You’re Not Supposed to Be Happy
All of the time
One of the biggest struggles in life is happiness. I wake up bombarded with information about how I should be happy. People on social media constantly showing me a facade of how they have awesome lives. As I walk around in life, I see it everywhere.
When I lived in London, I was surrounded by people, doing things and looking happy all of the time. It made me question why am I not like that. This is a massively flawed question, a focus like this is damaging and not based in reality.
Happiness is like a bar of soap the harder you try to keep hold of it the hard it is.
As I’ve got older, more learned, and less interested in other people’s made-up lives I have come to realize that happiness isn’t the goal. Life isn’t about being happy. Life is about being content and able to deal with what comes your way without it destroying you.
I’ve found happiness sine waves (see below) through life and it’s all about being able to ride the wave and be content with it. There are ups and downs, that’s just how it is.
When addressing happiness I have found greater success in moving the average of our experience up and have less swing. Below the ride is the same, with the same ups and downs. Our general experience will be better in the green as the general experience is better rather than the specifics.
Life is hard!
It also comes down to how hard what we are doing is. If we are climbing Everest it’s going to suck! It’s cold, there’s no air, it’s physically demanding, it’s just going to downright suck.
This isn’t a bad thing. You’re achieving something great. You’ll turn around, look out from the top, and know you’ve achieved something, and this will give you a great sense of pride and joy.
This is the same for all aspects of life. Work, relationships, exercise, you name it. They all have their ups and downs.
To believe we are meant to be happy is damaging. It creates false expectations. Like going to a movie that everyone says is the best thing they’ve seen. Often, you’ll leave disappointed- inflated expectations. Where if there are no expectations to a movie, they often are more enjoyable.
How many of us can say we’ve done this? Not just for movies but dates, food, sex?
We need to be able to not go into life with an inflated expectation. Not that we can’t have a minimum expectation. If we have a house it needs to do the basics, keep us warm and sheltered. But we shouldn’t expect a great countryside view, in a city, good schools but quiet and super affordable. They don’t exist. If that’s what we are expecting, we are only going to be disappointed.
Focus on the joy it will bring
This is a huge one for me. I have the tendency to focus on making things perfect. This is another way for saying focusing on the bad bits. It has the goal of making things better but either way, the focus is still negative.
All things have positives and negatives. This means we have to deal with both. New baby- sleepless nights, no time to yourself, however, the most joy and love you can experience. So, the first thing is to focus on what joy it is and will bring, not just what you are experiencing at the moment. See it as the cost of something.
A cake cost money. A baby costs sleep. Happiness costs the negative.
Create an environment that plays to our joys
We need to be able to balance the positives and negatives in life that best suit us. If you like meat and it makes you happy don’t become vegan. If you value sleep don’t get a night job. If we take steps to create routines, spaces, and people that complement our desires, we will have a far more fulfilling and happy life.
Find the space, people, or routine that makes you happier and add more to your life.
Focus on the priority
The way I look at it is we all have priorities. We need to be happy that we can just focus on that. We have a newborn. I get less sleep and less time to myself. But my priority is having her healthy and happy and all these ‘negatives’ achieve that. This should be our focus, creating positives in our priorities in life. There would be something wrong with the equation if I neglected the things I love for an easier life.
Sometimes you need to go towards the discomfort and negatives to get good. We need to not allow these negatives and trials to ruin it for us.
Remove the negatives
We discussed social media making me feel stressed. This isn’t serving me. My solution is to get rid of it. I haven’t had them for 3 years now and have never felt better. Get rid of the things that make you feel anxious. Simple.
Yes, it may be a little scary to disconnect but I promise you you’ll be happier for it.
Stop comparing!
Your life is your own so own it. Own the good and the bad. People who seem happy often aren’t. Life is full of the good and the bad for everyone and people often don’t share the bad. Thinking that everyone else is happy is a sure-fire way to make sure you aren’t.
Summary
Life is hard, it’s full of ups and downs. Focus on making the general ride better rather than just trying to have ups. Make it better in the areas that matter. Doing this each day, step by step will increase the general happiness of our lives.
Having a general focus on life rather than happiness, not a warped idea that we should be happy all of the time will, ironically, make us happier.
