3 Lessons for People That Want to be Happy All The Time
A practical guide to setting expectations.
A concept that I’ve found myself coming back to frequently is how life has ups and downs. Sometimes you are up, things are going good and everything just seems to flow.
I’m sure the time frame differs for most people. For me, my highs and lows seem to last in weekly intervals.
Reflecting and looking back on journal entries for May, I get something like this:
- Week 1 — Down, depressed, and in a funk. Life circumstances
- Week 2 — Up, resetting the mind. Forming new habits
- Week 3 — Down, expectations were high from the week before. Ended in frustration/overwhelm
- Week 4 — Up, mini adjustments. Lowered expectations. Consistent habits
- Week 5 — Ongoing — so far so good.
Now it doesn’t always go like that. There are months where the highs seem to last longer. As I’ve progressed through life, I noticed that the lows may not last as long. There is less rumination. I had to slowly learn this. Let’s call this marginal improvement.
Throughout one’s life, we will most likely experience many highs and lows. It is kind of part of the package. We get to experience both as humans.
I can only speak from my experience, but I don’t think it’s possible to be up all the time. There is nothing wrong with an optimistic state of mind, but should we expect continuous bliss and happiness?
What happens when those expectations aren’t met?
I’m writing this today because of my way of dealing with lows used to be much more mentally destructive than they are today. These are some lessons that I’ve learned in life. I’m 31 now and I do wish I could have bestowed this ‘wisdom’ on my 21-year-old self- even if I wasn’t ready to listen.
Quick wins happen, but they are rare
In my early 20’s I considered myself a smart slacker able to get by with A-B’s in high school with very little effort. That little effort part didn’t translate so much to college. I ended up going for a business degree and quickly realized that A’s took intentional effort. Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready to take life seriously. I was a bit aimless and my passions lied outside of any success in academia.
I was more focused on becoming confident. More specifically, I wanted to be cool. Even though I had cool friends, I never felt like “I” was cool. This is how I slowly discovered the world of personal development. I thought that I could read my way out of insecurity.
I fell in love with the idea that the right book could provide me with the life hack to be a better human. My idea of a better human back then was a cool confident guy.
It took a while to learn this lesson, but there are no quick wins. I couldn’t just read my way to confidence. I had to act and fail, a lot. I spent a lot of time pretending to be confident before I learned to accept myself.
The life-changing lessons that people tout as life hacks are very rarely learned overnight. That is not to say that sudden insights don’t happen. It is just more realistic to understand that real progress takes time. All of the lessons we learn mold us.
It is better to focus on consistent marginal improvement instead of swinging for the fences, striking out often.
Don’t expect to always be up. Learn to accept the lows
As I get older, I am starting to notice a shift that has increased my confidence, attitude, and well-being.
The shift is a different way of thinking from when I started the personal development journey.
Even though the lessons I’m sharing has taken years to learn, they still stemmed from some initial beliefs that I had.
I always believed that life had ups and downs. What’s different between then and now is that I don’t expect to always be up and on top of the world. You see when I first started reading and absorbing self-improvement, I thought that there was some end goal. I believed that after I read enough and then applied enough lessons — that I would be able to reach the peak.
That peak was a 100% happy person who was always positive, optimistic, and inflow. It sounds so silly writing it out, but I believed this to be a truth. That there was some ultimate end to the self-improvement journey.
I pictured myself as an optimized human. Here I am — let me teach you how to get here.
Now I am finding that it’s much more beneficial to accept those lows. Accepting that some days are worse off than others can prevent a desperate call to the top. That frantic attempt to escape the bad days only creates more frustration and overwhelm.
Instead when you are feeling a bit off, take it in. Be kind about it. You don’t have to always be optimized and you shouldn’t expect it.
Learn lessons through struggle. Use the pain to become strong.
In my last article, I shared some career advice that I received from a mentor. I had shared a story about how the conversation I had with my mentor sparked a brand-new mindset for me. This spark created a huge jolt of inspiration and radically shifted my thinking.
This type of insight is wonderful, but it’s admittedly rare. I don’t often expect to receive career-altering advice through 1 on 1 conversation.
Here is how I think we learn most of the lessons in life.
- Sudden Insight/Paradigm shifts — Light bulb moments.
- Slow Realizations — Lessons learned gradually over many years of experience.
- The Hard Way — Painful experiences that shape the way we think.
While it might be nice to feel constantly inspired with hits of paradigm-shifting advice, that’s just not realistic.
Most of our lessons come with experiences. Humans are smart. Our brains are designed to solve problems. Even if we find ourselves struggling, we usually figure something things out after enough time goes by. These are lessons we receive through life experiences.
Within a culture many of us will experience many similar experiences. This helps us to relate to each other. We say things like “been there, done that”.
Other lessons are learned through pain. These lessons can suck. If you’ve ever had to grieve the loss of a loved one, or have been through a tragedy you can understand. There is no sugar coating it- sometimes life is really hard. It is hard to think your way out of sadness and despair.
However, the pain we live through gives us lessons in return. It’s not always the lessons we wanted, but none the less we can learn if we allow ourselves too.
We can learn what to be grateful for especially when we lose something special. Words like appreciation become more meaningful during a loss. We learn to slow down and feel. You don’t get these lessons from anything other than going through some type of pain.
This is what it means to accept the good with the bad. Feel those moments that hurt. By going through these types of situations you grow strong. You form empathy for others because you understand that you never know what someone might be going through.
Maybe, this is too personal to be broadly shared as advice but it’s helped me get through some of the toughest times in my life.
Final Thoughts
Perhaps there will be a day when I look back on this and again call Bullshit. Maybe, you are supposed to find a way to constantly be high on life. To always be on. My goal right now, however, is to take the good with the bad and accept it. Be grateful for what I do have and find ways to be accepting when life doesn’t work out as planned.