Brought to you by Proctor Gallagher Institute
I ran across a terrific little article a couple of days ago with the intriguing title, “The 22 Habits of Unhappy People.”
Habits… and unhappiness. How often do you make the direct connection between the two?
People usually associate the idea of habits, good and bad, with physical behaviors or actions that lead to tangible, material outcomes. Things like weight loss or gain… health improvement or deterioration… wealth increase or depletion… productivity or laziness.
On the other side, people often see happiness, or the lack thereof, as a function of their circumstances, not their habits. They’re happy because they’re successful; they’re unhappy because they’re struggling financially, and so on.
Neither view is correct.
Almost all of the culprits on this list of 22 were habits of the mind, not of action — which reflects a simple, universal truth:
If you are happy or unhappy in any area, it is because you are habitually thinking in a certain way. You are doing something with your mind, over and over again, that is putting you into either a positive or a negative vibration, and consequently attracting a positive or negative result.
Your actions and behaviors are not the ultimate causes of your results. They’re simply the manifestations of your thinking.
Where does your “happy place” come from?
Which of your everyday thought habits make you happy, and which of them take you in the other direction? If happiness is something you feel you’re lacking in any area of your life, it’s a question well worth examining.
To get the answer, start with the end result, then trace your steps backwards, all the way to your mind.
Are you happy when you’re spending quality time with your kids? OK, what is it that enables you to be in a state where you’re feeling relaxed and present in that situation, instead of stressed out and distracted? Is it when you’re on top of your to-do list? Great! What is it that allows you to achieve that level of productivity? Is it when you’re able to get a deep, restful night’s sleep? Perfect. What typically precedes that? Is it when you spend the moments before bed anticipating a good day, rather than complaining to yourself about all you have to do and worrying about how you’ll get it done?
There you have it: the HABIT that causes your happiness.
Do you see how this process works? Keep going until you hit the pay dirt of a mental activity. When you land on one that results in happiness, consciously cultivate it. You’ll likely find that that single habit is actually the source of quite a lot of your happiness across the whole spectrum of your life — and that you’ll experience more of it by maintaining the habit.
Go through the same with unhappiness. When you identify the habits of thought at the source of it, work to replace them. Get to the mind level, correct the issue there, and the action/behavior elements of the equation – what people typically think of as the “bad habits” at the heart of their problems — become much easier to deal with. In fact, they often fall away altogether.
Here’s the original article, if you’d like to take a look at it. Are there any you would add to this list? Any you would take away? Share your thoughts in the comments!