Things That Do Not Make Us Happy
1. Health Problems: This is probably the biggest cause of a person’s constant worry and unhappiness. Bad health cripples our daily life and becomes a hurdle in our day-to-day functioning. This not only affects our self confidence and normalcy of life, this also leads to lasting unhappiness. The physical pain or the emotional agony of not being able to function like others leads to deep sorrow. Our health should be our first priority but sadly we realize it only when we lose a bit of it.
2. Unhealthy Relationships: Just the way healthy relationships lead to long term happiness, unhealthy relationships can be devastating. Not just an unhappy marriage can get deadly for a person, being in thecompany of unhappy people can also bog us down in life. I recently had to let go of a dear friend from college because she had begun to become toxic in my life and I could feel it. Each time I talked to her, my mind would only become over stressed.
3. Pursuit of Materialistic Pleasures: In my humble opinion, pursuit of materialistic pleasures has an inversely proportional relationships with happiness. Not a surprise that a recent study found how Facebook can make us unhappy and have detrimental effects on our mental health. Running behind money does not take us in a better direction either. Rich people are not happy and this sheds light on the fact that money may bring us pleasures but not happiness. I agree, sometimes we equate happiness with the materialistic pleasure we have accumulated in our lives – car, big house, foreign trips etc but trust me, the real happiness – the one that lingers on for long – comes from within and not from these materials located outside our body.
4. A Wandering Mind: I believe this is the biggest cause of my misery. I am somebody who finds pleasures in small, little things but my main problem is my wandering mind. I am content with what I have but I still sulk at times and that is mainly because my mind has a habit of wandering. I often go into wild thoughts of running away from everything. While this unnecessary wandering has reduced over the last few years but I still have difficulty in focusing my mind on one, single thing and this has caused me enough distress. Wandering mind leads to distractions. It takes our attention away from the present to something far off, distant. It takes us away from reality and fixes itself up on an illusion and this results in ultra dissatisfaction from life.
5. Constant Worrying (and Pessimism): In my opinion, constant worrying about something or the other is the silent murderer of happiness and contentment. I often meet people who always have a problem ready in front of them and this problem is most of the times created by their own thoughts. Initially I used to spend time with them dealing with their ‘assumed’ problems but now I saw good bye as soon as they mention their new worry. This kind of worrying dwells upon negative thoughts and fosters itself on killing optimism and developing the habit of being critical of almost everything. Research has proved that the way we think of future has a direct link with depression and hence determines our level of happiness. The more worried, critical and pessimist we are about the future, the more difficult being happiness becomes.
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