🌼These Unhelpful Habits Hold You Back From Being Happy

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Quit them, and you’ll find yourself happier.

Between routines, habits of the rich, or habits around happiness there are many archetypes of this self-improvement staple. There’s definitely nothing wrong with learning about some helpful habits one could be picking up and trying.

However I’m willing to bet that for most people there is a fixation on starting habits as opposed to stopping habits. Particularly ones that are so deeply engrained in our routine.

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Whether you’re starting or stopping habits, there is always going to be a challenge to it. Going cold turkey can lead to hard withdrawals depending on what it is. Not only that but finding a habit to replace the one you’re quitting could lead you to another unhealthy habit to try and remove later.

Meanwhile building up a new habit could be blocked off by various circumstances beyond our control that discourage us from building it up.

Because of the nature of that, I prefer more addressing bad habits and learning to systematically whittling them down until you no longer need that habit or render its influence to a manageable level where you can refuse to indulge in it.

The technique is like I mentioned above: replace the bad habit with something similar but better for you. Do that, and you’ll find yourself to be happier.

As for what these bad habits are, here are several that come to mind that can be replaced.

Comparison To Others

Replacement: Learning to be comfortable with who you are.

We all have different talents and skills and above all we enjoy showing that off to people too. Through social media, we’ve had an over exposure of people living their lives and we can’t help but compare ourselves to them.

Self-help has leveraged this for decades by showing off the guru’s life or the life of someone else they look up to. They talk about how they or some other person “made it” and drum up interest in that person through quotes or something else.

We’re more accustomed to comparing ourselves to others now more than ever before.

Of course the goal is to learn how to stop but one simply doesn’t stop comparison. I also think trying to think about what makes you special isn’t all that helpful either.

What does make it easier is learning to be comfortable with who you are.

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It’s not quite like thinking about your unique traits or what makes you special. But rather it places more focus on yourself and to be more practical about who you are and where you want to go.

I see it more like a gateway that leads to a series of questions of what one can do. If you find yourself comparing yourself to someone, take some time to really ask whether there’s more to it than that. Often we compare because of jealousy and I find that emotion can be used to start developing routines or ideas that could play a big part in one’s life.

I got back into Youtube because I saw a channel that did a video format that I really liked. Instead of comparing my dead channel to their thriving one, I decided to use that format (with my own twists) to make videos again.

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Misplaced Responsibility

Replacement: Delegation, and learning what you are responsible for.

In Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck he talks about responsibility. On one side, we’re not responsible for every possible thing in the world. However we are responsible for things that happen to and around us in our own ways.

He often uses the example of someone cheating on their partner. While cheating does suck, the desire to cheat on a partner normally doesn’t happen out of the blue. It could be the partner’s past behaviour, lack of communication, or the cheater has some screwed up values that the other didn’t recognize.

The point is that both sides have responsibilities in their own respects and the goal is to figure everything out.

But the thing about that scenario is that similar scenarios play out like this all the time in our lives. And often we screw up what we’re responsible for in those situations.

Of course in the heat of the moment, these things can get thrown out the window. But when you have a more level head about yourself and of certain situations it does become easier to figure out how things could’ve gone and what one can do better for next time.

There is also the more direct form of responsibility such as one’s job or specific tasks. Remember that one doesn’t have to tackle every problem in life alone. Leveraging systems and delegating can often lead to things being better.

My roommate doesn’t like me cleaning dishes so we’ve agreed to let them wash the dishes while I put dishes away once they’ve dried for example.

Keeping Score Of Negativity

Replacement: Pay attention to the emotion and process it properly.

Disappointments, slights, grifts, harm, abuse. All of those things suck to deal with but keeping track of all that you experienced by various people is even worse.

Of course, a lot of trauma can be connected to those things and it’s difficult to overcome that. Trauma doesn’t “go away” or heal completely from our minds. But overcoming what we do with that trauma long after it’s occurred is something within our realm of control.

Harbouring ill feelings towards people just because of this one thing they did in the past is not worth it. It also can affect future relationships with people too.

