In this article, I discuss why being unhappy serves no purpose. It might sound like a harsh title, a complete brush off, or a flippant comment made by someone that doesn’t understand……but keep reading to find out why being unhappy only causes more unnecessary pain and suffering as well as ill health. But it does not change your physical circumstances one little bit.
Being Unhappy Does Not Change Your Circumstances
Whether you’re happy or unhappy, it doesn’t change your physical circumstances one little bit.
If you have a broken leg, your leg will still be broken whether you’re happy or unhappy about it. If you can’t pay your mortgage this month, being unhappy doesn’t change that fact one little bit.
No story in your head about who’s fault it is, how it shouldn’t be that way, how you should be earning more money, how you deserve a promotion, none of those things will change the fact that you can’t pay your mortgage. All the stories do, is make you unhappy.
If you can acknowledge that simple truth, then you are well on your way towards achieving the ultimate happiness that lasts in any situation.
Action is the Only Thing that Changes Your Circumstances
The only thing that will change your physical circumstance is action. But like the old saying about changing the things you can and ignoring the things you can’t, knowing what you can take action on is important.
Fixing a broken leg requires you to see a doctor and get medical help. Telling yourself how stupid you are because you tripped over your own shadow doesn’t help. It just makes you unhappy. Blaming someone else for leaving a skateboard on the staircase, doesn’t help. It just makes you unhappy.
Not being able to pay your mortgage requires you to take action. You need to call the bank, you need to find a way to earn more money or you need to sell your house and move to something more affordable. But having conversations in your head, blaming the bank, blaming the economy, blaming your broken leg for not being able to work, blaming being born into a poor family or your parents getting divorced when you were younger does not help. It just makes you unhappy.
Being Unhappy Will Make You Sick
When you close your eyes and visualize something, your body responds as though you were really experiencing the event. If you imagine eating a lemon, your mouth will water. If you picture going around a tight bend on a roller coaster you will slightly tense the muscles on one side of your body to counter the lean. When you think of an angry encounter, you release small amounts of adrenaline, cortisol and other harmful chemicals into your body in preparation for a fight or flight response.
This negative chemistry, no matter how small, shuts down the parts of your system that allow you to relax, heal and thrive.
When you release these small quantities of harmful hormones over an extended period of time, you are inviting illness and disease. Digestive issues, headaches, fatigue as well as more serious autoimmune and heart conditions.
I’m not a doctor, but when you meditate and practice mindfulness, you can observe these subtle processes going on in your body.
So understanding that your thoughts control your body chemistry, is also key to adopting a strategy that keeps you happy and bathed in healthy hormones 24/7.
Why We’re So Unhappy
I go into this in a lot more detail in my book, “Understanding Happiness – Pocket Companion Workbook”, but from a high level, we have evolved to want things that will increase our chances of survival. So we “want” anything that seems like it would be an improvement over what we currently have, because that would inherently increase our chances of survival.
But, in our modern landscape, we are exposed to so many things that are better than what we currently have. Newer, bigger, faster, more beautiful. And many of the things we are exposed to we will never encounter them in real life, but we see them on TV and the internet, so they still subconsciously become “wants and desires” that have the effect of making us unhappy now.
We get so good at comparing and ranking things as better or worse that we walk around judging everything. All the conversations in your head criticizing other people or the things they have are basically your mind justifying why you are superior. Each time you have a conversation in your head, justifying what you’re doing or why someone else is to blame for your situation, your mind is trying to defend against a theoretical criticism aimed at you.
Again, my book lays all that out in great detail, but just understand and acknowledge that, your thoughts cause your body to react and that your thoughts are driven by a fear of judgment and a need to feel superior. When you understand that, you’ll see the conversations in your mind that make you unhappy and realize that they’re unnecessary.
Love Hate Relationship
I want you to try this quick experiment for yourself. Read the whole thing first and then start when you’re ready.
Find a nice quiet room away from distractions and other people, and just sit quietly for a few moments with your eyes closed.
Get as comfortable as possible. Breathe slowly and relax your muscles.
Just do this for a few minutes, then when you’re ready, picture a small baby giggling uncontrollably. You’ve all seen videos of kids laughing hysterically at something as simple as a dog wagging it’s tail. Just picture that. A baby, so happy that it giggles at the silliest thing.
Now while you’re doing that, move your awareness to your body and feel the warm, tingly feeling rising up into your chest. If you really focus in on it, you’ll feel it radiating outwards like warm honey. What you’re noticing is unconditional love. It’s a strong, healthy chemical response within your body. You’re healing and thriving.
Once you’ve got used to that feeling. Now, switch to a scenario that makes you angry. Picture someone yelling and screaming at you. Insulting you. Digging into all of your insecurities. Picture someone that you really don’t like. Picture them laughing at you.
You should feel the energy in your body change. If you got the adrenaline going, you will feel a painful, queasy feeling in your stomach. Your body went into defensive mode and you flooded your body with harmful hormones.
Now that you’ve experienced that, you can flip flop back and forth a few times to feel the difference.
Acknowledge that your thoughts changed your body chemistry.
You Control Your Happiness
Hopefully from that little experiment you should have realized that your thoughts control your body chemistry. Loving thoughts create a wonderful, healthy feeling while angry thoughts create a painful, damaging feeling.
You should realize that, the thoughts in your head do not change your physical reality. A broken leg is a broken leg.
So, whenever you react to the world around you, you have a choice. You can react lovingly or negatively. Neither reaction will change the world outside you, but one reaction you will be happy, healthier, live longer and the other, you’re just doing harm.
Understand you can experience happiness no matter what is happening in your life.
You have a choice, so choose to be happy.
How to Practice Unconditional Love
That experiment we did above, you can practice that everyday. But you can twist it a little to serve you as a powerful tool
Once you get good at sitting and relaxing, and feeling that loving energy within yourself. Open your eyes and look around the room. Try to feel that same loving feeling when you look at each and every object you see.
Just keep doing that, over and over again until you can walk around your house feeling pure love towards everything.
Once you’ve got that under your belt, now seek out things you might not normally like and see if you can do the same. Walk around your neighborhood and feel pure love towards a piece of trash. Some graffiti. Somebody driving faster than you would. Your neighbor who never cuts his lawn. A lawn sign for the opposite political party (now that’s a good one).
Pretty soon you’ll be so healthy, that nothing on this planet will ever be able to make you unhappy.
Don’t be unhappy. It serves no purpose.
Be happy and healthy my friends.
Mat Robinson
~ The gregarious Hermit
#Happiness #Unhappy #InnerPeace #UnconditionalLove
Hey – Thanks for Reading
If you enjoyed this article, then check out my new book, “Understanding Happiness ~ Pocket Companion Workbook” available on Amazon for just $7.99. You’ll learn why your mind talks to you, why it makes you unhappy and the 3 most amazing tools you can use to revolutionize your life, your health and your happiness. Be Happy NOW!!! Not next week or when you get a faster car, a bigger house, better job, perfect partner……be happy now instead.