Dumb Little Man: 43 Reasons We are Unhappy (And 43 Solutions)
Unhappiness may be influenced - but certainly not controlled - by external situations.
We're unhappy because we allow ourselves to be unhappy.
Often we plant our own seeds of discontent. Sometimes we realize it, but most of the time, the seeds take root and begin to blossom completely unbeknownst to us. Until
it's too late.
Until the seed is a tree.
Unhappiness stems from many different things, but it's within our power to eliminate. So let's pull it up by the roots.
1) Desire - Desire is the cause of misery. A desireless state of mind is the cause of happiness. "When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire
can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself - Oh yes, I already have everything that I really need." - Dalai Lama
2) Loneliness - "Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone." - Paul
Tillich
3) Materialism - "An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world because it contains within itself no
limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited." - E.F. Schumacher
4) You wish you were someone else - "The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself." - Lao Tzu
5) You haven't found your purpose - "Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not mindless self-indulgence, is the proof
of your moral integrity since it is the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values." - Ayn Rand
6) You compare yourself to others - If you do so, you are insulting yourself. It gives rise to unnecessary jealousy. You have no idea what their journey is all about. Don't let your neighbours set your standards.
7) You're being someone you're not - Be YOURSELF. Don't imitate others. Instead of being a poor imitation, be a 100% original. The turmoil between our true nature and what we pretend and strive to be is what we call stress or tension leading to unhappiness."To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest achievement." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
8) You're stuck in the past - Make peace with your past so that it won't mess-up the present. We cannot change the past. We should never brood over the past. DO NOT REGRET. Life is not a continuous procession of past regrets. Never ever live with regret. Whatever happened was destined to happen only that way. Why cry over spilled milk? Learn from the past and move on. "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." - Buddha
9) You're stuck in the future - You can ruin the present by worrying about the future. Life is not a continuous procession of future anxieties. Do it! Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.
10) You're unhealthy - Our thoughts, feelings and emotions, attitude, behaviour, what we eat and how we eat all influence our physical and psychological health. Therefore always entertain good
positive thoughts, emotions, attitude and behaviour and have a healthy diet. Those who have everything in this world except happiness and health are the poorest and those who have
happiness and health are the richest.
11) You're negative - "Quit thinking that you must halt before the barrier of your inner negativity. You need not. You can crash through... whenever we see a negative state, that is where we can
destroy it." - Vernon Howard
12) You're a perfectionist - Being a perfectionist and expecting others to be perfectionists is a sure short cause for unhappiness, especially when we fail and others do not
measure up to our standard of perfection. There are many imperfections in life and we may have to simply live with some of them.
13) You're afraid of failure - "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill
14) You're insecure - Material security is the most ephemeral. Nor can we find total emotional security in relationships with others. No one can love us enough to fill up that emptiness within and possessive love only generates fear that accentuates this hollowness. Not security but insecurity is the basic fact of life and we must recognize it. Instead of chasing after something that does not exist, we must come to terms with the uncertain nature of our existence. Spirituality teaches us not to identify with the external, not to try to anchor ourselves in the things we own, nor in other people. The inner loneliness can only be transmuted by the experience of the eternal and unshakable within ourselves and spirituality provides us with the practical means to foster that experience. Security is purely a personal achievement. It is harmony and conviction in one's inner essence that results from Self-knowledge and bestows a poise that remains unaffected by life's ups and downs.
15) You neglect personal relationships - "By building relations we create a source of love and personal pride and belonging that makes living in a chaotic world easier." - Susan Lieberman "Trust is to
human relationships what faith is to gospel living. It is the beginning place, the foundation upon which more can be built. Where trust is, love can flourish." - Barbara Smith
16) You procrastinate - "Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today." -
Lord Chesterfield
17) You don't give enough - "Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." - William Arthur Ward
18) You try to control everything - "As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow
with them, to your great delight and benefit." - Emmanuel Teney
19) You hold grudges - Forgive and forget. That is the best thing to do. "I've had a few arguments with people, but I never carry a grudge. You know why? While you're carrying a grudge, they're out
dancing." - Buddy Hackett
20) You're unrealistic - "I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter." - Walt Disney
21) Your professional expectations are out of line with reality - "Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality.
Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like." - Lao Tzu
22) You're not learning - "Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young." - Henry Ford
23) You have unrealized dreams - "All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." - Walt Disney "Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our
potential." - Winston Churchill
24) You're bored - The greatest tragedy of anybody's life is that he can't stand himself. And then he wants to impose this bored entity on others for the sake of company!! Facing one's own self is the biggest problem. We get bored when we get stuck with ourselves. The more and more we escape from ourselves, the less and less becomes our capacity to appreciate or enjoy the "isness" / "beingness".
25) You don't spend enough time alone - "Solitude is the place of purification." - Martin Buber
26) You're jealous (of people who are happy) - "Don't waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind." - Mary Schmich
27) You're dependent - Try to reduce being dependent on any particular place, time, object, people, environment, condition, situation and circumstance for happiness. Any kind of dependency is a cause for bondage and any kind of bondage is a cause for misery. Permanent and infinite happiness doesn't come from impermanent and finite things and beings. Everything is temporary.
28) You can't accept happiness (don't think you deserve it) - Our essential nature is of Infinite, Absolute Bliss. If you knew who you are in Reality, you will always be happy. Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response. Most people would rather be certain they are miserable, than risk being happy. You simply cannot be unhappy unless you have decided to be unhappy. Make up your mind to be happy. Learn to find pleasure in simple things. You cannot prevent the birds of sadness flying over your head, but you can prevent them from nesting in your hair.
29) You're always one step away (you think the next step will finally do it for you) - "Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the
need without ever reaching satisfaction." - Erich Fromm
30) You hate your job - Instead of doing what you like start liking what you do. Make the best of your circumstances. No one has everything and everyone has something of sorrow intermingled with gladness of life. The trick is to make the laughter outweigh the tears. Chose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life. Happiness and unhappiness are in the way we meet events not in the nature of these events themselves. "Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better." - Martin Luther King Jr.
31) You're with the wrong person - "People are not perfect... very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they've had to work
through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that." - Patricia Hewitt
32) You have no spiritual life - Spirituality helps us to face all the challenges of life. "Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life." - Buddha
33) You do not provide any value (to others) - "Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value." - Albert Einstein
34) You have no real friends - Real friendship needs to be cultivated over a period of time. "Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus
with you when the limo breaks down." - Oprah Winfrey
35) You're afraid of yourself - Often we are afraid of becoming something that has a low esteem in our eyes. "I'm sure not afraid of success and I've learned not to be afraid of failure. The only
thing I'm afraid of now is of being someone I don't like much." - Anna Quindlen
36) You don't live in the present - Let your mind be where your hands work. "Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have
any control: now." - Denis Waitley
37) You care too much about what others think - Do not worry about what others will think, they don't do it very often anyway! The so called 'others' are equally worried about what 'others' will think!! What other people think of us is none of our business. You can't please everybody. Don't let criticism worry you. The faculty of imagination is for creativity. It should not be misused for worrying.
38) You lack gratitude - "Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude." - Denis
Waitley
39) You don't relax - "To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float." - Alan
Watts
40) You're impatient - "Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods.
Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come." Robert Schuller
41) You don't like your town/city - Happiness is a state of mind. It is independent of any particular place, time, object, people, relationship, situation, circumstance or environment. If you are
not happy here and now you will never be happy anywhere any time. Can we run away from our own mind?
42) You equate comfort with happiness - We think that if we had every comfort and luxury available to us, we'd be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. That is seen in western culture.
Now what has happened is that we sit amidst all the comforts and luxuries and are comfortably and luxuriously miserable!!! Happiness is within us and not outside. The Inner
happiness is projected on the external world giving an illusion of happiness outside. Therefore external factors can never bring happiness.
43) You don't love yourself - "Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world." - Lucille Ball
We let ourselves slip into unhappiness - it is not thrust upon us.
Therefore it is within our control to defeat it... and be happy.
Happiness is not an elusive object, always slightly out of reach. It is our very essential nature. There is a source of Infinite Bliss within awaiting to be discovered. It is
independent of all external and internal factors. When one discovers that, one can always be happy any where any time, irrespective of the circumstances.
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