Stop hating yourself and self sabotaging your chance at happiness.

You're the problem, it's you.

You spend so much time reading things about positivity, looking on the bright side even when it feels like everything around you is collapsing. You wonder will I ever be happy? Will anything make me happy? Your life sometimes seems meaningless and you feel lost. You've asked yourself is life really better than death? Why does everyone say it's such a miracle?

You say you want to be happy but you don't, not really. Something deep down inside of you stops you every time. You want to believe you want to be happy but I will tell you why that's not the case and where you can start to rebuild your life the way you want to.

Self-Awareness

This is something everyone struggles with to different degrees. I learned from a book I am currently reading that there are different levels of self awareness. Instead of constantly reacting to things emotionally ask yourself three questions. Things that upset or bother us , are our bodies way of telling us there is something unhealed there.

The first question is to stop and ask yourself what you're feeling. The second is to ask why you feel like this and the last is keep asking questions until you are able to change this narrative.

Let's say you contribute your unhappiness to the fact that everyone around you is seemingly doing better than you. So let's break that down and use an example of when you see something upsetting on social media.

1) What are you feeling? Envy, jealousy and sadness.

2) Why do you feel this way? Because everyone around me seems to be ahead in life, with relationships, career, and they have better relationships with their families.

3) Why do you think that? They post about their lives and it seems so much better than mine

At this point you should realize that step number 3 acts as a metric to what you believe success is. We look at everything in our lives as failures and successes. In this scenario, you are basing your success in life on your relationship, career and your relations with your friends and family and using social media as a metric to determine how well you're doing.

This is an incredible dangerous way of thinking, many people before me have said it but I will say it again. Social media is a highlight reel, it's not real. Also when people look at your life I guarantee you there's things they are also envious of. No one is happy if we are constantly looking to our neighbour as a metric of our success in life.

After question three you can take it further and keep asking yourself why. This exercise helps you understand your deepest values and desires in life and hopefully will show you that maybe the things you are valuing or desiring aren't going to make you happy. Maybe it's time to start rethinking what you value or at least how you are measuring yourself.

Depression Is Familiar

A reason you constantly stay depressed or sad is because it's familiar. It's like being in the dark under the covers in your room. It's comforting and warm, you might even feel safe there but nothing grows in darkness. Biologically talking that's what are brains are meant to do. Keep you safe and comfortable. We are not wired to come out of our comfort zones, which arguably why it is so important that you do leave.

You hold yourself back from being happy because it's comfortable to stay where you are. You don't actually know if you will find happiness when you leave this mental place. You don't even know if happiness will bring you everything that you want in life but staying idle in life is not an option. Abraham Maslow said, “In any given moment, we have two choices: step forward into growth or step backward into safety.”

You can only ever really go forward or backwards. A lot of us go backwards and then ask why we are not moving forward, why we are not happy. Moving forward is not an easy feat, it doesn't happen over night but in small active decisions you make and work towards. You have to decide that moving forward is better and no one can convince you of that but you.

However, I will still try to convince you. It's better to move forward because there is so much good that is ahead if you try. You won't experience the best moments of this short life if you do not move forward. We are all going to die soon enough, we are here to experience life. To go to new places, learn everything we possibly can, make connections with other people. We can't make other people our happiness however in times of darkness we can light each other up and bring happiness to one another. Maybe that's enough.

Loneliness is scary but healing

Oh man, loneliness is a feeling I know far too well. Whenever I go from a good place mentally to a really bad place I find myself alone again. I cut myself off from people to try and help myself recover and rest but then I find myself petrified of being alone forever.

When I have gone through rough times in my life such as friendship breakups or relationship breakups it feels like starting over. Those times I usually feel a lot of grief and depression. I don't feel like I am living my life, just tolerating it. I can say I looked back and took a lot of lessons from it. My biggest lesson is how healing loneliness is. For me it was learning to go to classes alone, going to cafes alone, taking transportation and figuring out directions alone. We sometimes become dependent on other people in ways we don't realize.

We stop doing things we want to do because our friends don't want to join. We don't see movies we would like or leave the house unless we are with a friend or partner or family member. This is a way that we lose ourselves in other people. Eventually we forget what brings us joy and passion because we are so used to being carried along by the people in our lives. We have to learn to stand alone because at the end of the day the easy things in life aren't going to bring us everlasting happiness, just temporary pleasure. Everything worthwhile in life will be hard but you will be so much happier on the other side.

When you need to heal old thought process and beliefs, you will get a lot out of spending time in solitude. Reading, learning, rediscovering yourself and what you like and ultimately healing and finding your way back to happiness. When you think about it, no matter how rough our childhoods were, we didn't realize it then. Kids love being happy, you also deserve to be happy.

Why do you stop yourself from being happy?

Now let's get back to talking about why you specifically choose to be unhappy. It's like the song Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield, you have to "release your inhibitions, feel the rain on your skin." There is a reason you stay in a cycle of unhappiness. Before you protest and say all you want is to be happy I will tell you why I stop myself from being happy. Maybe y'all can relate.

I have spent my entire life motivated by fear and pain. The biggest changes in my life happened when things were so unbearable I had to make a change. When I left home I knew I couldn't stay there another minute otherwise things would have taken a very dark turn. I was in so much pain and mental anguish that my biggest motivator was getting away from the pain and suffering. It was all I could think about. I tried hard in school and got good grades because I was motivated to get away and build a life for myself. It was all motivated by avoiding some sort of suffering.

What I didn't realize when I fell into a deep depression after moving out was that pain and suffering was all I knew. It was my only motivator, once I left, my whole reason to continue was gone. I had left home and the pain was hopefully over. What I didn't realize was over time I became afraid of happiness and paralyzed by unhappiness.

I lost all motivation because all I knew was being motivated by pain and so I stopped letting myself be happy, in fear that I would never be motivated again to achieve my dreams. It took time for me to realize that there are many other ways to be motivated. I could be motivated through purpose and passion but in order to do that I had to be happy. Choosing to be happy for me was like taking a huge leap between two cliffs surrounding a bottomless pit. I worried (and still worry) that being happy will make me directionless and lazy but being depressed did the same thing so why not try?

I've spent the last couple of years understanding myself and learning why I wasn't happy. I encourage y'all to have some serious conversations with yourself. Like literally, talk to yourself, write to yourself, whatever you have to do to understand why is it that you don't allow yourself to be happy. I will definitely write some more articles on my progress as I continue to choose happiness.

I hope you learned something from this and that you find the strength to find happiness for yourself. Life is hard enough sometimes, we have to help one another up. Please let me know if you enjoyed this, I love hearing feedback and appreciate constructive criticism always.

Love,

Simran