Our own hand in unhappiness

When you pose the question, 'What makes you unhappy?', many can offer passionate responses and justifications. When you change the question slightly, to 'How do you make yourself unhappy?', the explanations seem to be less definitive.

We have a knack for outsourcing our quest for well-being to the world around us, yet are reluctant to own up to the inner ambiance of our own happiness. We readily blame external events, symbols, and situations as surrogates for most of our miseries - but drag our feet when we need to examine our own hand in scripting discontent.

Contracting out happiness, unfortunately, doesn't make things better. Convenient as outer mirages of our inner turmoil may be, a significant step towards a happier life is to turn inward - and simply start making yourself less unhappy.

Of all the ways we often contribute to an aura of despair, three particular behaviours stand out:

The first, a habit of clinging to bygones. There is a unique weight to recycling sadness. You thoroughly dim your spirit when you re-invite images of hurt into your life; even darkening their narratives. You bolt your happiness every time you retell the story of long-gone sorrows or replay the details of setbacks. And it doesn't help when you allow the media's reminders of life's inadequacies to seep into your daily life.

In contrast, happier people spend their best energy on today, not yesteryear. Most 'woulds', coulds', and 'shoulds' are fenced out of their lives by rather being fully engaged in extracting present delights, exposing themselves to constructive information, and shaping a better tomorrow, pragmatically so.

The second way to make yourself unhappy is by playing judge. Energy evaporates in the presence of subjective convictions and endless appraisals of right and wrong. You miss out on so many moments of joy when you allocate mind space to inner courtroom dramas; identifying culprits, pointing fingers, and sentencing scapegoats. Gauging and critiquing every nuance of life are heavy on inner peace.

Happier people are realists but steer away from trying to adjudicate what is beyond their reach. They spend their best time in their own lives - and within their own sphere of influence.

A third successful strategy of raining on your own flame is to make things personal. Amplifying every life event, as if the world plots against us, can be a one-way ticket to unending dissatisfaction. This form of unhappiness flourishes when you overthink the things that should receive no thought capital at all, and over-associate with the behaviour and sentiments of others.

Happier people don't live through the eyes of an audience. They don't do drama, they refrain from over-interpreting life's imperfections, and they under-identify with the opinions and emotions of people.

A huge portion of everyday happiness depends on silencing unhappy inner dialogues. Just as every object in a room, even the ordinary ones, gleam when you open the curtains and invite the sun, so will your happiness when you disallow shadows of gloominess to live in your mind. Let this Spring be the first season of a bright-minded future!