3 Habits That Steal Your Happiness
The 3 thieves of happiness and a few strategies to steal it back.
Hey all!
I’ve been traveling.
And staying near the base of an active volcano in Seattle, WA all week meeting with private clients.
I started this post then, but I am comfortably finishing it up from my home.
Also, if you haven’t already and someone sent this to you:
If you only find happiness in what you do, not who you are, this post is for you.
Happiness.
If we could buy it everyone would spend every dollar on it.
And do so contently.
If people were always happy, without needing a reason to be, every aspect of our lives would change.
We would need new ways to work together, date each other, and even change how we exist by ourselves.
But that change isn’t coming soon, and we can’t buy happiness, or if we can most people can’t afford enough of it.
And without a button they can push for it, most people don’t know how else they’re supposed to get happiness.
Let alone, what they should do after they have some.
They take what they can get, and eventually resign to scraps of serotonin.
But it’s not their fault.
Or mine.
I grew up a victim of that sort of thinking, too.
Thinking that you can’t just be happy.
That there needed to be a reason.
And not just a reason, but a good one that you can explain to others.
Suddenly, happiness is limited to the version of it that I can articulate.
The version of happiness that comes with reasons that won’t be easily criticized by others.
A version that doesn’t exist.
And maybe that’s how I got good at writing—so that I could claim versions of happiness that I could explain, justify and defend.
Don’t judge me, though.
Everyone has their insane strategies for happiness, you included.
For many, the happiness they allow themselves comes from control.
Others, substances.
Many more it’s togetherness through the struggle.
Whatever it is, when you grow up thinking that way, it’s easy to keep yourself unhappy, because it’s what you know.
For this reason, billions of people are taught to settle for unhappiness in their lives.
They’re taught that happiness is not the most important thing.
That it’s an easy trade-off, something to be lost in the fine print of another exchange.
And moreover, they aren’t taught how to protect happiness.
After helping 1000s create the habits that lead to happiness and fulfillment in their lives and careers, I’ve discovered that the most critical piece of the happiness puzzle is not just knowing what makes you happy, but also…
Learning how to vigilantly protect your happiness once you’ve got it.
The 3 Thieves of Happiness and How to Steal it Back
Viktor Frankl taught us that happiness is emergent and that it comes to us indirectly, as something emergent from what we’re engaged in.
Said simply, it’s hard to get happiness because you can’t just go out looking for it.
It only comes as a byproduct of doing something else.
It’s a combination of factors.
Easier and more important, than finding ways to kickstart happiness, is protecting it once you’ve got it.
And observing the habits that steal happiness, so that you can ruthlessly eliminate them, and steal happiness back.
Thief #1: Comparison
President Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
Which is the quote that inspired this post.
But he was the president, so I can only imagine who he was comparing himself to…
Especially considering he was also:
- The youngest president in history up until that point at 42…
- A boxing champion, mountain climber, bear fighter…
- An assassination attempt survivor and all-around bad boy…
That other person must have been on another level entirely, or maybe that’s what drove Teddy to become someone incomparable.
He conquered his unhappiness in the same way he conquered most things in life: with audacity and tenacity.
It is insane to not compare yourself to others.
Our brains are literally wired to do it.
But they are also wired to suffer from doing it.
The difference is, now you have far more people to compare yourself to than even a president did in the 1900s.
The human brain evolved to remember about ~150 people.
Now you see about that many people in an hour online.
It makes sense to want to focus on what others have when you’re in a small tribe with only a few high-performers and you learn from each other’s actual behavior.
Because then you get to see the time they put into training and performing.
But what you see online is what others want you to see.
A standard they don’t actually live up to and you definitely can’t.
So, don’t compare yourself to others.
Compare yourself to yourself—specifically who you have been.
It’s a different game than most play, but it’s the only way to sustain success and happiness.
If you stay in this cycle long enough, you can eventually reconnect with recognizing where other leaders are at on the broader stage.
And re-integrate, sustaining your happiness, without inherently sacrificing it to others in comparison.
Thief #2: Weak Boundaries
The second thief of happiness is more like a leak.
It’s having weak boundaries.
You can know this for certain: if you step outside, others are going to do things that will make you unhappy.
Many others are far more desperate than you are, and when you meet them, you’re walking into their story—just like they are walking into yours.
But, and it’s a huge but here, what happens next and whether you get to keep your happiness or not comes down to what that story is for you.
And specifically, whether you believe it and defend it.
Their story doesn’t actually matter that much when you get this.
For example, is your story that your happiness is more valuable than what others have to say or do?
If it is, then you have the opportunity to defend that story whenever you interact with others.
They have a story, too.
And it may or may not involve your happiness.
It often doesn’t.
Then, there’s another third story, where you can help them and keep your happiness.
But you have to be willing to step away, in order to unlock it.
Most people don’t defend their boundaries soon enough—they’re reluctant to put a boundary up.
And so they lose immediately.
They step into another’s frame and then spend all their effort trying to work their way back.
Most people are not thinking about you, or really anyone other than themselves.