Replacing this habit is a matter of sitting with that emotion and learning to process it. For a lot of us, we haven’t had much of a chance to sit with that emotion or learn to cope with it. Doing so now would be a good step forward.

A prime example is the sting of losing at something. For us Millennials we got participation awards growing up so we never truly “lost” at something. Those experiences can often lead to us feeling more upset when things don’t go as plan or we lose at something we thought we were good at.

How you process emotions is up to you. Some will encourage a journal or meditation. Me, I’d say go for a walk and talk to yourself. Venting to yourself can feel pretty good.

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Multitasking

Replacement: Mono-tasking

Between work, life, and our goals, there are many things clamouring for our attention. It’s noisy and as a species we’ve sorta adapted to this chaos by trying to multitask.

Or think we’re great and capable multitaskers.

The reality is the vast majority of us suck at it. And it makes us more stressed out and unfocused.

This really started to hit home for me once I started using this new productivity app called TheSukha. It’s helped me to focus on my work more and get things done faster and more efficiently. I’m also happier as a result of it.

But you don’t always need an app to help with that. Learning to get into your own flow and drill down on a single task at a time can be done once you form a system to do so.

Harsh On Oneself

Replacement: Give yourself some credit.

We’re flawed beings. We’re going to screw up things. I make spelling mistakes in these articles that I don’t even realize until months later. The point is that it happens.

And addressing this issue is learning to roll with that rather than dwelling on the mistake. If you missed an appointment, see if you can reschedule it. And if it’s something more serious then ask yourself what you can do better for next time.

There are lessons to be learned from our mistakes, but to get to that point where we grow from that, it’s important to give yourself some wiggle room. Give yourself some responsibility to own up to that mistake, but also give yourself some slack in the process.

A good example that I saw recently is that there are 7.888 billion people in the world right now. What this means is that we have 7,887,999 opportunities to form a good and strong bond with someone. If we screw up a friendship, it sucks, but there are literally billions of other people that we could get along with.

Thinking about it that way, a friendship crashing and burning or not really forming isn’t as bad as it could be despite what our emotions are telling us in those moments.

Phone Dwelling

Replacement: Take breaks and hideaway.

My first phone was a Nokia flip phone. The year? 2010. I didn’t get my first iPhone until 2013 and even then it was a hand-me down. I currently have an iPhone 7 while Apple is rolling out 15’s.

The point I’m making is I’m never current and my phone is used more for functional purposes as opposed to a super powered computer in my pocket. I’m not hooked to my phone. But I know plenty of others who are.

Whether it’s videos, social media, or games, all of these things can lead to us being drained in a variety of ways. And because these are meant to be addictive, it makes it harder for us to be better.

What helps a lot is having more of a strategy on how to deal with technology. I know a streamer who takes routine breaks from streaming. They’ve been able to balance their life and work by either going off to someplace with no technology or staying at home with all their tech stuff.

You don’t need to do exactly that, but learning to deal with taking breaks or limiting technology use during key moments can be a real game changer.

Buying What Makes You Happy

Replacement: Deliberate purchases.

This is a counterintuitive one since every purchase we ever make in life is connected to an emotion. I’m not saying never buy anything ever again. Rather, be conscious about what you are buying and to dwell on your emotions around potential purchases big or small.

I often think about the countless self-help webinars or events that guarantee “you’ll change your life forever” or promise “incredible happiness” when writing about this. It’s this sort of scummy tactics that one should be more wary of.

It’s impossible to remove our emotions from buying things. We’re always going to buy things that we think will make us happy or enhance our life in some way. Even when it comes to experiences too. But learning to have a double take on things can often lead to wiser and better decisions in the end.

What makes us happier in life will vary from person to person. We all have similar needs but there are nuances to it that our own circumstances dictates. In my mind, it’s figuring out what problems are worth solving in our lives and determining what problems we want to have in the first place.

And those problems can be complimented by a lot of these kinds of habits that I mentioned above.

Read also: Essentials of delegation for entrepreneurship 

Picking your own fights and finding fulfilment in solving those problems is what life is all about. And of course the payoff from solving those problems too. That is what life is about.

Contributed by Eric S Burdon

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