You can’t know if you’re sad at 40 without trying 1 thing first

From the outside looking in, there was little accounting for how depressed I was when I hit 40 years old.

I was an exceptional father and husband, I made good money and lived in a nice house, I made it to the gym regularly and ate a pretty healthy diet.

Wait … doing everything right and still sad at 40?

Classic midlife crisis, right?

Well, sure, that probably played a small role, but I worried it went a lot deeper than that.

But was it possible that I was just a sad person?

This was the question I fixated on as I stared down the barrel of another 40 years of dissatisfaction with what should have been a great life.

It turns out I would get the answer to my question … but it would only come about 1 year later.

Being sad all the time can have real biological causes, but we can help ourselves too. (Licensed by the author under the Unsplash+ License)

Why you don’t actually know if you’re unhappy

The truth is you probably don’t actually KNOW if you’re unhappy, and neither did I back then.

What exactly do I mean by that?

“I know I’m unhappy James. I’m just … I’m frickin’ unhappy.”

Now I know people can have clinical, biological reasons for being depressed.