I often teach about happiness and what has become exceedingly clear is this: there are 7 qualities chronically unhappy people have mastered.
According to Psychology Today, University of California researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky states: “40% of our of our capacity for happiness is within our power to change”.
If this is true and it is, there’s hope for us all. There are billions of people on our planet and clearly, some are truly happy. The rest of us bounce back and forth between happiness and well, unhappiness depending on the day.
Throughout the years I’ve learned there are certain traits and habits chronically unhappy people seem to have mastered. But before diving in with you, let me preface this and say: we all have bad days, even weeks -myself included- when we fall down in all 7 areas.
“40% of our of our capacity for happiness is within our power to change”.
The difference between a happy and unhappy life is how often and how long we stay there.
Here are the 7 qualities of chronically unhappy people.
1. Your default belief is that life is hard.
Happy people know life can be hard and tend to bounce through hard times with an attitude of curiosity versus victimhood. They take responsibility for how they got themselves into a mess, and focus on getting themselves out of it as soon as possible.
Perseverance towards problem versus complaining over circumstances is a symptom of a happy person. Unhappy people see themselves as victims of life and stay stuck in the “look what happened to me” attitude versus finding a way through and out the other side.
Top Comments
This kind of approach is so demoralising to those of us who are mentally ill and at times don't have a lot of control over how we feel. After reading this I feel so very, very guilty for not being able to follow this advice and being a "negative Nellie". I've spent the last five years being treated for bowel cancer. I've had one surgery after another, six months of chemotherapy, I wore an iliosomy bag for twelve months and then more surgery. Apparently I should have been able to deal with that, severe clinical depression and fibromyalgia with a spring in my step and a song on my lips because god forbid I should be negative and allow my pain and fear to distract them from their happiness.
I'm sorry the attitude in the article makes me feel despairing, angry and a total failure. I just don't have the words to describe how much I despise myself right now.
To find the reasons for having these 7 qualities seems the best way to me. Like going to therapy and searching in childhood the reasons for unhappiness. Much better than reading something like this and feeling guilty for feeling you're not able to be happy like "the happy people". That can be very devastating.