So don’t take it personally when their plan for how things should go doesn’t also include your happiness.
Often it hardly includes the solution.
But, do take it personally to create your own happiness and then defend it.
If engaging with someone else starts to diminish that for you, put up a boundary.
Not to keep them out, but to keep your happiness in.
To save and protect your energy.
Happiness is strengthened and endures with strong and well-maintained boundaries.
And the result of that is better work getting done, in a more sustainable way, that’s more enjoyable for everybody.
You’d be surprised how often two opposing ideologies can exist happily in a room when both people have powerful boundaries.
Everyone involved is empowered.
Happiness perseveres.
Thief #3: Gratitude Amnesia
The third and final thief of happiness is not so much something you do, but something you don’t do.
Gratitude.
Without gratitude, happiness is starved.
Happiness needs gratitude like flames need oxygen.
Gratitude amnesia is like forgetting to breathe.
Everything is fine, but suddenly—you’re tense. You feel like you can keep going, keep moving, but… it’s harder. You don’t know why, but you get the sense that you won’t last long like this. As far as you can tell, things are fine, right?
Without gratitude, happiness recedes and something else encroaches in its place.
It’s a turf war in your heart.
And without boundaries to protect it, happiness is vulnerable to attack.
Instead, remember to be grateful.
It’s just like when you’re sick, and you think, “Wow, I can’t believe I used to just walk around healthy and not realize how great that was. When I’m healthy again, I’m going to dance in the streets.”
Well, are you dancing?
Forgetting to be grateful is a type of amnesia.
You have so much to appreciate, but are you remembering to?
If you’re forgetting to, the universe has a funny way of making you remember why you appreciate it.
And that’s not always fun.
So don’t forget to recognize that.
The 3 Thieves and Their Empowering Opposites
So, the 3 Thieves of Happiness are:
Comparison - focusing on what you lack instead of what you’ve gained.
Weak Boundaries - giving up the happiness you’ve cultivated, by poorly defending it and expecting anything different.
Gratitude Amnesia - forgetting to be grateful and appreciate what you have and attracting a reminder of why you should be into your life.
Another way you can look at them are as:
Envy, Weakness, and Forgetfulness.
Definitely, not things you want to make a habit of.
So, what are their empowering opposites?
Objective Appreciation
It’s known that we’re tougher on ourselves than others.
Even in the exact situation, we are more likely to be kinder to a stranger than ourselves.
It’s not objective or pragmatic to treat yourself poorly—and of course, you’re the one that this affects the most.
It’s actually far more objective and pragmatic to look at the good in yourself, and the progress you’ve made.
The simple way to do this is when you find yourself thinking (or obsessing) over what you want, or scrolling endlessly on social media, take that as a prompt to as yourself,
“What is something about my life now that I used to crave?”
Try to go One:for:One whenever you find yourself thinking like this.
And pair a thought of want, with a thought of appreciation for what you have already gained.
Strong Boundaries
Having strong boundaries means having a habit of self-assertiveness.
A boundary is both something you can maintain when someone comes to you, as well as something you can maintain when you go outside of your comfort zone to help others.
In both cases, if you don’t have strong boundaries, you’ll quickly get pulled into someone else’s story and that may or may not include what’s good for you.
If you find yourself in this situation bear rules apply…
Freeze.
Pause, and breathe.
Go silent for a few seconds, or a minute.
It’s better to do nothing and think of the right thing to say to someone than to give up your happiness.
If you take one step into a disempowering frame, you’re going to spend an evening or weeks backtracking and taking back the ground you’ve lost.
Silence is a powerful boundary.
Self-esteem and self-assertiveness are other powerful boundaries.
If the your boundary is as thin as a pause between what’s being said, that’s at least something. Something that can be maintained. Something and space that can be grown.
Just don’t sacrifice it, and your peace, or happiness, for someone else’s story.
Make silence a reaction.
Only unmute to respond.
Because it’s much hard to re-establish a boundary after it’s been crossed than it is to maintain one that’s become the status quo.
Appreciation Amplification
You can safely assume that you are forgetting to appreciate something or someone.
After all, there are more things and people to appreciate than there are seconds for thoughts in the day.
Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to take for granted.
The abundance of both things and people to choose, and moments to appreciate them.
It’s a lot easier to appreciate something or someone when they’re gone.
But you don’t have to get sick to remember how good it is to be healthy.
Celebrate healthy and happiness, to get more of them.
Nothing stays as it is.
Everything is always in flux, in change.
You included.
Happiness is growing, or it’s shrinking in every moment.
It’s okay for that to be the case and to ride the up and downs.
But don’t let your candle go out completely, because it’s much harder to re-ignite that flame when it’s extinguished.
Than it is to put your hand in front of it and protect it.
But don’t try to ride that line of scarcity.
You are capable of being far happier than you think you are, and just because others aren’t doesn’t mean you should live the same way they do.
Learning to protect your happiness is the first step to accumulating it.
So, you can be happier, more often.
And when someone or something steals your happiness, use these 3 strategies to steal it back.
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