10 Causes and Cures of Unhappiness

 

One of the quickest ways to spread the sunny rays of happiness over your life is to directly confront the negative attitudes darkening your doorstep.  

While neither universal nor all-encompassing, the joy-stealing attitudes and corresponding cures listed below are common enough to warrant a thumbtack on the wall of many lives, including my own.

1. Jealousy: Destroy the green monster by celebrating the successes of others. If your friend succeeds, celebrate his victory as your own; if your enemy succeeds, remind yourself that jealousy is self-defeating, pointless, and merely extends an enemy’s power over you.

2. Persecution Complex: Recognize that persecution is irrelevant, since you (and only you) control the outcome of your life. Every person has a stack of obstacles placed before him; success hinges upon your ability to overcome the obstacles in your path, persecution or no.

3. Lack of Accountability: We may not control every bad thing that happens to us, but we do control how we react to those bad things.  Instead of passing the buck, take responsibility for every failure so you can learn and grow.

4. Perfectionism: Stop nit picking. Perfection is rarely attainable and seldom necessary. You’re a person, not a robot. Use the 80/20 Rule whenever appropriate.

5. Excessive Reasoning: Man is blessed with a marvelous and astounding ability to reason. At its best, this ability facilitates accomplishment; at its worst, it causes spirals of perfectionism, over-thinking, and paralysis by analysis. If it’s clear you’re in a situation that cannot be improved through logic and reason, learn to let go. 

6. Negativism: Remind yourself that there are just as many positive forces in the world as negative ones; your fixation on the negative is a matter of perspective and choice.

 

7. Assuming the Worst of Others: There is a fine line between guarding against a realistic threat and being needlessly defensive. Make sure you haven’t crossed that line. Whenever possible, give people the benefit of the doubt.

8. Low Self-Esteem: Raise your self-esteem by recognizing your accomplishments and positive qualities; further boost it by correcting the problem areas that drag you down.

9. Low Self-Efficacy: Self-efficacy is defined as faith in your ability to achieve a desired outcome. To overcome low self-efficacy, master the skills required to reach your objective. Practice, practice, practice.

10. Feelings of Meaninglessness: Inject meaning into your life by learning to follow your passion: that internal compass, guiding you toward fulfillment. Read my synergy series of articles for more information; if you disagree with my approach for discovering purpose, pioneer your own.

Unhappiness is both self-defined and self-imposed (meaning a person who believes himself happy is), so if you’re capable of controlling your mental state without examining its constituent elements, I stand in awe of your mental abilities and politely leave you to your devices.

On the other hand, if you’re like most people I’ve known (myself included) and occasionally feel unhappy for reasons that cannot be swept under the rug, review this list of 10 self-destructive attitudes and corresponding cures.

By understanding the source of your unhappiness, you can take the steps required to climb out of the hole of despair and into the sunlight of happiness. 

7 Ways to Increase Your Self-Esteem

 

Last week, a couple of readers asked if I had any tips for increasing self-esteem. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today – how to raise your self-esteem.

Traditional advice includes positive affirmation, recognizing your strengths, and meditation – but my advice includes none of these.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure affirmations work wonderfully for some people, but they did not work for me because they seemed like a trick – a smoke screen covering the truth – to my highly analytical mind.

Whether affirmations work really isn’t the point – the point is that the advice I dispense on this site comes from my own experience. In other words, I have to write what I know.

And the truth is, I know what it’s like to suffer from low self-esteem, and I also know what it’s like to finally learn to believe in myself. So every bit of advice that I dispense here today has been battle tested in my own life.

There are no easy fixes here because raising your self-esteem requires hard work, introspection, and dedication.  So let’s get to work!

Discard Outdated and Unfair Childhood Evaluations

Many people who suffer from low self-esteem learned to think poorly of themselves during childhood, often because someone of significance disapproved of them: a parent, relative, or peer.

