What You Should Know About Unhappiness

If you know your enemy, your job of defeating it is halfway done.

And now let me ask you, my friend, whether you do not think, that many of our disappointments and much of our unhappiness arise from our forming false notions of things and persons. — Abigail Adams

I’ve come to realize that unhappiness is not the same as sadness — sadness is a feeling, and unhappiness is a state of mind.

The main difference is that sadness fades because feelings are always fleeting — unhappiness stays with us until we change our mindset.

The good news is that unhappiness is not a natural condition.

We are not born unhappy — we learn to be. This means that we can unlearn it, just like anything else in life.

As the saying goes:

“If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

Fun fact — I unlearned 80% of the math I learned in school within months of graduating.

I think the reason unhappiness in the world is increasing despite the increase in the quality of life is that life gets more and more complicated with time.

Caveman had none of the comforts we enjoy today, but I doubt that meant everyone was constantly unhappy.

Life was not great, but it was simple.

Their world was small — it mostly consisted of themselves. If they had a community, it would have been small.

I can’t imagine that their happiness would have depended upon what the world does for them. It more likely depended on what they did for themselves — finding food, making shelter, etc.

Today we are so connected to the world that we place our hopes and expectations on it to make us happy. Always waiting for something or someone else to make us feel good. And when the world fails to deliver on those expectations, we just get mad at it.

Our way of thinking has also gotten increasingly complicated — overthinking what happens to us and why, overthinking what others think, and making assumptions in our heads that may not be true in reality.

“Everyone hates me, I’m a failure, bad things always happen to me, if I’m not successful people will think less of me…”

This kind of mindset leads to misplaced blame and being angry at a world that is not really that concerned with how you feel, taking the focus away from actually working on helpful solutions to unhappiness — like self-improvement. That’s why it needs to be unlearned in order to be happy again.

Obviously, the longer you’ve practiced something, the harder it would be to unlearn it — harder, but not impossible.

By overthinking and overcomplicating our lives, we’ve become the main reason for our unhappiness.

I’m still trying to unlearn all the habits that are harmful to my happiness. But being more mindful and aware of them has improved things immensely.

I started by not overanalyzing every situation or making assumptions without real evidence and by focusing on the ways I make myself unhappy instead of how others make me unhappy.

In conclusion, the best ways to fight unhappiness is by:

• Simplifying your life
• Dialing back your thoughts
• Working on self-improvement
• And avoiding assumptions

Thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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— Love, Yana