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How to be happy, or Why you're sad and how to fix it

In this entry, I'm exploring why I'm sad, how to be happy and my thoughts about what I want to do in my life, where I want to go and how I want to get there. I hope you find it informative too. To that end, I've included some links to sites I've found useful, with brief summaries and/or reviews.

Career, life plans, aspirations, hopes & dreams

Aside from the seemingly obvious, what do you absolutely, totally, without-a-doubt, enjoy–no, love–doing? Something that just sends shivers through your spine when you talk about it?

If you're not overwhelmingly emotionally-connected to your business, you're in the wrong industry.

Trizoko: What's the absolute best feeling you've ever had?

Entrepreneurship

For me, entrepreneurship is the only way to go. Entrepreneurship, to me, means I'm completely in charge of where my life goes, the buck stops at me, it's my responsibility to make sure I do everything that needs to be done or delegate it to the right people.

For me, it's important that I get to do a massive variety of things. At the moment, the things I most love doing are being on the Internet, talking to people, writing, thinking up new ideas, playing around with new ideas and just generally being creative. Hence, All Things Bright.

For me, I've got to be highly stimulated by something in order to be passionate about it. I can work really hard on a project 'if I have to', but my best work definitely comes out when I desperately want to be working on it. Why's that? Because my creativity pours out when I'm loving what I'm doing.

Gratitude, or How to be thankful

Dwelling on things that have gone well can help pick you up, he says. "You have to thank your lucky stars about what goes right on a daily basis. Whenever you get the feeling of being negative about things, just take a moment out and remind yourself of the stuff that has gone well. It could be anything from a conversation to your garden looking nice, or that it didn't rain on you when you were out on your bike. It's an extremely powerful technique.

The Guardian: Why do some people enjoy life and others don't? (How to be happy)

I had been thinking about writing an entry about things for which I'm grateful, but I thought a list would make pretty dull reading for you.

However, reading the article I've just quoted above, I'm re-convinced it's a good idea. By breaking up the list in to bitesize chunks, it'll be easy to make it interesting and/or insightful. Consequently, I'm going to write on this theme each day at 43 things.

I'll be doing this every day for the next 30 days (and then I may carry on). The first one is: Thank you for friends. In future, you can read these at Say thank you, by Kx; they also appear in the Thanks box, in the sidebar to the right, between the Subscribe and Pages boxes.

How to be happy: Useful links for you

  • Depression Cure: How to be Happy!
    1. Place conditions on your happiness leads to unhappiness.
    2. Blaming others leads to unhappiness.
    3. Decide to be happy.
    I can easily accept that 1 & 2 are true; but 3 seems a little tricky.
  • The Guardian: Why do some people enjoy life and others don't? (How to be happy)
    "Positive psychologists believe optimism can be learned, that we can teach ourselves to see a half-empty glass as half-full. All we have to do is spend time mulling over all the things that have gone right for us, rather than dwelling on what has gone badly."
  • Trizoko: How to Best Spend a Minute
    "When you think of one thing that makes you thankful, another sucka pops up. And another, and another, and another — until you fully appreciate what a sweet life you really have."
  • How to be happy: Happiness is an inside job. Here are ten ways to claim your joy
    "The best thing I gained from that college experience was a determination to work at being happy. I still work hard at it. I'm prone to worry and sometimes forget that happiness is largely my responsibility."
  • eHow: How to Be Happy
    "Happiness has different meanings for everyone; we each have to define and seek it for ourselves." Step-by-step instructions on how to be happy!

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Posted on 21 November '06 by Kathleen Bright, under Entrepreneurship, Personal, Pledges.

8 Comments to “How to be happy, or Why you're sad and how to fix it”

#1 Posted by IanW (22.11.06 at 01:37 )

Thanks for the very personal-seeming post.

I wanted to comment on the 'Decide to be happy' thing, and what it means to me personally.

When I was depressed, one of my friends said that I wasn't allowing myself to be happy.

What he meant was that I'd got into a position where feeling sad and like a victim got me attention, and that was a good thing, so I stayed there.

It wasn't until I stopped dwelling on the negative things in my life, and just made myself smile each morning that I started to change for the better. I literally decided to be happy and to wear that mask until I was genuinely happy, and it did work.

It can be quite a powerful technique, but like everything, it isn't easy and it isn't guaranteed.

#2 Posted by Kathleen (22.11.06 at 01:45 )

Heh, so positive until those last seven words! I think the dose of realism is important though, because telling sad people 'just be happy' tends to make us feel like people aren't taking our feelings seriously.

I agree, smiling really does help me to feel happier. Sometimes it's hard to make myself smile, but it helps to have reminders sometimes.

Thanks for talking about your personal experiences too. The attention-seeking aspect is sometimes true and it definitely rings true for me at the moment. I was going to mention this in my entry, actually, but forgot to: Sometimes feeling sad I feel very self-indulgent for exactly the reason that (sometimes) I'm aware that I'm dwelling on being sad.

Increased responsibility for my feelings seems to be the way to go. :D <– NB: Smile!

Thanks again.

Kx

#3 Posted by Do you know what you want from your life? Or, Reflections on mine : All Things Bright by Kathleen Bright (08.12.06 at 00:57 )

[...] Some of these thoughts emerged in my entry How to be happy, or Why you're sad and how to fix it, which explores, "why I'm sad, how to be happy and my thoughts about what I want to do in my life, where I want to go and how I want to get there". [...]

#4 Posted by How to be happy : All Things Bright by Kathleen Bright (21.01.07 at 00:01 )

[...] I've read lots of articles about how to be happy. When I was feeling particularly down I sought out relevant articles and used what I found to write one myself: How to be happy, or Why you're sad and how to fix it. [...]

#5 Posted by Amy (02.10.07 at 20:01 )

Happiness is a journey not a destination, you cannot just expect to come to a sudden moment in your life when you think I'm happy now, you have to enjoy every little victory you are bless with!

#6 Posted by Chris (12.08.08 at 03:41 )

nice entry.. but some people like myself cant just fix being sad like that.. people might think their happy sometimes.. but at night when they are alone they probably cry..the world is cruel, cant find anyone nice anymore.. no one is their true self.. cant find anyone real or anyone who cares.. if your sad or depressed you most likely always will be.

#7 Posted by Sandra K. (10.12.09 at 12:36 )

Hi Kathleen,

i simply love your blog. I keep heading back here almost anytime i feel like sh*t and it doesn't take long 'til i feel better. At least most of the time that is ;)

I've always been a bit sensible and it's a constant up and down with me :/

Well, i recently found a site (http://moodists.com) which let's you track your feelings and share these with yuor friends. I talked my best friend Sandra (yeah, we share the same name :) into using it to and it's really nice to see how we feel or felt some time ago. Also it paints your mood depending on your location onto a worldmap, which is fun because you can instantly see your feelings impact to the world ;)

Just wanted to let you know.
Keep up the good work!

Thx, Sandra.

#8 Posted by Adam (01.04.10 at 01:16 )

Hi Kathleen,

This is a great post. Under depression, if you're a child abuse survivor I would add that therapy can really help you with creating new thoughts and behavior patterns that contribute to happiness. Deciding to be happy is important, sometimes support comes in handy. I wrote an article about it called "Why Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Can Be One Of The Best Cures For Depression For Child Abuse Survivors" (http://www.zentactics.com/cures-for-depression.html). I post this in honor of National Child Abuse Prevention Month, which is in April.

Adam

PS I like the picture of the lion on your about page.