Are you happy being unhappy?

You probably had to reread that title a couple of different times because who could possibly be happy being unhappy? To be honest it’s more common than you think. So many of us blame our unhappiness on our life circumstances. “I dont have enough money, I didnt have good parents, I didnt have support growing up. If my spouse or family or friends would only do this then I would be happy. Once I get my degree Ill be happy”

Blah

Blah

Blah.

The only person that is in control of your happiness is you.

An article by Psychology Today states that people who are addicted to unhappiness tend to:

• Find reasons to be miserable when life gets “too good.”
• Prefer to play the victim role and blame others rather than take personal responsibility for their choices.
• Compete with friends and colleagues to see who has it the hardest.
• Have difficulty setting and achieving goals, or conversely achieve goals only to find that they can’t enjoy their success.
• Struggle to bounce back when things don’t go their way.
• Distract, escape or cope by using drugs, alcohol, sex, food, or other addictive or compulsive behaviors.
• Stop taking care of their basic needs, such as a healthy diet, regular exercise, and adequate sleep.
• Feel enslaved to their emotions and powerless to change.
• Feel dissatisfied even when life is going well.
• Have dramatic, unfulfilling relationships.

Similarly, LonerWolf reports that:

People find it hard to let go of things that make them miserable because they also bring them some type of pleasure. It can come in many forms:

• Sympathy: Our society and social etiquette encourages sympathy as a form of virtue. If you complain about being sick, about struggling with a personal problem, there’s always a sympathetic ear to listen and offer “you poor thing” and “awww”s that will make you feel special and indulge your egotistical need of acknowledgment and attention.
• Desires and Expectations: This is attaching yourself to a misery now in order that your future desires will occur. For instance, you might have some ambition to achieve that is bringing you present miseries. So your expectations of the future are the things causing you problems in the present.  Things aren’t going the way you presumed they would.

I was inspired to write on this subject because I am reading the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and there is a section in the book entitled “All Problems are Illusions of the Mind” the book states that there are no problems, only situations to be dealt with now or to be left alone and accepted as part of the “isness” of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with. Problems are mind-made and they need time to survive.

A “problem” by most people’s standards is “an active relationship (a relationship that extends over a period of time) between a human being and a situation that triggers a negative emotion.

For example:

If you stub your toe and have an instant of pain, that’s not a problem. It’s an event.

It only becomes a problem when the pain lasts an extended period of time. Then you’ve probably broken your toe.

If you’re not in pain beyond that instant, then you don’t expend any effort to reducing the pain. You never look for a solution.

IF YOU ARE NOT ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR A SOLUTION YOU DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM. 

Im not saying complications and things dont arise but in the words of Eckart Tolle “challenges exist, but problems are mind-made. Challenges are something that can only be tackled in the present moment and require action.”

You’ll find that most unhappy people have a solution right in front of them but for whatever reason, they choose to obsess and worry about it instead (in comes the anxiety).

If you’re someone with a “problem” for every solution, you probably enjoy being unhappy.