Eliminate these habits and happiness will follow.

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Editor’s note: Everyone wants happiness, but the road to happiness is blurred. This article puts forward 5 psychological habits that make you unhappy. Avoid these habits and happiness will follow. This article is translated from Medium, author Nick Wignall, the original title is “5 Mental Habits Sabotaging Your Happiness“, I hope to inspire you.

We all want to be happier, but it is difficult to figure out how to do this.

The things we think will make us happy, such as money, status, beautiful appearance, etc., usually turn out not to be as effective as we hope. And most of the self-help books we read are equally disappointing in the long run.

Although I don’t have a panacea to solve this problem, I do want to propose a way to happiness that may be overlooked by most people:

The most direct way to happiness is to eliminate bad mental habits.

As a practicing psychologist and therapist, I talk to unhappy people every day. Many of them are rich, beautiful, and have read many of the best self-help books. But in my opinion, what keeps them away from happiness is often a series of negative mental programs running in their minds.

I cannot guarantee that my method will make you happy. There is no universal solution that will work for everyone. But if you can learn to recognize and reduce these negative mental habits, I think you will find yourself happier every day.

1. Unrealistic expectations

Expectation is a belief about how the world should work, including how people around you should act. Although they are sometimes helpful, they are usually quite dangerous psychologically.

Here is an example:

After spending an afternoon cleaning the garage, you hope your spouse should thank you and express gratitude immediately. If they don’t, you will not only feel sad and disappointed, but also angry and frustrated. When they still don’t mention anything, you will start to think about the good things you did in your previous marriage but were not appreciated. Of course, this will lead to more anger and resentment, which may eventually lead to a serious quarrel.

The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment. Every time your expectations fall through, you will experience disappointment and shock. When you feel angry after expecting to be grateful, your anger, and with itAll the unhelpful behaviors that come will become bigger and more painful.

The lesson here is simple:

If you want to be happier, calmer, and emotionally more stable, especially in your relationships, then pay more attention to your expectations. We have to adjust our expectations to make it more realistic, or simply don’t have any expectations.

“I am not living to meet your expectations, just like you are not living because of my expectations.”-Bruce Lee

2. Criticize your emotions

There are no good or bad emotions. Anxiety is not bad, anger is not bad, and sadness is not bad. These are just different emotions.

If something is morally good or bad, you must control it. This is why no one is sent to prison for feeling angry, because you cannot control whether you are angry or not, so this is not something you can be held responsible for.

On the other hand, there are always people who are sent to prison for excessive behavior. Because you can control your behavior, which means you can be responsible for your behavior, and behavior can be judged as right or wrong, good or bad.

It is torture to judge yourself (including your emotions) because of things you cannot control.

Think about it:

  • When you judge yourself to be sad, now you feel guilty in addition to being sad.

  • When you criticize yourself and feel afraid, now you feel guilty or angry in addition to being afraid.

  • When you blame yourself for being angry, now you will feel sad in addition to anger.

Instead, try to do this: When you are in pain, sympathize with yourself.

When you are in a bad mood, try to talk to yourself, just like you comfort a good friend, with understanding, sympathy, and support.

“I understand now that embracing my story and loving ourselves in the process is the bravest thing we have ever done.”-Brené Brown

3. Worry about the future

Being in a state of worry for a long time will add a lot of anxiety and stress to your life. You may also know that worrying about bad things does not actually make good things happen. In other words, you may realize that worry is just a side effect, but there is no way to change it.

So, why do you want to do this? Why do we still worry if we know that worry will make us feel stressed and anxious?

We like to worry because it gives us the illusion of control.

Here is how it works:

  • For things you cannot control, your brain always imagines it as the worst case.

  • You feel helpless.

  • You will be worried. Because even if worrying will cause anxiety, it will alleviate feelings of helplessness (at least temporarily). For many people, they would rather feel anxious and stressed than feel helpless.

