JR1Being happy in life partly involves learning exactly how you manage to make yourself upset and miserable, and avoiding those things.   So here is a list of how people typically make themselves miserable–despite all the comforts and blessings of modern day life…

10. Lose something or forget something you needed.  Spending time looking for something you’ve lost is no fun at all.  It beats having a root canal, but it doesn’t beat much else.

9. Compare yourself to a supermodel. We get endless images of supermodels each day, and if you’re not careful, such images will leak into your brain and cause you much grief.  Supermodels are freaks.  Actual people don’t look that way, and nor should you…

8. Constantly think of all you have to do.  You will never complete all the things on your list.  If you make being complete with your “to do” list a precondition to being peaceful or relaxed, you will never be happy.

7. Watch and/or read bad news.  99% of the news in the media does not affect your life—so there is no good reason to know about it.  If you expose yourself to a constant stream of bad news, it’s like feeding your brain a bunch of garbage.   

6. Compare your level of wealth to those who have a lot more than you. If you make $50,000 a year, you’re in the top 1% of the wealth of the world.  Yet, if you compare yourself to those at the top .01%, you can manage to feel poor and miserable.  Your choice.

5. JR2Eat lots of sugary and fatty crap.  65% of Americans are fat, and half of those are obese.  When your body doesn’t feel good, it’s hard to get the rest of yourself to feel good.

4. Think that you and your ego/mind is always right. The human ego/mind exists as a survival mechanism.  It likes to believe it doesn’t make mistakes and it’s always right. If you always believe what your ego/mind says to you, you’ll alienate a lot of people—and you’re gonna suffer…

3. Be a perfectionist. I’ve never met a truly happy perfectionist.  There’s always something not going well or turning out right, and if you need everything to be perfect before you can feel good, you’re never going to feel good for long.

2. Have unrealistic expectations. As a culture, we’re about 300% richer than we were 50 years ago.  So why don’t we feel rich? Because our expectations have managed to grow even more quickly than our incomes. If you have unrealistically high expectations in any area of life, you’ll feel frustrated a lot.

1. Make your happiness dependent on your partner being loving to you and doing what you want.  You’ve had relationships. You can’t control your partner.  This needs no further explanation.

Now that you know the top ways people make themselves upset and miserable, be on the lookout for these dis-eases.   Commit to “fighting” these tendencies by doing what research shows actually leads to being happy.  People who become happy end up being more giving than “normal” people, make $750,000 more over their lifetime, and live 9 years longer than the rest of us.