that it’s a hard time. However, everything gets a whole lot harder when you’re unhappy, bored and lack drive.
Here’s five different things that everybody needs to be watching out for when it comes to protecting their happiness.
Comparing Yourself to Others
This is always going to be the biggest source of misery in so many people’s lives. Simply looking at other people who are in your niches and bubble and thinking “look at them doing something I want to be doing so much better than I can” is one of the most toxic habits we engage in. It does nothing other than make us miserable. It’ll see you challenging your ideas of success no end. And at the end of the day, you’ll never be happy behaving like this regularly.
The core issue here is that there’s always going to be someone better. And we live in a culture that hugely favours exceptionalism. Sure, being muscular is nice. Here’s this seven-year-old child from China who’s stronger than you. Wow, you’ve spent years practising to play that drum solo? Watch this guy master it in ten minutes.
That’s the problem here.
We all want to think we’re exceptional because we’ve been taught that that is what matters. Click To TweetIt isn’t. What matters is that you are productive and that you chase the things that matter to you. You want to prioritise things that make logical sense, but that doesn’t mean don’t do something just because you’ll never be the best at it. Do things for the joy of doing them. Work hard, produce things and there’ll be joy in that confidence.
Even the highest achievers on earth end up feeling bad about themselves. Arnold Schwarzenegger used to be unable to look at himself in the mirror for periods during his competitive peak, thinking he still looked small and weak. If even the highest performers suffer these anxieties, what do you really think comparison is good for?
The only person anyone should ever be competing with is themselves yesterday. There’s a time and place for actual competition and that time and place isn’t constantly comparing yourself in the back of your head. That’s no way at all to live or be happy.
Failing to Reach Out to Friends and Family
This is a huge issue for so many people. We think to ourselves, why should we bother to reach out? Why should we see what’s going on with them? They’re not seeing what’s going on with me. This is no way to view things.
In your social group and family, the best person to be is the one who cares. The one who’s putting the effort in, making sure everyone else is doing great and in turn, being able to ask for help or assistance yourself.
Everyone needs a strong network of people around them, and if you’re neglecting your network of friends and family, you’re going to suffer for it in the long run. When things go wrong, as they inevitably will at some point, we all need to be able to pick up the phone and talk to people.
If you’ve not spoken to a friend or family member in six months, you’re going to struggle to reach out in the way that you need to. Feeling needed is also absolutely vital when it comes to being happy. Being the person that people call for help is always going to be a good feeling. Being able to count on people for support while they count on you is always going to be one of the best ways to reinforce your happiness.
Resting On Your Laurels
We all like to sit back and celebrate when we’ve achieved something. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Not even slightly. The problem arrives when you achieve something that deep down, you know you should have already gotten done. Then you use that achievement to excuse laziness to yourself.