We, humans, tend to underestimate our happiness and how important it is for us.
The happiness has been one of the most important surveys managerial metrics for a while now, and the per cent of those that [unhappy is the highest it has been in the last 50 years]. Even the 2007 crisis that saw a huge spike in suicide cases didn’t give us these unhappiness numbers.
The unhappiness is a real mental illness that lowers our productivity, creativity, self-esteem and most importantly, the ability to think straight. Unhappiness also is an illness that doesn’t appear on its own. Usually, the unhappiness is followed by a huge range of other problems such as depression and anxiety.
Unhappiness in 2021
We have all developed a special behaving pattern that takes the unhappiness that is present within us and shoves it as deep inside of us as we can.
It tries to hide it in the places that our mind would never be able to look whilst creating a specific physical and mental, behavioural model that ignores these problems of happiness and keeps consuming each day at a time.
This system was developed in the past in order for us not to go insane in the dangerous moments of moving our encampments or when someone close to us got killed while hunting a mammoth. But the ability to stop our mind from expressing itself has been a tool that we use to make our lives worse, not better.
Ways that we trick ourselves
There are multiple ways that you can trick your brain from being unhappy into being happy on the surface. If you notice that you have used one of those methods, maybe meditation and other techniques to surface your real feelings are something you should look at.
- Usually, people try to trick themselves with expensive gifts that supposedly must make you happy. It can be a new game for you to sink your time in. It can be a new TV that you can use to numb your brain into not even thinking of anything as it is busy constantly being fed rubbish. It can be a car that you can brag about and feel superior to others. A new set of clothes that must increase your confidence and your energy levels, but only remind you why you were sad in the first place after a week. The worst part is not that these gifts don’t actually make you happy, but when we are sad, we tend to make stupid choices, and most likely, you never even needed these items and spent large sums on them already. What makes it even worse is that usually in the USA, specifically all of the money for these purchases come from the credit cards that make you sadder and your financial position even worse.
- Looking at someone else who is happy and imitating them is something that we do due to the reflex. We see someone happy and wouldn’t doing the same thing cause ourselves to be happy as well finally? Even though this can seem smart in reality, you start living someone else’s life. A life that is not your own and doesn’t align with yourself fully. That is a sure way to get into the unhappiness abyss.
- Getting busy. Some too many people throw themselves at work or at some hobbies that consume all of their time and energy. So much that they have no power to think about the bad thing or to do anything about it, that can seem smart but what a person is doing, in reality, is postponing the drawbacks effects that will hit you back even harder in the future when you inevitably burn out.
We try to be happy, but when we can’t instead of fixing our surrounding, we try to accept that fact. This leads to too many problems and as the result causes suffering that only worsens the situation.
Stop tricking yourself and start thinking about what will really make you happy.
Start now. Get perfect later.
Klim Y
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