Discover how to break the cycle of chronic unhappiness by distinguishing between what you can control and what you must accept
Monalisa Dash Dwibedy
There is one cycle we all must learn to break.
If you ask me what that cycle is, my answer is simple: the cycle of unhappiness.
Not the sadness that arrives with loss. Not the disappointment that life inevitably brings. Not the difficult seasons that test our courage. I am talking about something subtler— the habit of remaining unhappy even when there is no compelling reason to be.
Sometimes, unhappiness stays with us for so long that it begins to occupy an uncomfortable amount of our existence. We wake up with it. We carry it to work. We bring it home. We take it into our conversations, our relationships and, eventually, into our identity. And somewhere along the way, we forget something fundamental: We were born not merely to exist, but to experience life happily and go through the life situations gracefully.
Life will bring joy and sorrow, success and failure, beginnings and endings. We cannot control all of it. But we can decide whether unhappiness gets to become the permanent resident of our minds. Do not let unhappiness conquer you. Because when you repeatedly surrender to it, unhappiness stops being an emotion and begins to behave like a master. It starts controlling how you see people, how you interpret situations and how you experience even the good things that are already present in your life.
Look at nature. Have you ever seen a flower looking sad? A flower simply blooms. The sun rises every morning, generously scattering its light without asking who deserves it. The moon arrives quietly, filling the night with its own kind of intoxication. The wind moves freely. The sky remains vast and open. Nature seems to possess an effortless relationship with existence.
So why are we, the most conscious beings on this planet, so often unable to experience the simple happiness that surrounds us? Perhaps that is a question worth asking. Are you happy today? Pause for a moment before you answer .If the answer is no, ask the more important question: Why?
You are not alone. Think about the people you see every day. Someone drives a luxury car, lives in a beautiful home and appears to be living the life many of us dream about—and yet sits behind the steering wheel with a face full of frustration.
Someone earns more money today than they ever imagined earning. They travel, party, own expensive possessions, build a following on social media and appear successful by every conventional measure. And yet, they are unhappy. Why? Because happiness has never been a direct function of income, possessions or social status.
The first step, therefore, is not to solve your entire life. It is simply to identify what is making you unhappy. Tonight, or whenever you have a quiet moment, take a sheet of paper and write down the reasons for your unhappiness. Be brutally honest. Then divide those reasons into two categories: What is within my control? And: What is beyond my control?
Start with the first category.
If you are unhappy because you did not like the breakfast at your office cafeteria, solve it. Have a satisfying breakfast at home before leaving tomorrow. If you are exhausted because you have been working relentlessly, take a break. Give yourself permission to do nothing for a while. If your home is chaotic and the disorder is constantly irritating you, clean it. Organize it. Create a space that gives you peace.
These may sound like small things. They are.
But small things matter because unhappiness often accumulates through small, unresolved irritations. When you begin taking responsibility for the things you can change, something remarkable happens.
Your list begins to shrink. And eventually, you may discover that many of the remaining reasons for your unhappiness have little to do with what you can control. That is where the real work begins. Perhaps you are unhappy because your boss did not give you the promotion you believed you deserved. Perhaps your spouse did something that hurt or disappointed you. Perhaps your children seem distant or have ignored you. Perhaps your friends did not respond the way you expected. Or perhaps the stock market did not perform according to your expectations.
These are different problems, but they share something important: Your happiness has become dependent on someone else’s action—or on circumstances beyond your control and that is a dangerous place to live. We often tell ourselves, “I will be happy when…” . I will be happy when I get the promotion. I will be happy when my spouse changes. I will be happy when my children understand me. I will be happy when the market rises. I will be happy when everything finally goes my way.
But life rarely agrees to those conditions. There will always be another promotion to chase, another disagreement to resolve, another expectation that remains unmet, another uncertainty on the horizon. If your happiness requires the world to behave exactly as you want it to, you have effectively handed the keys to your happiness to the world.
And the world is not a reliable driver. Perhaps the wiser approach is to first reclaim what belongs to you: your response, your perspective and your ability to experience the present moment.
That does not mean ignoring genuine problems. It does not mean pretending everything is wonderful when it is not. And it certainly does not mean accepting situations that require action. It means learning to distinguish between what needs to be changed and what needs to be accepted.
Fix what you can. Accept what you cannot.
And refuse to let either one steal every good moment from you. Because there is something profoundly tragic about postponing happiness while waiting for life to become perfect. Life will never be perfect. But it can still be beautiful.
So, let’s go back to the question. Are you happy today? If the answer is yes, pause and appreciate it and count your blessings. If the answer is no, don’t judge yourself. Investigate it. Write down why. Fix what you can. Release what you cannot. And tomorrow, ask yourself again.
Perhaps happiness is not something we find once and possess forever. Perhaps it is something we practice—one decision, one perspective and one day at a time.
Break the cycle. Because if you are happy, nothing else matters quite as much. But if you are unhappy, nothing else seems to matter at all. And that is why your happiness deserves your attention.
(The writer is an IT Consultant living in Toronto. Views expressed are personal.)