Your habits determine your happiness. It’s quite easy to create your happiness and become a happier person, and it is also quite easy to be the one to rob yourself of your own happiness. I do that to myself all the time and most of the time I do it unknowingly. Well, nothing to worry about because you are not alone on this one. In this post we are going to remind each other of the small habits that tend to steal our happiness and how we can learn to change these habits.
A habit is a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. Habits are things that we do often or regularly often without thinking about them. Habits are learned behaviours therefore with some effort they can be changed.
1 Comparing yourself to others.
With all the social media craze, people always posting everything about their life, its easy to find yourself comparing your life to theirs. Whether it’s a fake life or it’s their real life we just somehow find ourselves comparing. Although it is natural to do these comparisons, it is very damaging. It can be their appearance, job title, wealth, lifestyle, just about anything that we use to compare ourselves to someone and after we are done, we would have messed up our self-esteem and our confidence. We begin to feel unworthy, valueless which brings us a heavy dose of unhappiness.
- Changing the habit of comparing yourself to others
Be conscious and aware of comparison thoughts that crowd your mind. Stop as soon as you realise you are making comparisons and try to change focus. Count your blessings, even the little things that you think are insignificant. Focus on your strengths and celebrate them. It’s ok not to be perfect, no one is perfect anyway so keep that in mind. Continue to run your race, don’t let other people’s journey distract you.
2 Waiting for the perfect moment.
There is no such thing as a perfect moment, the perfect opportunity, the perfect time or the perfect state of being. Sorry it’s a myth that just doesn’t exist. The sooner we realise that the sooner we work up and work on our dreams and aspirations in life. We miss a lot in life waiting for the stars to align. Well, moments are never perfect, they are just as we make them. A perfect moment to be happy is never going to come.
- How to stop this habit.
Let’s be willing to act in the face of imperfection. Just like Zig Ziglar said “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great,” Stop having an excuse for everything. Let go off fear and self doubt. If it makes you happy or improves your well being, don’t wait for the perfect moment, just go for it.
3 Harbouring feelings of hate affects your happiness
It’s so easy to harbour feelings of hate and most of the time it gets the best of us. The hate controls us. If you look at it deeply, usually we forget why we hate, what we hate and whom we hate. We simply hate just because. In the end the results are that we start to hate ourselves too. We allow these feelings of hate to steal our joy and happiness.
- How to stop harbouring feelings of hate
It is essential to learn to disconnect ourselves, move on and not look back. It is a difficult process but our happiness maters more than holding on to these feelings. Let us learn to forgive. Always focus on people and things that you like. Always move on to something that makes you happy.
4 Worries and Fears affect happiness
If you try to look back where you’ve come from and what you have gone through in life you find that most of your fears and worries never really came to fruition. How many times have you found yourself uttering the statement “I was worried for nothing”? We have destroyed many opportunities for joy in our lives with needless worry and negativity. Let’s wake up now and realise that our fears and worries are completely unfounded.
- How to stop worrying and being afraid.
Don’t clamp shackles to your own ankles. It’s incredibly easy to enjoy more of life right now no matter the situation you are in. Let go off the layers of nonsense that are weighing you down. Underneath those layers there is a happy productive person. Life can be wonderfully fulfilling when you start peeling the layers of nonsense off and simply appreciate everything for what it is.
5 Making problems or difficulties a big deal
When you encounter a bad time in your life choose to not make it anything more. A bad day is nothing but a bad day. Life’s adversities will inevitably affect you or your living conditions but you don’t have to let them affect who you are and where you are going with your life. Making your problems a big deal does nothing positive but to take away your happiness.
- How to change
Focus on the positive things happening in your life. You might be surprised to learn how much is going right in your life. Be thankful. There is always something to be happy and thankful about, all you have to do is dig deeper. Next time you find yourself dwelling on a problem and trying to make a big deal out of it, just think about something you are grateful to have in your life. Think and focus on happy thoughts.
6 Holding on to people who hurt you
It is ok to
walk away from some people sometimes. It’s not because you don’t care but it’s
because they don’t. Someone who keeps hurting you time and time again does not
care or love you. People who are hurtful to you can be friends, your family,
spouse or significant other. These people should be involved in bringing you happiness
but instead their hurtful ways end up stealing your joy. Walk away from those
types of people without feeling any guilt or regret. Your happiness is
important.
- How to stop holding on to hurtful people.
It doesn’t really mater how they keep doing it, if people are hurting you or they have hurt you in the past and you are failing to forget and move past it, then just simply let them go. Free yourself from being hurt, give yourself time to heal and reclaim your happiness. It might be a very difficult step to take but try to find the strength and walk up to your happiness. Stay away from toxic relationships. Stop trying to please the haters you’re not the jack whisperer.
Now let’s reflect and get to the root of these habits. There are many of them, you will surely dig some up if you dig deeper. Let’s work on resolving them, armed with this little knowledge that we have shared with each other. Let’s reclaim our happiness.
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