We are told how to be happy in a million different ways by a million people and the options are boggling. There are many different ways to be happy but just a few simple ones to be unhappy. Here are a few simple tricks to be unhappy and achieve a gloomy, sloppy, sagging soul.
Beat yourself up: Crap, I was supposed to get up in the morning for the gym, and I again didn’t, I’m so lazy, and fat. Get the idea? If you didn’t do something right, or you missed a class or you were just simply being you- stop cutting yourself some slack. Forget all the other good things you have done or are doing. Even if you happen to be a peacock, stare disapprovingly at your feet rather than the splendid feathers. If you believe it, you will never ever be good enough. Simple.
Have expectations: Margaret Mitchell once said that life is under no obligation to give us what we expect. If you expect you will lose weight in 2015, you never will unless you hit the gym. If you expect to find that perfect guy, god help you if you are sitting in your office/ home/ college all day long without venturing out. Moreover, expectations are the perfect recipe for disappointment and unhappiness. If you are expecting that phone call which your elusive, too-busy-for-you friend promised to make, may be you will be grey by the time your turn comes. Expectations build up a world of their own, where things fall in place, where you get good grades and your boss appreciates you and you fit into your old jeans and wherever you walk, rose petals are showered on you. Expect, do nothing and wait endlessly for someone other than yourself to show up and you are sure to be unhappy.
Try to change others: Your sister cannot start sharing things just because you think it is a better way of bonding. Your friend will not acknowledge his insensitivity just because you are whining, complaining or bickering about how much his behaviour hurts you. If you are trying to make others mend their ways, all the best, you are mending yourself into an unhappy person.
I’m going to shamelessly quote Oprah’s speech at Life You Want Tour here, rather than saying something original.
In her speech, she quotes Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz, where Glinda banishes The Wicked Witch of the West with this line: “You have no power here.”
“Ask yourself how much of the pain you suffer in life is because of something you wish somebody else would be, or do, or fix, or transform. Your friend who needs to stop drinking. Your brother who needs to get a job. Your mother who can’t let go of her bitterness and rage. Your father who can’t open his heart to love. Your college room mate who needs to stop letting men use her. You best friend who needs to stop smoking. And so on, and so on and so on and so on…
The fact is: You’re probably right. All those people may indeed need to make exactly those changes. Obviously, their lives would be better for it. Any fool can see that.
But it’s not your domain.
And meanwhile, you’re leaking energy, when what you really need to be focusing on your own power, your own life (which is hard enough to manage, and has its own set of problems that really require your full attention…as any fool can see.)”
Stay stuck in an “If Only” World: If only my father wasn’t who he is, I wouldn’t have been this emotionally insecure. If only, I made more money, I wouldn’t have to always worry about making the ends meet. If only, I had got that chance.
If only, we stop doing this, “if only”.
It is AS IT IS. Hold on to “if only” to be unhappy. Certain things cannot be changed. If you do not change how you feel about them, you will be, rest assured, unhappy.
Pity yourself: You have got fever and cold but you have classes to go to, things to do because, nobody else can do them for you. You either make the best of a bad situation or you keep complaining but rest assured that after a while, sympathy will stop pouring in. If you keep on showing yourself as the abandoned, rain-drenched pup, you will get a few bread crumbs for sure (read sympathy) but given that you literally aren’t a pup, nobody is taking you home with them.
Sorry but being sorry for yourself is a very sorry state of being.
Happiness takes work. So does unhappiness. So sow what you want to reap.
Srishti is a lawyer by profession and a blogger by choice. She writes at Law Schools Terrace.