Test your happiness index here .. 7 Habits of unhappy and highly ineffective people
2014 studies reveled that, presently India stands at 117th position in the happiness index on a survey conducted across 158 countries. We are below Palestine(108), Bangladesh(109), UAE(20) and another 116 countries, where Switzerland stood first and Togo on the last. (Source: World Happiness Report 2015)
I have recently completed a worshop on ‘7 habits of highly effective people’. The course was based on Stephan Covey’s original book . The course inspired me to write this article. I was thinking if the reverse is true? It looks like it is — this write up is not exactly putting the opposite of what is mentioned in Stephan Covey’s book as Mr Covey is talking about effectiveness not about happiness.It is true that you will be more happy if you are more effective and vice versa. If you are finding yourself in following 7 cases, you are essentially unhappy and currently leading a frustrated life — in fact your are screwing yourself up, its time of wake up and starting living the gift of life.
7 Habits of unhappy people — with some cheat codes
- You are results of your circumstances
You have given your remote control to others around you. The people or situations around you control your emotions. They can make you angry, sad and inpatient. Most of the cases these factors that control you, are the situations that are beyond your control or influence. For example — traffic, long queue, no cash in ATM, rain, friends/family/strangers who do not understand what you are trying to say.
Cheat code: Take a pause, close your eyes, think and respond — do nor react.Cheat brain to post-poning the fixing the situation. Learn to say ‘I choose to …’ instead of ‘I have to …’. Happiness, like unhappiness is a proactive choice. After all you are not a doll with remote control with someone else.
2. You compare yourself with others
You try to compare your car with neighbor's car. You try to compare your children with their classmates. You try to compare your salary with friends having similar experience and education qualifications. You never compare yourself with people whom are at a lower situation compared to you self.
Cheat code: After your comparison, if you really want to become someone that you you know, do a gap analysis and list down things to do to fill the gap, and take the first step. General advice; Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
3. You default belief about life is ‘life is tough’
You see everyone with a doubt;You do not believe in yourself; You think everyone around you is trying to cheat you. You have not motivated anyone to do anything in last 6 months. You find yourself as victim of all most all situations and keep on looking at what happened to you.You try to find tangible return on investment of every money you spent
Cheat code: Start reading and learning world situation; when you complain about not having shoes, think about people don't have legs. Think about soldiers in the borders.
4. You gossip and complain a lot
Most of the time, you talk about your past hardships, you complain about the society, brought up. You blame everyone else other than you for all your hardships. When you run out of such things, you try to find whats in other people life and start gossip.
Fix code: Most of the time the gossip group, is of similar kind of people. Start avoiding such company. Commit yourself to some task to deviate your attention. Do enough time spent on self improvement so that you do not have time to gossip about others. Just promise yourself and the you will not complain for anything for one full day and then see how your life changes.
5. You have not learned anything new in last 6 months
You have not learned anything in last 6 months. If at all you have learned something, that is just for sheer personal or professional survival. You do not remember when did you last spend time on some hobbies — gardening, painting, drawing. You listen to anyone with the intention to respond, not with intention to understand.
Cheat code: Join some courses online, offline, f2f on anything other than what your work demands. Find time for read books other articles. Join a distant education course. One important quality of any great leaders is they spent at least 30 mins to learn something in new. Do not get busy in driving, so that you forget to refuel the tank.
6. You always try to control your life
You try to micromanage everything in order to control the outcome. Life is not in our control most of the time. For you, the way is more important than the target, and most of the cases ‘your way’ is the right way for yourself. You generally pick up fight with others; or get upset due to others behavior
Cheat code: Going with flow is what happy people normally do, when unexpected things happens to their plans. Ctrl-Alt-Del what happened, just go with the flow.
7. You live by default, not by design
You do not have any goal or target for life; If you spent more than an hour in front of TV, especially if you are keep on changing channels — believe me, you do not even know what you want.
Cheat code: Please wake-up and realize that there is only one life and you need to start living it. Please put 7 relations that you cherish (example — Aaryan’s father, Sandya’s husband, Rema’s son, Anoob’s brother, Zubair’s manager, Shaji’s friend) and you see what do you want to do for them before you die. Work towards that goal, take the first baby step today.
If you find yourself in one or two of above symptoms, you must understand this early stage, still curable, take some of cheat codes, you will be all right. If most of above matches your personality, it means that you are very late to start diagonosis; you still not started living life.
I do not remember which movie it was, recall the dialogue from a Bollywood movie. “Yeh mat dekho, Zindagi main kithane pal hai? … Yeh dekho Har pal main kitani zindagi hai?” — means ‘do not count how many seconds are there in life, instead see how much of life you can live in a second’ — very well said.
This is life , close your eyes & ignore all negative things to live happy. Try not to complain for just one day and see your life changes. Start writing down the gratittudes that you have. Write down if you felt happy for the meal that you ate on that day, write down if you are happy on the conversation you had with your spouse, write down if you are happy with the time you spent with your child, write down all the gratitude that you have for small, small things on a piece of paper for next 7days — you see how magical it is and you see how your world changes for you.
Yuo konw waht is Rael Reltionship?
I m gving yuo an exmpl : Jsut c tihs msg. Evrey splleing of tihs msg is wrnog. Bt sitll yuo can raed it wihtuot ayn mistake. if u wnat true Raleti0nship; jsut ignoer mistaeks .. and understand them…..!!� KeeKeep smiling !!! Keep smiling …
Thank you and best Regards
Anu Sadasivan
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