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Some Obstacles to our happiness 

Today I am discussing a few more things that concern all of us. I think by now all of you agree that being happy is very important to us in our lives. We believe happiness depends upon many things that may be and may not be in our control.

But I am putting forth an argument that we are the ones who lay the biggest obstacles to our happiness. Yes, it is we who stand to block our happiness.  We create these blocks by doing certain things.  Some authors put them in a category called “happiness sins.”

First, we underrate the importance of happiness.  We sometimes sacrifice happiness to material objects or gains. We may be unaware, but we do it several times. For example picking up things which are considered to have more value for money than those that we enjoy most. It is most common in food items. We know that latter will give us more happiness yet we chose the former.

The second obstacle is becoming more competitive. In this race we are chasing superiority. “How is the neighbor having a better car than I have?” We falsely believe that becoming superior to others will bring us more happiness. We tend to find satisfaction in becoming richer, stronger, faster, higher achiever,etc.,than others. The list is endless. We also encourage our children to do so. Sometimes we want to be the best in every aspect of life. This desire leads to more competition, and we end up finding someone somewhere better than us in one or the other element. We forget that this will not make us any happier. Chasing superiority is the biggest killer of happiness.

There is a story that I tell in my training which goes like this

Once a crow was living happily in a forest until he saw a swan. The swan was pure white, and its feathers glowed like pearl in the sun. The crow said to the swan, “Oh, you are so beautiful and admired. I would have been delighted if I were like you”. 

The swan told the crow that he was pleased until he saw the two colored parrot with a fine beak. “It is much more beautiful,” the swan said. The crow went to meet the parrot to admire how beautiful it was.  The parrot said, “I took pride in my colors till I didn’t see the peacock. He has beautiful multicolored feathers, and it’s amazing to see them spread out when he dances. I wish I were so beautiful like him”. The peacock was in the zoo in a cage.  Many people had gathered to look at him. When the people left, the crow went near the peacock and said, “I am envious of you. You are so beautiful, and people come from far to have a look at you. I would be very happy if I were like that”.  The peacock said, “I always thought that I was the most beautiful and happy bird on the planet. But because of my beauty, I am entrapped in this zoo. I have realized that the crow is the only bird that is not kept in a cage. So for the past few days, I have thought that if I were a crow, I could happily roam around everywhere.”

Isn’t that our problem too? We make unnecessary comparisons with others and become sad when there is no guarantee that the other person would be happier than us.

Doesn’t the grass always seem greener on the other side?

 We pursue superiority. We fall for the rat race, or we try to take pride in what we have achieved.

Good and healthy relationships share the same position as happiness in the list of top things that people want in life. We all want to be in healthy, loving, nurturing relationships. But if this desire is expressed in an unhealthy way it strains relationships.

 We cannot sustain healthy relationships if we become either too needy or too avoiding. Being needy or clinging is not suitable for our emotional health.  The opposite of it that is being too avoidant or asocial is equally bad.

The third thing that kills happiness is being emotionally too needy or too asocial or aloof.

The fourth mistake we make is to become too controlling, especially for our spouse or kids and also on our employees or staff. For example “My husband wouldn’t tell me how his day went,” or “My wife doesn’t pay much attention to my needs,” “children do not listen to me,” etc.  We try to control other people’s actions or behavior.

Not only this, we want to control the surroundings and even situations and the outcomes of events. For example, “I didn’t want it to rain today,” “such and such person was talking to others but not to me,” etc.

Such a tendency to control the outcomes also lowers our happiness levels.

The next obstacle to our happiness is to have a distrust in other people. It is to believe that you cannot trust people unless they are proved to be trustworthy. People who trust others more are generally happier. Researchers have found that when you trust others a hormone called oxytocin is released. Some researchers call this hormone the trust molecule. It's the same molecule that gets released when two people are in love with each other. It's also the same molecule that gets released when a mother is feeding her baby. And because this hormone gets released when you trust others, they generally tend to repay your trust with trustworthy behavior. If we could somehow trust people without really knowing whether they are reliable or not, we would build a culture of mutual trust. The act of trusting people more would increase our level of happiness.

The sixth factor that lowers are happiness is keeping a distrust for life in general.  It is focusing more on the negative aspects of life than the positive ones, looking at the glass as half empty rather than half-filled. We all have some setbacks in life. But we can overcome the hindrances and researchers call this ability as resilience. People who have more resilience are happier. We should not rely on outcomes for our happiness.   There is always a big or small positive outcome to even the grimmest situations.

The last mistake that we make is to ignore the source within. There is an excellent source of happiness within oneself. Tapping this resource can overcome all other obstacles too. Deepak Chopra in his book “You are the Universe,” says that one secret to happiness is to “know who you are.”  He further says, “Everything that matters like happiness, contentment, fear of loss, joy and creativity and love and compassion and empathy comes to us from knowing who you are. According to yoga knowing who you are is not your body or your mind or not your experiences of the world.   Who you are is the awareness, the consciousness in which all experience occurs. What is experience? Experience is thought, experience is perception of the world, sound, touch taste and smell. So who are you? You are the source of thought, you are the source of perception, and you are the source of volition or choice.”

We must increase our awareness of self.  There are several ways to do so like meditation, mindfulness, etc.