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You have tried everything to be happier.
You started working out, eating healthy, developing good habits, meditating, having good relationships, following your heart, stopped complaining, sleeping enough, and so on.
Still, you are not as happy as you hoped you would be.
Happiness is a very elusive concept. Sometimes it’s there without reason. And sometimes happiness is missing although you have every reason to be happy.
Some people claim life is about being happy others say a happy life is unrealistic.
Hence, it seems there is a major incongruency in what happiness is and is not. So, before I get into the one reason why you are not happy, let us try to decipher what happiness is.
What is Happiness?
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The Cambridge dictionary defines happy as feeling, showing, or causing pleasure or satisfaction.
But is that all there is to happiness?
I don’t think so.
There is one distinction I want to emphasize:
1. Acute happiness. This is any event, person, or thing that triggers your feelings of happiness in that moment. Acute happiness is usually an intense feeling of joy, pleasure, satisfaction that subsides over time.
2. Chronic happiness. I know chronic implies disease. But in this sense, I am using it to describe a sense of being happy with your life in general. Chronic happiness is a consistent feeling of peace, contentment, presence.
Acute happiness is easy to accomplish. Eat delicious food, watch a comedy, have sex, take drugs, etc. But the problem with seeking out acute happiness is that after it has subsided you feel even less happy than before.
Hence, what we want to focus on is chronic happiness. This is the type of happiness that you get when you feel like life is unfolding perfectly. Unfortunately, this is rarely observable in people.
And sure, there are many reasons why you might be unhappy. Here’s a list:
• Being negative/ Being around negative people
• Comparing yourself to other
• Blaming others
• Trying to control everything
• Holding on to the past
• Not having a purpose
• Not living in the present moment
• Trying to impress others
• Self-judgment
• Isolating yourself
These are all indeed possible reasons why you are unhappy. However, most of them are just symptoms. They are not the cause of your unhappiness.
I have tried to fix all of the above issues and more. Yet still, I have found myself asking myself the question:
Why am I not happy?
Well, why was I not as happy as I thought I deserved to be?
I have done the work and paid my dues. And I have done my best to earn my happiness. But perhaps this is where my fallacy was.
The One Reason Why You Are Not Happy
When I figured this out it was like a veil was lifted.
We try to solve the obvious, surface problems to be happier. But this is like trying to fix a stab wound by putting a band-aid on it. It might stop the bleeding for a while and things seem to go well. But the internal damage wears you down.
The one reason why you are not happy is that you are holding on to unhappiness. This might be anticlimactic for you, so let me elaborate.
You might be thinking why should I hold on to unhappiness? Well, we are not consciously holding on to unhappiness. No one wants to be unhappy.
But the reason is, that on a deeper level we think that being unhappy is necessary to achieve the life that will make us happy.
In other words, subconsciously we believe that if we are happy with what we are, do, and have right now, we won’t be, do, or get more in life.
We believe that if we are happy we would betray ourselves. And that as soon as we are happy, we’ll stagnate and our life won’t move in the direction we want it to move in.
This means many of us believe that we don’t deserve happiness. At least not yet.
But here is something important.
Being happy with what you are, do, and have in life right now is the fastest way to live the life you desire.
Truly think about this and ask yourself if this doesn’t apply to you. I think it applies to most people who are unhappy in their life.
Unhappiness is not a gateway to happiness; it is a gateway to more unhappiness.
How to Live a Happier Life
Now that we know the deep reason why we are unhappy you might wonder, what do I do with this?
I’m glad you asked.
But the answer is that you don’t do anything with this.
Living a happier life is not about doing things.
It’s about recognizing that everything you desire is accompanied by an internal state. As much as an external event can precipitate an internal state it also works the other way around.
If you understand this on the deepest level, a shift in perception will happen. You’ll realize that being happy is a decision. It’s the decision to no longer be in your own way.
This means to let go of negative emotions and embracing happiness when it wants to enter your life.
Also, if you’re working towards a goal or desire, ask yourself if you hold on to the striving. Often we hold on to the payoff we get from striving for things and therefore block their fulfillment.
In that sense, unhappiness can also be a way to keep yourself busy.
When it comes to living a happier life, you can set goals, fulfill your desires, do things that make you happy, improve yourself, and so on. And these are all fine and you can keep doing those things.
But if you’re still unhappy there might be a crucial component missing.
And this component is present moment awareness. Because unhappiness is always associated with thinking about the past or the future.
There’s rarely anything wrong with the present moment.
Start by shining the light of awareness on all aspects of yourself.
Be aware of your internal and external experience right now. That way you’ll start to unravel all the ways you’re standing in your own way to live happier.
If you commit to allowing life to happen you are just one step away from happiness.
And how do you know you allow life to happen?
When you don’t try to suppress, repress, and escape your inner experience.
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“People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Luka
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