Do you think that life makes us learn and grow? For me, every single moment is a proof of that. Here’s why:
We are all happy when things go right.
It’s easy to be contented, in peace and grateful, when you do the things you enjoy, are healthy, have money, are in a good relationship, when there’s no stress in your days and you even have time for yourself.
But there are ups and downs in everything. It’s the nature of life.
So what happens when you face a hardship, have money problems, or health issues, your partner leaves you, you lose a relative, or have hundreds of tasks to do every day that make you stressed and grumpy?!
That’s when most people blame other people and circumstances, think life is unfair, stop appreciating the things they have and focus only on the negatives.
And that’s what they do wrong.
So wrong, that the next good time in life gets even further away.
Why is that?
Simply because that’s life’s way of teaching, of making us aware, letting us grow and become stronger.
True wisdom lies in finding experience in the troubles, learning how to accept the changes, how to live with loss, to move on after a break up.
When you learn how to find a lesson in every failure and peace when you have a disease or after you’ve lost something precious, you’ll understand what life is on a much deeper level.
You’ll then see yourself from another point of view – as the person who is stronger than he expected, can let go and move on, find meaning and knowledge in everything, and whose hope, belief and will are greater than the temporary defeats life throws at us.
So the next time something devastating happens, try to find its meaning.
When you’re on the verge of giving up, when you feel a giant void inside, or have lost direction and are confused, try to stop, look around and find the ‘why’ of all this.
Remember that everything has a purpose. And most of the time it’s learning.
Every single failure and defeat makes you learn, helps you grow, opens your eyes, expands your horizons.
Only then can you appreciate success; only then will you know that you can’t always win. But you’re okay with that.
Sometimes losing is much more important. You learn more from it.
Only by going through something bad, can you understand what grief is.
And then you’ll be blessed with appreciation and gratitude.
You’ll see the abundance you live in, and once focused on that, no troubles will stand in your way. And that itself is a reason to be a happy person for the rest of your life.
You can’t truly recognize happiness, if you haven’t felt suffering.
After all, we wouldn’t see the light if it wasn’t for darkness.
So thank for everything that’s been harder in your life. Learn from it, find its meaning. And know that nothing can make you give up now.
You now know what your pain really looks like. You see it from another point of view.
But a deeper explanation is needed.
Obviously, our generation has a big problem – our attitude towards life, the way we see things, what we focus on and think is most important is not right.
So something needs to be done. We need to find a way to alleviate that inner pain.
But to do that, we must first get familiar with the origin of this suffering, with all the things that make us upset, disappointed, depressed, stressed, unproductive, discouraged and lose hope.
So here is a list of what makes us unhappy and what form it takes in our daily life:
What Makes Us Unhappy
1. Ideals.
Most of the pain we experience, whether we realize it or not, comes from the fantasies we live in.
We create our own worlds, where there are certain rules, things to be done and said and events to happen. And every time that doesn’t go according to the plan (which, basically, means anything because we have no control over what might happen and can’t predict it), we panic.
2. Not wanting to be where you are.
We create a prison, we build its solid walls slowly through the years, and can remain there for the rest of our life if we don’t do anything about that.
No matter where we go, we want to be somewhere else right away. Either because we’re not contented with the current place and situation and think the problem is in them, or because someone else tells us about something better.
And that makes our present destination a nightmare, even if we’re swimming in the ocean of a tropical island or skiing in a top winter resort.
We’ll talk more about that prison later.
3. Struggle.
When we feel bad, we try so hard to destroy that emotion and feel better. We put effort into finding something to make us smile. And when we eventually do (or should I say ‘if’ we do), we struggle to make it last.
So our whole life becomes a struggle. Pushing hard, interfering in the natural flow.
But we ourselves invented this fight. It’s fake. It lives only in our head and by trying too hard to succeed, find happiness, or else, we make it worse.
Here is what Leo says about that in his book “The Effortless Life”:
“We invent this struggle for many reasons: to give our lives meaning, to give ourselves a feeling of accomplishment, to dramatize our story (even if only in our own heads), or simply because this is the mode of thinking we’ve become used to.
Giving up the struggle isn’t always easy, but it is liberating. When you realize you don’t have to struggle with everything, life becomes so much more effortless.
