Does anyone look for happiness?
People are unhappy, irritable, depressed, or lost sometimes or most times.
#ChristianRigg’s article on Tracking Happiness states that there are certain behavioural and cognitive patterns that can lead to unhappiness. The behavioural patterns include staying indoors, isolating yourself, excessive drinking, and drugs, not sleeping enough and not sleeping regularly, chronic inactivity, lack of exercise, and poor nutrition. Whereas the cognitive patterns include tending towards dissatisfaction, skewed affective forecasting, focusing on negative past and future events.
You may be familiar with statements such as:
I'll be happy when... I fall in love.
I'll be happy when... I get married.
I'll be happy when... we can buy our dream house.
I'll be happy when... we can furnish the house. ...
When people link their happiness to things outside of themselves, they easily get disappointment because they cannot control those things. Rather, happiness comes from within a person. This realisation is a game changer as you know that happiness is a CHOICE. There are things within your reach that you can control such as how you think, what you focus on, your choice of words to yourself and others, etc.
To experience happiness, there are some steps you can take beginning with:
👉Identify your negative patterns;
👉Change your negative patterns;
👉Keep evaluating, keep improving, stay happy.
#AlexMonaco’s article states that there are 8 sources of happiness including materialistic, hedonistic, ego-based, event-based, need-based, hobby-based, future-based, and wisdom-based happiness. Furthermore, he notes that achieving wisdom-based happiness is hard and one must work on it. First, learn to manage their emotions, have lots of experiments, and one may have experienced all the other sources of happiness.
If you are tempted to look for happiness outside of yourself, STOP and remember that Happiness is a state, not a trait. Happiness exists within you.
Reflect on:
📌the negativities that have covered your state of happiness,
📌accept your situation; and
📌take steps to make desired change.
