It is altogether far too common nowadays to see people trapped into lives and patterns of behaviour that leave them feeling utterly unhappy and defeated. Life is not meant to be one long, protracted effort, and any kind of long-term unhappiness is not to be tolerated but combated and challenged at every turn.
It is not always clear how to challenge unhappiness when you identify it in your life. Sometimes, it can even be something of a leap even just to achieve the clarity of seeing how you are dealing with your life. Realising that we are unhappy or depressed can be a sudden shock, even if it did develop slowly over time.
Combating melancholy can be reduced to one simple discipline, in the spirit of efficiency, try building gratitude into your life. Do not try to do seven other things. Do not overwhelm your unhappy mind. Start slow with something simple and build up to full gratitude.
Gratitude’s panoply of benefits, combined with simple implementation make it the ideal safety ring to pull yourself out of depression with. Use it to light the way out of your unhappy lifestyle.
What is Gratitude?
Before I go on to explain why gratitude can be the best route out of an unhappy lifestyle, you need to understand what gratitude really is. At its core, it is a simple thing. Gratitude is positive realism. It is embracing the grimmer side of life, the impossible chance of your existence, health and sheer good luck in the face of many terrible fates that could have befallen you.
It is being aware of the multitudes of simple kindnesses that we accept daily from people around us, and for simple good luck as it happens throughout our days. Simply being aware of all the many ways things are going right for you at any given moment can be a life-changing thing. It is not necessarily a difficult change either, but it can cause deep, serious re-evaluation for the better.
You find yourself doing the bare minimum, and finding no energy left in reserve for anything else, and then wonder why you are feeling so miserable and low.
Gratitude can help challenge this laziness. It lets you see with clarity and regularity just how lucky you are to have another day of mental and bodily functionality, and see the inherent potential evident in your remaining years on this earth. It makes you see how inexcusably wasteful not being productive is, and gives you the kick up the backside that so many people need to get started.
One of the simplest benefits of managing to properly build gratitude into your life is simply enjoying better and better moods. Learning to feel happy and joyful again can be a long and bitter process, full of setbacks and potholes, but if you have a straightforward route to follow, where there is little to no expectation of yourself, you will achieve it in no time.