3 Myths That Are Proven to Cause Unhappiness

And how you can change them

You may think that your unhappiness comes from your situation. Bad things happened, so of course you’re unhappy. Anybody would be.

But there are actually three myths that are causing your unhappiness. You are unhappy because you have one or more of these beliefs. If you can change those beliefs — even if you change nothing about your situation — you will start feeling happier.

Best of all, once you know what the false beliefs are, you can change them pretty easily.

Myth #1: Your assessment is accurate

What does it mean to believe that your assessment is accurate? It means that you think you know everything about your situation. Everything. And you’re 100% right about it.

Why does this lead to unhappiness?

If you already know everything there is to know, and you’re 100% right about what you know, there’s no wiggle room. There’s no place where you can say, “Maybe it’s not as bad as all that.”

If some well-meaning person does say that to you, your response is more likely to punch them than to feel cheered by them. Because not only would they be wrong, they’d be questioning your 100% accuracy. And the only thing worse than being unhappy is being unhappy and having people tell you you’re wrong to feel that way.

I’m not questioning the accuracy of your feelings. Your emotions are yours, and you’re the only one who knows what your real feelings are.

What I am questioning is the belief that you can know with complete accuracy every little detail of everything.

One detail makes the difference

Have you heard the story of the fellow who was on a train, getting progressively more and more annoyed at a bunch of kids who were acting up while their distracted father did nothing to rein them in. Eventually, the father noticed that the kids were bothering this man, and said, “I’m sorry. We’ve come from the hospital. Their mother just died.”

The man in the train thought he knew everything about the situation. The kids were making noise. They were running about. They were with their father, who was doing nothing to stop them. This was enough for the man in the train to get annoyed. How dare these children interrupt his peace and quiet? Didn’t they know how one was supposed to behave on a train? What was their father thinking, to let them act out like that?

And then, with one sentence, the father gave the man information he didn’t know, that changed everything. The man’s feelings went from anger and annoyance to sympathy and understanding.

What detail don’t you know?

You may know everything about the situation you’re currently experiencing. But you’re like the man on the train. You know what’s happening right now.

Perhaps you don’t know what happened just before people did whatever they did. Might that change your point of view?

Perhaps you are looking at your situation as an isolated experience. But it really belongs as part of a greater history.

On the other hand, you might be looking at your situation as just the latest in a long line of similar situations. But it should really be viewed as an isolated occurrence.

And that assumes you know everything about the situation right now. There may be pieces of the situation — people’s internal motivations, memories, or actions when you were not present — that you are unaware of.

You don’t even need to know what the detail is that you don’t know. Just leaving yourself open to believe that there might be something that could change how you view the situation is enough to bust this myth.

Myth #2: No one can help you

Another reason for unhappiness is the false belief that no one can help you. A variation on that belief is thinking that someone could help you, but that no one will.

The reason this leads to unhappiness is that it puts all the weight for getting out of your situation on you, and your current resources. You may think that your current resources are what got you into your current situation, so they can’t possibly get you out.

It can also lead to a feedback loop, where you start questioning if you even deserve to get out of your current situation. Surely, you think, if you deserved help, you would get it. So, since you haven’t gotten it yet, you aren’t getting it ever, and you don’t deserve it.

Keep in mind that people’s willingness to help may not look anything like the help you want to receive. Or, they may be willing to help but not know how, and are waiting for you to ask.

Getting help to navigate the system

There are many systems put in place to help people. All too often, however, they are incomprehensible to the people they’re trying to help.

I experienced this when I was losing health care coverage. I spent many days going over the various plans offered by different carriers, as well as the conflicting rules published by the various government agencies. I was getting desperate. There’s a specific window of time to switch coverage, and if you miss it, you can’t fix it until the next window opens.

Worst of all, because of Covid, the people who had sent me the letter saying I was losing coverage were not available to give me any additional information. Their letter said I had to do certain things by certain times, but it was looking more and more impossible to meet those deadlines.

