By | Adil Malia | www.adilmalia.com
Haven’t come across anyone who consciously is in pursuit of Unhappiness. Everyone seeks happiness. But if one is not mindful of the course adopted in pursuit of happiness, one may end up becoming rather unhappy ! That’s like driving the car downhill in reverse gear.
Randomly, our study group asked 300 people as to what was the one thing that was making them ‘unhappy’ at the moment. All the responses were then then labeled on the basis of their pre-definitions.
Five clusters of responses emerged as the critical factors triggering Unhappiness.. check it out.
1. Externalising. Seeking your happiness not within you but searching for it in factors and things outside the realm of your direct control. When you seek such factors of your happiness outside, what you get in return is a ‘chase’ – not happiness. Happiness then is a swift sprinter faster than the Olympians.
2. Relegation. Making someone else directly responsible for your happiness and centering him as the cause of your pain. When you hand over the Remote Control of your happiness to someone else, you become the puppet of his maneuvers. When you keep it in your hands, you can surf it to the channel of your choice.
3. Isolating. Isolating one-self from Social reference groups leads to being unhappy. When you hide yourself from the socializing either when you are happy or you are sad, it can only make you resultantly more unhappy in the long-run. Social animals should socialize and seek happiness collectively within groups – happy times or sad times.
4. Envying or Anchoring . Your brother, your cousin, your batch-mate , your neighbour, your colleague. When you anchor the measurement of your commercial, material or social success to any such person/people, even if you could otherwise be happy, you will continue to be be unhappy. Keeping up with the Jonnes, makes you unhappy and puts counter preassure on the Jonnes to maintain the lead .. unless Jonnes are wise. Avoid it for your happiness, it is a Never winning game.
5. Happiness Dyslexia. We fail to audit and Value the existing factors and causes of happiness that already lie within us as we pursue the elusive and prefer to kiss the evasive factors of Unhappiness everyday. Absence of gratitude for the gifts already received which you are unmindful of but which the others envy in you, can only lead to your unhappiness.
Paul Coelho says it so well in his novel – The Zahir
“No one one should ever ask themselves that: why am I unhappy? The question carries within it the virus that will destroy everything. If we ask that question, it means we want to find out what makes us happy. If what makes us happy is different from what we have now, then we must either change once and for all or stay as we are, feeling even more unhappy”
Republished with permission and originally published at www.adilmalia.com
