You’re smart. Unfortunately, smart people sometimes exhibit thought patterns that prevent them from being happy.
While it takes time to change these patterns at large, each one is reflected in only a few “miseries of the day.” Those, you can shake off immediately.
You can’t go from unhappy to perfect bliss in a day. You can, however, check what bothers you right now and try to eliminate it. That’s how you uproot negative beliefs.
Here’s the complete, 17-reason checklist for why you might be bummed out today — and how to fix each one.
You think too much. You do so in 4 distinct ways:
1. You cycle through past regrets, wondering what you could have done better. The answer is “a lot,” but the past is still the past. There is nothing you can do to change it, and every thought spent on it is a thought not used to improve the present. Accept the past, move on. Always look forward.
2. You live in the future because “everything will be amazing.” You spend all your time in an imagined, perfect tomorrow, so you have no time left to make it a reality. But tomorrow is built on today. Use today.
3. You worry about what will go wrong, which seems to be everything. You conceive fallbacks for every fallback, hoping to escape nightmare-future’s crushing grasp. The future is not here yet. Stay present, do what you can, and the future will — like usual — turn out just fine.
4. You procrastinate on present-day decisions that don’t matter. You juggle a million ideas. You’re proud of how much you think, even though it won’t help most of the time. Only doing will. None of the questions you really want answers for can be solved in a day. Just keep stacking up good days.
You expect too much of yourself, others, and life:
5. You’re so focused on outcomes, you barely enjoy your greatest wins. Goals are just moving targets we push farther away when we hit them. If you don’t learn to celebrate what you accomplish, soon, you won’t be able to celebrate anything at all. Make time to enjoy your wins when you score them.
6. You criticize yourself too much for your mistakes. You know how much you don’t know. The pressure to prepare for every conceivable option only gets worse the more you learn. But the mountains you’ve climbed are not so shabby. See how far you’ve come despite not knowing everything, and realize: It’s probably okay to not know everything.
7. You hold others to such high standards that you create a big rift between them and you. Nothing they do is good enough, so, instead of enjoying people’s company, you belittle them in your head. Stop. Nobody’s perfect, and neither are you. Focus on people’s good sides and work together.
8. You’re too idealistic. When your picture perfect vision clashes with reality, you don’t like what you see. Sometimes, life is hard because it’s so trivial, not in spite of it. Don’t be afraid of dirty hands. Get to work.
9. You feel you should be more in control. We’re all humans here. Even the greatest of us are tiny compared to Mother Nature. She is running the show. Always has, always will be. Accept it, then do what you can.
You push people away for petty reasons, such as:
10. You pretend others expect too much of you. In reality, everyone’s busy worrying about themselves. No one cares. Get over it.
11. You suffer from an overblown case of lone-wolf syndrome. Okay, you enjoy talking about philosophy when most others don’t. That doesn’t make you the only misunderstood person in the room. Make an effort to relate.
12. You compare yourself to others around the clock. You compete against them instead of collaborating with them. This is the death of joy and the birth of misery.
13. You’re paranoid. You distrust everyone you meet and are skeptical of anything they say. You never open up, and so you don’t get to experience the compassion and empathy you so crave but that only vulnerability can provide.
You sabotage yourself in the following ways:
14. You skip the basics because “you’re too smart for them.” A careless mistake blows up in your face. You act surprised, but, deep down, you enjoy the reassurance of having known exactly why you’ll fail from the beginning.
15. You pretend you’re bored and lose focus. Actually, you’re scared. It’s easy to jump ship when it counts — there’s always a new one waiting. “I’m so good at everything, there’s so much I must do!” No. You must focus and not squander your gifts. Do something that matters and see it through.
16. You try too hard to blend in. You’ve known you’re an oddball for years, yet you still let the world bully you with its meaningless social constructs. Let Michele Ruiz solve this problem for you: “If people are doubting how far you can go, go so far you can’t hear them anymore.”
Finally, the worst: You devalue happiness altogether
17. You think you’re too smart to be happy. You want happiness to be a math equation, and you’re valuing the variables more than the result. But happiness isn’t complicated. You have a right to it, and you already know what it takes: Do work that matters, value people, learn to enjoy the present.
Happiness is a choice. Make that choice today, and it’ll be a little easier to make it again tomorrow. Don’t let the gremlins take your mind. You’re smart. Catch those grumpy thoughts, and then show them the door.