It really doesn’t matter who planted the seeds of your low self-esteem; if you’re still dragging the opinion of someone else around with you, it’s time to formulate your own opinions based upon your life as it exists today.

My own struggles with self-esteem can be traced back to specific incidents in my childhood, often involving the bullying and teasing of peers. Once I understood this, I started telling myself that the opinions of a bunch of grade-school kids formed more than 25 years ago were an awfully flimsy foundation upon which to base my current opinion of myself.

My perspective didn’t change overnight, but it did change.

Take Responsibility for Everything in Your Life

Find a mirror, look yourself in the eye, and say, “I am responsible for everything in my life. And only I have the power to make my life better.”

This is not an affirmation – it’s a reality check. And despite the fact that these words may seem self-defeating, I promise you they are the most liberating words I know.

How wonderful it is to know we have the power to take the reigns of our lives and assume responsibility for all our life circumstances.

Improve Your Trouble Areas

Do you have one or two areas that send you into spirals of despair? If so, fix those areas.

When I was younger, I had terrible people skills, which is one of the reasons my peers rejected me in grade school. But as I grew older, I recognized the importance of correcting the problem within me instead of waiting for the world to change. Today, I’m a skilled communicator, comfortable around people, with no self-esteem issues.

The moral here is simple: If you doubt your intelligence, accomplish something intellectual; if you doubt your social skills, accomplish something social; and if you doubt your physical abilities, accomplish something physical.

At first, it may feel like you’re wrestling a bear; and in a way, you are. A trouble area is a beast that delights in dragging you down into its cave to gnaw on your self-esteem. To defeat the beast, you’ll have to plow through some dark, unexplored parts of your psyche.

As you work through your problem areas, you will probably fail before you succeed, which brings us to my next bit of advice.

Embrace Failure

 

Failure is your friend! As long as your failures are moving you closer to your desired end-state, they are good.

When you fail, figure out why and be determined to learn from it. What can you do to improve your chances of success next time? Find someone who has accomplished what you are trying to do and ask for her advice.

We learn from our failures. Just think about how many times you fell before you walked, how many meaningless sounds you made before you talked. If you won’t risk failure, you’ll never grow.

Finish what You Start

Finishing college taught me to believe in my intelligence. Finishing big projects taught me to believe in my leadership skills. Following through on my promises taught me I could be dependable and trustworthy.

By learning to finish what I started, I learned the most important lesson of all: that I was capable.

Sometimes walking away from a problem is the smartest thing you can do, but any decision to quit must come from logic, not fear. Instead of walking away from challenges, meet them head on. Finish what you start on a consistent basis, and you will soon learn to trust yourself.

Join a Productive Club

Find something productive that you love to do (writing, dancing, acting, programming, or whatever) and then find a group of like-minded people who are interested in learning this activity with you.

The group is your support structure and your growth catalyst, and it will help you accomplish something you can be proud of.

Increase Your Positive Relationships

Don’t ask me why, but people with low self-esteem seem to attract abusers, probably because they’re easy to pick on.

If you’re like I was at one point in my life, your radar for evaluating worthwhile relationships may be totally screwed up. In this case, stop evaluating relationships with your heart, and start evaluating them with your mind. Does a person logically appear to be a good influence? If not, consider moving on to a new relationship.

If you surround yourself with positive, supportive people instead of deadbeats and abusers – well, that’s half the battle, isn’t it?

What are Your Tips for Increasing Self-Esteem?.

I hope my 7 tips are able to help you, in some small way, overcome whatever self-esteem issues you’re dealing with. There are many more tips I could share, but I want to turn the conversation over to the readers at this point because I believe we’re stronger as a blogging community than we are alone.

Do you have a tip to help others overcome low self-esteem? If so, leave a comment, and let your contemporaries benefit from your knowledge.

Conversely, if you’re struggling with low self-esteem, let us know.

By looking inward, working hard, and focusing on tomorrow instead of yesterday, I know you can find the healthy self-image you’re looking for.