It can be hard to hold onto that flickering flame that is happiness. Sometimes, it seems like all it takes is the smallest gust of wind, the smallest little problem, and whoosh, all your positivity and drive is just gone. That’s just how it is sometimes. However, it doesn’t have to be like that. Here’s eight different ways you can reinforce and protect your happiness.
Change How You View Happiness
Happiness is a big word. People excuse all kinds of decisions and behaviours with happiness. “As long as they’re happy!”. It’s a life-defining feeling that changes us from a failure to a success and vice-versa. The trouble is, most people don’t know what happiness really is. How it embodies itself and what it actually means.
Happiness isn’t staggering around, beaming like a drunk. Happiness is competence, driven and warm. It’s a rejection of pessimism and an embrace of realistic positivity. The hedonistic treadmill is an idea that no matter what changes in our lives, we’ll always return to basically the same emotional standing. That means that even if you win the lottery tomorrow, within a month you’ll be back to your usual mood.
It also means that if you can improve your baseline emotional state, you’ll feel much better no matter what life can throw at you. It’s the best armour against the painful turbulence that life can produce. You’ll know that no matter how terrible things get, you’ll still be able to maintain some level of basic mood.
This is how you need to be viewing happiness. Not as some ethereal goal. Happiness is simply you feeling competent, driven and content. It’s a mood that allows you to chase your goals and dreams without the impact of negativity distorting your mindset, worldview and attitude.
View Yourself as Work in Progress
It’s far too easy to sit back at times and get miserable at your seeming lack of achievement in some arbitrary frame. You think to yourself “I’m nowhere near as good at guitar as I should be” and you get disheartened. Are you going to come away from this thought process-driven and engaged? Probably not.
The only real way to regard yourself when it comes to achievement is that the best is yet to come. Even if that’s not necessarily true. Even if you’ve achieved something truly amazing already. That just means it’s time to find a new goal and get after it.
You’re a work in progress because we all. Click To TweetHabitual change and development is the only way to view life, because if you’re not improving, most of the time you’ll be declining.
Remember to Only Ever Compare You to You
A ridiculous amount of our sadness, anxiety and even depression is a direct result of comparing ourselves to other people. Even though we can only ever compare ourselves to the most surface level vision of other people, and we have no idea how they’re really experiencing life. Even though there might be wildly different circumstances and elements at play. Essentially, other people are irrelevant.
All you know in life is where you’ve been and what you’re about. Beyond that, there are very few guarantees. So, at the cost of sadness, envy and anxiety, why would you spend your time comparing yourself to anyone else?