Five Things Happy People Don’t Do
Be content with what is.
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When I say happy, I mean content. The two complement each other. No one is happy all the time. Happiness isn’t a state of being but a feeling you have when something happens in your life that makes you happy. Longevity increases with the amount of contentment, happiness in one’s life, according to CNNhealth.com
“Older people were up to 35% less likely to die during the five-year study if they reported feeling happy, excited, and content on a typical day.”
Just look at the long life of laughter comedienne Carl Reiner left behind when he died recently at the age of 98. Most of his friends were comediennes. Mel Brooks, who he ate dinner with most nights, was his best friend.
Happiness is fleeting, not something you can hang your hat on like the feeling of contentment. Contentment is longer lasting.
Happiness is usually something external, like when your writing is accepted by a major publication, like Vanity Fair, you get that promotion you’ve been after, or your best buddy makes you crack up, laughing in hysterics unable to stop.
Contentment is something different.
When you are content with your life, you live in the present. You often feel you’re headed in the right direction in your life, career, relationships, finances, and growth.
You have a dream in your life that is big and scares you, but achieving that dream gives you satisfaction. Your intimate relationships are healthy and fulfilling, and you find joy in small moments, free from anxiety, stress, and worry.
Here are some thing the content do
They don’t complain
People who are generally happy with their lives don’t complain. They know complaining sets them up for misery and attracts negativity.
Complaining doesn’t do anyone any good.
It makes the people around you miserable; you more miserable and won’t do anything to change your situation.
We cannot control the outcome of what happens, what we can control is how we deal with the outcome. The only thing you can control is your mood, behavior and the decisions you make.
Smart entrepreneurs, business owners and the content know this.
When an unforeseen event happens, they don’t concentrate on the hardship; they focus on good decision-making, lessening the impact of the unforeseen event.
Making smart, rational decisions instead of asking, “why me?” is changing your situation instead of staying stuck in the mistake, or event.
Bad things happen to every one. That is just, “yeah, so what?” Life. No matter what creed, race, sex, or religion you are, everybody goes through the unexpected stuff that is out of our control.
It is the people who get up quickly and stop asking ‘why me,’ and ask, “what can I do to get out of this?” are the people who are most content.
If you find yourself complaining a lot, try this: for every complaint you make, say two positive things related to the complaint.
Example: “Damn it! They gave me the wrong taco at the taco stand.”
Positive one: I get to try something different.
Positive two: I’m grateful I have money to buy tacos.
They don’t compare their lives to others
Comparing yourself to others is the quickest way to unhappiness, yet so many people do it.
Comparing yourself to other people — what they have, where they go on vacation, what kind of car they drive, the square footage of their home — has never been easier because of Facebook, Instagram, and now, Zoom.
Suddenly we are intimately familiar with people’s lives, literally in their living rooms. We now see people from our entire lives — people we wish we’d never see again — on our news feed daily. This is unhealthy if you allow it to become a comparison trap.
You have the option to stay off these sites.
Yet, so many people participate in the one-upmanship, the humble brags, the grasp for attention, and the narcissism that comes from being a social media ‘star,’ determined by how many likes, comments, and shares you can procure with all the oversharing.
You are a product for Facebook, they are making money off your sharing.
So many of us are narcissists. We crave the attention and are easily hooked by the adrenaline we get from seeing the bright red notification dot pumping us with dopamine urging us to click.
Sharing on social is mostly a dog and pony show and not reality.
Content people know this.
They don’t spend time on social media, trying to prove their worth through likes.
In reality, their lives are better than all their “friends” lives and they feel no need to prove it on Facebook. They are too busy out in the world, making a difference, and enjoying themselves.
They don’t gossip
Gossip is poison. Poison in. Poison out. It is a waste of time for the small-minded. Eleanor Roosevelt said it best when she said,
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
Have you ever noticed that you feel yucky afterward when you gossip about a “friend” to another friend? Because it is yucky.
By gossiping, you’re communicating to the person you’re talking to that you can’t be trusted. Your relationship with that person hinges on something unhealthy — the ‘dirt’ about another person.
Like the spiritual book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, by don Miguel Ruiz, talks about Be Impeccable with Your Word.
Your word is you. It proceeds you when you walk into any room.
Words have power. They have the power to seep into everything around you; they have the power to lift and destroy, so speak them with mindfulness.
When you are “impeccable with your word” you,
- Speak with integrity.
- Say what you mean.
- Don’t gossip.
- Don’t speak negatively about other people.
- Don’t speak negatively about yourself. Silence your inner critic. Rid irrational chatter from your mind.
When you stop speaking gossip, you will experience less negativity in your life, and you will have less conflict with the people around you, whether that is with your partner, your boss, your friends, your family, your peers.
They don’t look back to the past with regret
They don’t look at their mistakes as failures, they look at them as lessons.
Content people don’t let past mistakes bog them down into negativity, it serves no purpose and hampers you from going after your goals.
Instead, those who are content live each day as if it’s a fresh beginning.
Regret is a common negative emotion for people, but it holds you back from looking toward a bright future. If you’re locked in the past, you aren’t here now. Present.
Content people are present, not worried about their perceived mistakes of the past. The past is gone, let it go.
According to Psychologytoday.com,
Every choice we make is the right choice, whether or not it leads us to the outcome we desired. It’s the choice we made at that time, with the intelligence, history, wounds, conditioning, relationships, and everything else we possessed and were at the time.
You did the best you could with what you had to give at the time, move on.
They don’t have any expectations
This allows the content to have better decision-making skills.
When you don’t come into something with expectations, like a date, a dinner, a business meeting, or a project, you have more mental room and energy to make better decisions because you aren’t holding onto a particular outcome imagined in your head before said experience.
Happy people are aware you can’t control outcomes, the outcome is what it is, they concentrate on making the best decision possible, that is all we can really control.
If you imagine the perfect scenario in your head about how something will go, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Why? Because we can’t control the outcome of a situation, we can’t control how people act.
We will be disappointed when we come to a situation or experience with expectations. When things don’t go as planned, we end up feeling disappointed, sad, angry, frustrated, resentful, and unhappy.
“The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it.” — Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul
Let go of your expectations.
Three practices to help you let go of expectations.
#1. Practice acceptance — We humans are good at accepting positive experiences and resenting negative ones. Acceptance means being OK with both.
In all situations — both negative and positive — you have two choices, you can accept what is happening in your life, or you can fight/resist it.
You can only choose how you respond to each situation.
Acceptance of your situation will allow you to make better, more clear choices for the future, whether the situation you find yourself in now is perceived as positive or negative.
#2. Practice mindfulness — Mindfulness is the ability to stay present in the moment. Now. Now is all we have. Mindfulness creates acceptance because it is the practice of observing yourself without judgment.
Mindfulness is as simple as paying attention to your breath. You can do this in a meditation class or in line at the grocery store; it will reduce stress and anxiety, no matter where you practice it.
#3. Practice gratitude — The simple act of being grateful for the things in your life that are going right — everybody has more than a few things they can be grateful for — will automatically put in you a state of positivity.
Writing them down is more effective than saying them aloud. But both work.
Even if you have no job, no money, no home, you can say to yourself, “I’m alive. I’m healthy. I have breath.”
Practicing gratitude for what you do have is the fastest way up and out of sadness and into contentment.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
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