I needed help. The people who were supposed to help were unavailable or unwilling to help. I could have been forgiven for believing no one could help me, and being very unhappy.

Instead, I found an insurance professional who was paid by the government specifically to help people find and purchase the correct health insurance. After half an hour on the phone with her, I had the situation settled.

Think outside the box

When it comes to figuring out who can help you, don’t insist that the help has to take a specific form. If you need money, don’t just look for someone who can provide you the full amount. More people, contributing less, might be the right answer.

You might also need to do something in order to be eligible for help. Sometimes assistance is qualified based on where you live, how long you’ve lived there, or other things that you might not expect.

Finally, look for solutions that might seem out in left field. If you need a car, for example, don’t just look for ways people will help you get a car or get the money to buy a car. Maybe someone will give you a new job that includes a vehicle as part of it, or a monthly bus/rail pass. Maybe you can be invited to join a car sharing group, paying only when you use it.

Think about it long enough, with enough creativity, and you’ll see that someone, somewhere is able to help you.

Myth 3: You can’t help yourself

The final false belief, and the one that can singlehandedly make you miserable, is the belief that there’s nothing you can do. Either you are powerless, and need to wait to be rescued from your situation. Or your situation is so dire that no one could fix it.

If you think you need to be rescued, you are casting yourself in the victim role. And if you do that once, in one area of your life, you probably do it in other places, too. There’s something called learned helplessness. That means, if you start thinking you can’t do anything to help yourself, you don’t even bother trying. You just settle down to suffer.

I’m sure you can see how that leads to unhappiness!

The other option is a little less obvious. If you think your situation is so awful that no one could possibly fix it, especially you, you’re probably falling prey to black and white thinking. There may be one element that can’t be changed, but you can change other things.

Some things can’t be fixed

There are some things in life that are step functions — once you cross that line, there is no going back. You can’t retroactively restore your virginity after your first sexual encounter. If your house is destroyed by a natural disaster, you can rebuild it, but it won’t be the same house. And when someone you love dies, you’re never getting them back.

I got the news that my mother had died while I was on a business trip with my husband. I’d been expecting the call. So much so that I’d packed my funeral dress for the business trip, in case I had to fly directly from California to New York with no time to stop in Colorado to pick up clothes. But it was still devastating.

There was nothing I could do to change that aspect of the situation. No matter what I did, my mother would still be dead.

But I could choose how I reacted to that situation. I could put all my love and skill into writing an amazing eulogy to deliver at her funeral. I could do everything possible to support my father in his grief. Most importantly, I could shape the story of her passing not as regret that I hadn’t been there, but as gratitude that I’d been there for her last good days.

Give yourself agency

It is an interesting psychological quirk, that many people are more confident when a third party has given them authority, than they are when they’re acting on their own. You see that all the time with petty bureaucrats, who speak with the full might and authority of the company they work for.

So if you are having trouble with believing that you can do anything to help yourself, pretend that someone else has given you authority. Give yourself a business name, or imagine that you’re the personal assistant of someone you admire. What can you do on behalf of that business or admired person?

And if you’re facing a situation that can’t be changed, figure out what things can be changed for the better. Even if there’s nothing about the external situation, there are always internal things you can change. How do you react to the situation? What story are you telling yourself about it? Those are things that are always open to your modification.

Conclusion

There are three myths that will make you unhappy if you believe them. But if you break the myths, you can find your happiness again.

The first myth is that your assessment of your situation is complete and 100% accurate. It’s not. It can’t be. And as soon as you give yourself permission to believe there’s something you don’t know, you break the hold of this myth.

The second myth is that no one can help you. To break this myth, you need to think outside the box. Maybe the specific person you want to help you, is unable to help you in the specific way you wanted to be helped. But other people or other forms of help are still available.

The third myth is that you can’t help yourself. This myth leads to embracing a victim role and falling prey to black and white thinking. You can break the myth by giving yourself agency.

Now you’ve discovered something you didn’t know about how happiness works. You’re empowered to help yourself, and find other people to help you. You can be happy.

I sincerely hope you will be.