How to Be Unhappy? Have More Opinions.

by Sara Flitner

“How to Be Unhappy” was the title of the list I saw on Instagram, and at the very top it read, “Be right,” and “Judge.” There were lots of other things: “Blame others,” “Want more,” “Demand to be understood,” “Make happiness conditional (as in, ‘when I get the job/paycheck/new car…’),” “Want things to be different,” and (the clincher, at least for me), “Try to control things.”

We do so many things in effort to be happy. We try to get things or avoid things, and we usually clothe ourselves in opinions about what everyone else should be doing. In short, we have believe our own thoughts about what is right. We build a tight, efficient prison and though the door is wide open, we stay inside bars made of certainty and our desire to control things. We try to make the world out there align with the opinions we have developed in here.

This unvirtuous cycle is a fast track to unhappiness. While we wait for the majority of people to catch up and agree with us on all the things we are certain about, we are living in the prison. For every grievance we collect and report to our mental prison guard, we are missing what is actually happening. We don’t see the fox darting into Karns Meadows or the crystalline hoarfrost on trees at dawn. Our friend calls to share a joke, but we are distracted by how things ought to be going. We don’t get the joke.

Research shows that we have something called “hedonic adaptation,” which means that big events, like buying a house or receiving a promotion, provide only a temporary boost in happiness, before people return to their baseline. By contrast, small daily hits of positive experience are shown to impact our happiness and positively change it over time.

All of this sounds simple, and it is. But simple can be hard. It takes a lot of focus and effort, letting go of being right. How do we interrupt the mental patterns that pull us out of reality and into the stream of anxious thoughts and judging opinions?

Try letting go of as many opinions as possible. You can still get frustrated by the person who cuts you off in traffic, but if you’re still fuming about it three stoplights later, you are no longer in the driver’s seat of your own life. Instead, notice something new. Notice something beautiful. Take a deep breath or two. Loosen the grip on the steering wheel and feel what happens to your mood.

Trade all the time you spend opining about what others should be doing for your own self-awareness. If you really want to be understood, understand yourself. Become familiar with what you need, and then do it. (Bonus: this eliminates waiting for the outside world to guess for you….) The key to your satisfaction lies in how well you understand your own triggers, feelings, and behavior patterns.

Get on friendly terms with reality. Stop adding to the agony by ruminating on why it is unfair or shouldn’t have happened. While all of that might be true, being resistant to what is happening is putting yourself on a subscription plan for suffering. Bad things happen, and our ability to respond with balance reduces that broken glass effect. Reality deals some painful blows, and it hurts. We can decide against the internal rehashing and ruminating, which means we avoid hardwiring painful situations into lasting unhappiness.

Make it an intentional part of your day to notice good things. As really messed up as a lot of things are, more things are good. Research shows that dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter, is released when we actively notice good things around us or spend time thinking about or writing down things we appreciate or feel thankful about.

Start over. Again. And again. Preferably while laughing at yourself. You can’t be happy yesterday or in the future. The opportunity lies in being awake to what we experience now.