Of course, worrying about how to deal with all kinds of bad things will make you feel that everything is under control, but the mountain of stress and anxiety will eventually make you collapse. Because when you are under long-term stress and anxiety, you will start to see more and more things that worry you, which will lead to more and more anxiety and pressure.

Although you may not need me to tell you this, if you have been under stress and anxiety, it is very difficult to want happiness and happiness.

The true tragedy of long-term worry is that it robs us of our lives.

If you want to end this cycle, rediscover your life, and make yourself feel less stressed, the secret is to accept more helplessness and uncertainty.

Bad things always happen, and most of them are beyond your control. Instead of living in denial, it is better to accept it.

“Worries will not take away the sadness of tomorrow, but will only take away the strength of today.”——Corrie Ten Boom

4. Always seek comfort from others

Seeking comfort will make you feel good in the moment, but in the long run it will leadCause self-frustration.

We all feel anxious sometimes. Obviously, feeling anxious is uncomfortable, even painful. Then, we naturally want to reduce pain and discomfort. This is why seeking comfort is so common:

  • After making a mistake at work, you immediately want to call your boyfriend, hoping for comfort.

  • After an awkward social interaction, you sent a text message to a friend, hoping to get some comforting words to ease your anxiety.

  • Once you find that you feel uncomfortable in your body, you will call your partner, hoping that their comforting words will alleviate your fear.

There is nothing wrong with comforting yourself. When we are afraid, it is very natural and healthy to want support and comfort from others.

But when comforting becomes a habit, it becomes a problem. When your direct and only response to fear or insecurity is to seek comfort from others, this becomes a form of self-sabotage.

Don’t throw away your anxiety on others, because this will cause two major problems:

1. You have lost the ability to control anxiety alone.

2. In your most important interpersonal relationship, you will eventually have unhealthy social dependence, which usually leads to resentment and conflict.

Rather than let others relieve your anxiety, it is better to learn to deal with anxiety yourself:

  • Practice to endure anxiety and uncertainty instead of distracting yourself.

  • Try to face your helplessness rather than trying to eliminate it.

  • Learn to live in fear and anxiety, and continue to live in spite of fear and anxiety.

“The purpose of philosophy is to teach people to live in uncertainty…noIt is to make him feel at ease, but to make him uneasy. ——”Lev Shestov (Lev Shestov)

5. “Mind Reading”

The so-called “mind reading” is a mental habit that assumes that you understand the thoughts and feelings of others.

Humans have an incredible ability to make educated guesses about the thoughts and feelings of others based on various subtle external cues.

For example:

My wife has a special frowning action. Once she does this, it can only explain one thing, that is, the children have been messing around all day, and you need to take them to the park and give me At least one hour of space and quiet, otherwise…

Although I am very good at noticing this and inferring her thoughts and feelings at the time, this mind-reading technique is very dangerous. why?

Because I am not as good as I think…

Occasionally, I might guess her thoughts right, but in most cases, I can’t guess it right. The problem is that one or two successful victories will give you false confidence in your own strength.

This means that most of us think we know what other people want and feel, but most of the time it’s wrong. As a result, we made many wrong assumptions about what they wanted and needed. So we ended up doing a lot of stupid things, saying a lot of stupid things, leading to a lot of stupid conflicts, and a lot of unhappiness.

Rather than assuming that you know what other people think and feel, try asking them. This has two very beneficial effects:

1. You give the impression that you sympathize with others, not judge others. Whether it is right or wrong, when you think you understand others, you are likely to leave an impression of arrogance or even aggressiveness. This is likely to cause conflicts. On the other hand, if you assume that you don’t know, but express interest by asking, you will appear compassionate, leading to a more productive and enjoyable interaction.

2. You will get more accurate information. The simpler you ask people how they feel or think in a particular situation, the better your response will suit them. This in turn means that your guesses about their thoughts and feelings will be more accurate. So we have a paradox: if you want to read people’s thoughts more effectively, you need to stop trying to read their thoughts and just ask them their own thoughts.

In the final analysis, happiness depends largely on relationships.

Do you often fight with the most important person in your life? If so, then you will not be so happy.

On the other hand,