5 Unfortunate Habits That Steal Happiness

By Rosemary Nonny Knight on March 18, 2016 - Fact checked by Dumb Little Man

by Rosemary Nonny Knight March 18, 2016

You wake up, you do whatever the day brings and all the while, there is a sinking suspicion that you are getting more and more unhappy. Lots of people live a ‘settled-for’ existence and you may be falling into that trap. Except you know that you are called to more than this, and so it is time to figure out what is halting the progress of happiness in your life.

Table of Contents

1. Lurking On Social Media
2. Choosing To Be Right All The Time
3. Dwelling on worries
4. Diving Deep Into Negativity
5. Accepting Other People’s Limits

1. Lurking On Social Media

Sometimes, social media just seems a little bit too much and so, rather than engaging actively and producing some content yourself, you go around lurking and watching the highlights of other people’s lives. This gives you a vague sense that you are doing all you could be doing to progress your life forward and so, little by little, happiness seeps out. You get more and more discontent, but not in a way that leads to anything useful, because you are not aware it is happening.

It is time to get aware and rather than wishing you could live everyone’s else story, choose to create your own. Take a break from lurking. You may find it harder than you realize to break the addiction. However, it creates space for you to think about what you want from your life and get to work creating it. There is nothing anyone else is doing that out of your reach, so why not stop wishing and start creating? That will certainly increase your happiness levels.

2. Choosing To Be Right All The Time

Are you trying a little bit too hard to be right all the time? Are you trying a little bit too much to get the upper hand all the time? Does that really make you happy or does it makes you feel alienated from everyone you know and now that you have made such a strong, firm statement of what you consider to be right. Are you trapped into thinking there is no other way? Would you rather be right than happy? I mean, there will always be those who do not agree with you. There will always be those who want to lord their opinions over you, but you have to ask yourself whether the feeling it gives you when you do it is worth the trouble. Choose the relationship over being right. You can agree to disagree and still maintain a calm sense of happiness knowing that you have valued the person over their opinion.

3. Dwelling on worries

Worry is having faith in an imaginary negative future. You have no idea what the future will hold so why hold on so tightly to your fears and worries about it? The same way you fear something happening is the same way you can look with excitement at an imagined positive future. Why do we humans, find it so hard to think positively about the future? Change the status-quo. Be the person that sees everything in a positive light. You generally tend to get more of what you expect. so expect good things. It will take some work to get your mind to expect a good result, but it is well worth the effort. And it will make you feel a whole lot happier.

4. Diving Deep Into Negativity

Every day, you are surrounded by negative voices. The radio show you listen to, as the presenters make the macabre seem funny… The news program where the broadcasters make you feel you need to know about every single negative thing happening in the world… Your colleagues moaning and groaning about how hard done by they are… Your partner griping at you about what you have not done yet… The billboards telling you that you need to have something else in order to be happy like those happy people on the poster. Some of these things you don’t even notice anymore. It is time to put some barriers up if it makes you seem anti-social or weird. For your happiness and to be able to live a life of meaning, get it done. Be wary about what you allow into your brain. Get into the habit of asking “Is this helping or hindering?” Then, take appropriate action.

5. Accepting Other People’s Limits

Just because someone else has chosen not to live a fulfilling life does not mean you have to accept their limits as your own. What do you want out of this one life that we get? Go after it. Just the act will increase your confidence and your happiness. You start to see yourself as someone who makes things happen, you start to feel happier within yourself, and no, it is not dependent on what you do. However, whatever the gurus say, it is pretty tough to feel happy when you are living a life beneath your full potential. So, deal with the root of your unhappiness. Are you not living to your full potential because you think there is a limit? If yes, deliberately choose to remove the limit and remind yourself of your unstop-ability as you actually start to act unstoppable. Which of these will you stop? Tell me in the comments and give me other ideas…