People who feel a sense of unhappiness about their lives from time to time often have a good idea why they are feeling that way and are able to take some action to eliminate or modify elements of their life in order to get rid of their general feelings of discontent and replace them with happiness.
However many of us will, at some point, simply feel unhappy about life in general yet feel that we cannot put our finger on what it is that is making us feel miserable.
Happiness is a State of Mind
What we must all accept is that there are no pre-determined conditions that will make us happy or unhappy. As individuals, we are all different and all experience the world differently based upon our past experiences. Therefore, although we will all be able to relate to events that generally cause us to feel unhappy, such as a bereavement, the end of a relationship, sickness, the loss of a job, our dislike for the job that we are currently doing etc., our individual reactions to these events and of similar ones will vary greatly from person to person as will our individual abilities of getting over these hurdles in order to regain our sense of peace and contentment with the world.
Often, those people who tend to appear to be always unhappy or just generally disenchanted with life generally, are like that because of the way they have pre-programmed themselves to react to disappointments throughout their lives. You’ll all be familiar with those who tend to come out with comments such as, “It’s bound to turn out to be a disaster, nothing that good ever happens to me,” and, although they might have thrown out that statement flippantly, the fact of the matter is that if they perceive happiness and contentment as something that’s hard to attain, that’s going to elude them more often than not, then they are basically asking for that to be the normal outcome throughout their lives.
Awakening From the Negativity
If you don’t feel happy about your current situation, you need to sit down quietly and work through all the various strands in your life and see how each one makes you feel. Do you like your job or does that cause you to feel stressed each time you think about it? What about your relationship? When you think of your partner do you find yourself only filled with warm, happy thoughts about them or do you constantly have nagging doubts as to whether or not they’re the ‘right’ person for you?
Basically, you should work through each aspect of your life and consider it like being on a journey towards some kind of spiritual path. If you find doubts and indecisions keep cropping up when considering certain aspects of your life, then this indicates that you are on the wrong pathway. And, it’s only when you can consider all aspects and feel in harmony with them all that you are travelling on the best pathway and can you start to approach life with a feeling of contentment and with a clear mind and soul.
Very rarely is our entire life out of synch. In other words, even for those who feel that their life is generally unhappy, they too will be able to identify some aspects of their life which they feel is going well and makes them feel good about themselves. Hold on to those feelings then revisit those elements where you feel unhappy about life and try to come up with a strategy whereby you could change certain things about the unhappy areas to get the happy feelings you’re experiencing in other areas of your life.
Taking Decisions
People who tend to be unhappy can often be great procrastinators. In other words, they feel uncomfortable with making any major decisions which will change their lives and prefer to maintain the status quo even if that means they are denying themselves the happiness which they are entitled to. Therefore, they should try to release themselves from that train of thought and to be bold enough to make important decisions which can change their lives for the better. Decision making often brings new vitality to life. We’re all familiar with the concept of ‘as one door closes, another one opens’, yet how many of us are reluctant to shut that ‘familiar’ door for good, even though we realise it’s not doing us any good?
For us to have any possibility of finding peace and contentment in our lives, it’s crucial that we choose our own paths and not let others opinions of our choices have any bearing on our decision or to let our fears cloud our future decision making. Only when we choose our own paths and refuse to be frightened of making potentially life changing decisions (often for the better), can we truly experience happiness.
Waking up
The moment people wake up and accept that something in their life isn’t working for them or is no longer working for them, that acceptance is the first stage of embarking upon a road that will ultimately lead to happiness. The key then is to discover how you intend to replace the element of your life that no longer has any meaning or purpose for you. Once you’ve achieved that, then you’ll find the happiness you seek.