Take the example of struggling with your young child when she won’t eat her vegetables. This struggle is unnecessary — forcing her to eat the vegetables accomplishes nothing. The child won’t like vegetables more because she’s forced to eat them. Instead, set the example of eating vegetables yourself, and find ways to make eating healthy foods fun for her. By making it fun, and letting go of the need to force her to eat veggies, you’ve let go of the unnecessary struggle.”
4. Seeking happiness in external sources.
There’s a void inside most people.
It’s been created by not being contented with who we are, not being happy with what we have, not being present and looking for something more, better, more exciting out there.
And we’ve always been trying to fill this void with something external.
Here are some of the fake sources of happiness people turn to:
– shopping – buying stuff we don’t really need because it brings us momentous comfort and takes our mind away from our current problems;
– food – a way to feel momentous pleasure, but then we immediately feel bad about ourselves;
– a person – thinking someone else can make us feel good, obsessing over him, wanting to spend as much time with him as we can;
– drinking;
– gambling;
etc.
But it only makes the void bigger as we are okay for a while, but then feel even worse.
5. Holding onto the past.
Not letting what has already happened and can’t be changed go is something so bad, and yet so common.
Almost everyone does it to some extent.
Some people even live entirely in their past, not letting anything new happen to them, just spending their days going through stuff that happened a long time ago and has no importance in the present.
6. Refusing to accept.
One of the reasons for not being contented is our inability to accept things as they are, together with ourselves, other people, events and every little detail of our days.
And we try to change the unchangeable and control the uncontrollable.
Which only continues the struggle and increases our suffering.
7. Comparing.
Instead of seeing your positives, you focus on how much better other people look. You see that their house is more spacious, children smarter, bank account bigger, social life better, etc.
This makes you unhappy with your life, even if you’re considered successful.
8. Not knowing what’s important.
Often we suffer because we don’t realize what’s essential.
We may want to be rich, but the rich are lonely.
We see all those people on TV that have won the lottery and want to be at their place, but studies show that they are even more miserable after having won the big check. They don’t really know what to do with all that money, take poor decisions on how to spend them, change themselves and their friends don’t see them in the same way.
9. Being a victim.
If you’re constantly asking the universe “Why me?”, then you probably think life is unfair, others are so happy and you’ll never be, or just take things too personally and make a big drama out of small things.
10. Worrying about what might happen.
Living in the future is another reason we live so unhappily.
11. Goals.
Living without goals may seem a bit too much for some of you. But what I mean with that item of the list is that goals are another version of living in the future, focusing on a result that’s not current, wanting something else and expecting it to become a reality.
Here’s how Leo from Zen Habits summarizes it:
“These days, however, I live without goals, for the most part. It’s liberating, and contrary to what you might have been taught, it doesn’t mean that you stop achieving things.
It means that you stop letting yourself be limited by goals.
Sometimes you achieve a goal and then you feel amazing. But most of the time you don’t achieve them and you blame it on yourself.
Here’s the secret: the problem isn’t you, it’s the system! The goals system is a set up for failure.
Even when you do things exactly right, it’s not ideal because goals limit your possibilities. When you don’t feel like doing something you have to force yourself to do it. Your path is chosen, so you don’t have room to explore new territory. You have to follow the plan, even when you’re passionate about something else.”
12. Plans.
The same goes for them:
“Living without plans might seem foolish or unrealistic to most people. That’s fine. But if you want to be realistic, you should understand that the plans you make are pure illusions of control.
Many days, other things come up and the illusion of control is easily shattered. But some days we get lucky and our plans actually happen as we had hoped.
The more we embrace this chaos, the more we embrace the brilliant possibilities that might emerge. The more we try to control our day and actions with plans, the more we limit ourselves.”
13. Expectations.
It’s when you’re not happy with the person you’ve become and the things you do, because you have too big expectations of who you can be.
Or want your partner or someone else to do something for you, love you, be nice, ask you out, etc. You expect so many things from them, often unrealistic. And wait for them to do exactly what you imagine them doing. But people have their own vision of the same situation and it never meets yours.
You even ask life for more than it can give you. And become unhappy when you understand it has its limits, too.
Read also: How to Achieve Anything
14. Wanting to change.
Kids want to be grown ups, adults want to be young and careless again.
Single people desperately want a relationship, but those who are in one still complain almost all the time and wish for freedom.
The poor want money, the rich want more of it.
This means that changing your situation doesn’t prevent you from suffering, doesn’t make your desires go away.
So you need to change something on the inside.
