Everyone has good and bad days. But if you step back and push aside those fantasies of being a billionaire or the most attractive person on the planet, and if you’re fortunate enough not to have to struggle with poverty, violence, or trauma, are you happy just being you on an average day? If not, what’s missing? What do you need to improve your self-esteem and outlook on life?
Like happiness, unhappiness is a byproduct of something else. Here are four common sources and their antidotes:
Unsolved problems
Many of my clients come to see me not because they are clinically depressed, but because their lives are cluttered with unresolved problems—a loss they never fully grieved, a divorce or estranged relationship that still gnaws at them, an ever-present worry about their health that they try to ignore, or even a leaky faucet they never had fixed. These issues erode their quality of life, becoming the sum of what they’ve avoided. They feel like victims or losers, as if life is against them.
Antidote: Time to tackle these problems and put them to rest—fix the faucet, check on your health, or resolve your relationship. And it’s okay to bring in help, professional or not, to reach your goal.
Regrets and self-criticism
If you tend to be self-critical, if that bully in your head is always beating you up, or if you are always looking back at what you did wrong and looking forward only to see what you’ll probably keep doing, it’s hard to feel good about yourself and your life. Just as life can become the sum of what you avoid, it can also become the sum of what you should have done but didn’t.
Antidote: The problem here isn’t you, but the bully who constantly rubs your nose in past mistakes and tells you the only salvation is to be more perfect.
It’s time to give yourself some grace and recognize that you always do the best you can at the time. Learn to identify that bully voice, and push back or ignore it. It is ruining your self-esteem; it is running your life when you should be. Take charge of your brain. Focus on success rather than failure, and on gratitude rather than regret.
Lack of purpose
Maybe you’re unhappy with your life because you lack direction or a strong reason or passion to keep you moving forward. Maybe it used to be about providing for your kids, but they’ve left the nest. Maybe it was your work, but that is over. Maybe you were fueled by the approval of others, but now that’s harder to come by for good reasons.
You’re in a state of transition. Rather than being driven by duty, accomplishment, or others’ approval, your challenge now is to focus on self-approval and process, where the doing itself is its own reward. For many, this is difficult because it requires a paradigm shift in how you view life’s goals and how you find meaning.
Antidote: It’s time to focus on the doing, without expectations about what others may or may not think or what the outcome will be. Make your task exploring your gifts and becoming more fully you. Decide anew what you need to do to feel proud of yourself and to be proud of your life, independent of others.
Lonely and isolated
Independence is not about being alone. We all need to be connected to others in some way. Feeling lonely and invisible, as if no one truly cares about you, is a silent killer of happiness.
Antidote: Reach out to others, not for approval but to feel connected to humanity. Reach out so you don’t keep feeling that it’s you against the world or that the world doesn’t care about you. Reach out to discover that you are capable of making a difference, however small, in others’ lives.
We’re back to our original question: What is missing from your life? What are the one or two things that would make it better—letting go of the past, being less critical, finding a sense of purpose, or feeling less alone?
You are a unique human being and here for a purpose. Your life is always working for you, offering you the lessons you need to learn most. What is the lesson you need to learn to run your life better?
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If not now, when?
