Over the last three years the United States has experienced more drastic and dramatic changes to its financial well being then it has in decades. For many Americans, the losses in our lives related to the ailing economy are unlike anything we’ve ever experienced. Odds are good that in the last three years you have suffered losing your business, losing your job, loss or drastic reduction in retirement savings, loss of your home, irreparable credit report damage or even a combination of all the aforementioned. What’s worse, is that in addition to all the consequences of devastating economic changes, odds are good that you have also suffered loss of a loved one, divorce, the end of a love relationship or other significant changes that just come with living our daily lives. Not to mention the demoralizing experience of watching nearly everyone you know suffering the same or worse types of loss. In the wake of the last three years you may very well find yourself unemployed, underemployed or otherwise enduring hardship with less support than ever.
These types of events are traumatic. As is common after trauma, you may be feeling numb, disconnected or disinterested in the life in front of you. You may be struggling with the notion of who is to blame and have a hard time trusting others. You may resent the things that have happened to you and may be feeling emotions such as anger or sadness. You very well may have been conditioned by recent events to “assume the worst” or to live in fear about what may happen next. These types of things can quietly and subtly force us into ruts in our lives.
Before you know it, the excitement is gone from facing the day. Mornings filled with drudgery and days filled with clock watching…or worse…television watching. It is easy to understand why most Americans are not currently consumed with feelings of hope, optimism and faith about their future. In addition, what we do not realize is that as we begin to live more and more under the burden of negative feelings and carry more weight of the trauma we have endured, we may very well be compounding the problems by making life harder on ourselves with our reactions. Feelings of sadness, anger, resentment, low self-worth, etc may be reverberating off of you and returning to splash you right in your face like waves off the side of the bathtub. One way or another, happiness can disappear from our lives without notice. Happiness can go missing without anyone or anything to blame. The events in our country and in our personal lives over the last three years certainly could add to the possibility of unhappiness.
At this very moment you may feel like a victim of bad circumstances or bad luck. You may feel at times that the world and all its occupants are working against you. We are often very quick to hold other people and things accountable for making us happy or unhappy. At the same time we can be blind to the role that we ourselves play in building and tearing down happiness in our daily living. While the list of people and things that appear to be making you unhappy may be long, the important thing to realize is that your name should not be on the list. In other words, these days, it is easier than ever to find reasons to be unhappy and allow unhappiness to exist in your daily life. However, the old adage “I am my own worst enemy” is more important to consider now than ever. To believe we are our own worst enemies is easy. To know where and how to change this is much harder to see.
We live our lives as one continuous motion. Our happiness comes and goes like swells or waves that we never saw coming OR going. What if we take a step back, and break down our lives not just in smaller increments of time but of areas of life that we are in everyday. The mistake we often make is looking at what happened to us today and trying to figure out who to blame or what to do about it. What if we look at how we feel about the things that are in our daily lives and how those feelings may be leading us to do or not do things that are contributing to the things that just seem to happen to us?
For example, it is easy to understand that how in life, particularly lately, that someone could come to resent their employer, a significant other, former spouse the government, etc. but we DO NOT always understand is what that resentment will cause us to do or not do that is way more detrimental to our happiness than anything the other party did to us. It is understandable that we sometimes feel that grudges and accounting in our personal relationships are needed to “teach someone a lesson” or punish someone for wronging us. However, what we do not realize is that those very tactics may be hurting us worse than anything the other person did. Sometimes an increase in happiness and an increase in the frequency of happy days can come from simple changes in prospective.
While you may not be easily convinced that your life is about to instantly change for the better, there are things, very simple things you may be able to do to feel better right away about the life you currently have. You may feel powerless to change the world and everyone in it but you can influence at least one person. That one person is you. There may be small adjustments in thinking or action in the area(s) of career, relationship, friendship, health, etc that may have you feeling happier before the sun sets the next time. In the series to follow, we will examine some possible adjustments in the aforementioned areas of your life that can help you begin to get your mojo back. These adjustments will not call for trendy sacrificial diets, change in religion, job change, starting an internet business or joining a gym. Just an open mind joined with a strong desire to be happier today.