Does nothing make you feel happy anymore? Do you find no reason to keep going in your life? If you feel lost and wonder how to keep going, then here are a few strategies that can make you feel alive again.
What makes you happy?
Let me start by asking: What do you think makes you happy? Is it your family? Your career? Lots of money? Travelling? Or a healthy relationship with a good partner? Most of us tend to believe that achieving certain goals and possessing certain things and gaining value from certain people will make us. But there is something inherently wrong with that pattern of thinking. Happiness is not about having the perfect career, or an impressive bank balance or about love. Your happiness does not depend on external things or other people. Of course, these things are important and can make your life better, but these do not make you happy. And it is because of this belief that you feel lost. That you feel nothing can make you happy anymore. That you don’t have the will to keep going and move forward.
When you depend on other things and people for your happiness, you will never be able to experience true happiness that is stable and sustainable. When external factors make you happy, then it will always lead to personal suffering. Author Darius Foroux explains “Happiness is a state of mind. It’s entirely within your control. Just like you can make a decision to do something useful with your time, you can decide that you are happy.”
Read also: 10 Little Habits That Are Keeping You Away From Happiness
When nothing leads to happiness
But what if nothing makes you happy? Once again, the problem with this thought is that you believe you need “something” to be happy, and the lack of that “thing” is making you unhappy. Yes, there are tons of challenges in life. You don’t have the perfect job, you don’t have the bank balance you’d like to have and your relationship needs a lot of work to be healthy. That’s life. But that’s no reason to be “unhappy”.
So if you want to learn how to keep going when nothing in this world makes you happy anymore, then the very first thing you need to do is change your thought process. Transform your beliefs and tell yourself that your happiness relies on YOU and not on external factors or other people. The answer to the question “how to find happiness?” is to look inside and seek within you. Happiness is our default setting. We are programmed to be stressed and depressed. The truth is we do not need anything or reason to be happy. We simply need to unlearn the unhappiness programming and relearn how to tap into our inner happiness. When you think that you are happy, you become happy.
Read also: Emptiness Inside: Why You Feel Empty In Life & How to Fill It
Find your path
However, if you are still asking yourself how to find happiness and how you can move forward, then you should focus on finding your path in life. Understand your life’s purpose. Do not allow the daily grind to affect your mood, thoughts and emotions. Instead, look for ways to bring small changes into your life that will help you cope better with daily challenges without getting affected.
It’s okay if you don’t love your job. It’s okay if you haven’t achieved a certain goal. It’s okay if you are still struggling for financial stability. It’s okay if you are having relationship problems. These are all things that you can be overcome by developing the right mindset and working on them gradually. Do not let your daily struggles distract you from tapping into your inner happiness and focusing on the one thing that matters the most – YOU. “A bit of healthy selfishness is necessary every once in a while in order to recover, to get to know who we are and to have the certainty that our life is heading in the direction of happiness. We have to be sure that the path we are on is one we’ve chosen ourselves, that it wasn’t picked out by other people,” explains an article in Exploring Your Mind.
Read also: Contentment over Happiness: Why It’s Better To Be Content Than Happy
How to keep going
If you feel unhappy and external things have no positive emotional effect on you, then it becomes crucial that you look inside and reflect on your own thoughts, emotions, needs and dreams. “The whole key to happiness is identifying our emotions and reactions, and aligning them with our end goal,” writes growth coach Jacqueline Battaglia. She adds “When you become really good at noticing your emotions and reactions, you can quickly change your attitude and circumstances so that you put yourself in a place where happiness lives.”
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