Almost everyone is in the process of seeking greater happiness. We are all involved in the pursuit of feeling good within our lives and bodies. What may surprise you is that many people who struggle with depression, emotional eating, stress eating, or some other addictive behavior are really just looking for a way to feel happier. They feel some kind of discomfort in their emotional state and in their physical body, and then they look for something to numb the discomfort or make them feel better.

There is no crime in wanting to feel better. Your body is meant to be aligned with thoughts and actions that make you feel good. If you currently don’t feel good in your life or in your body, then certainly continuing emotional or stress eating, or some other addiction, is a valid option for getting through the day. If your emotional eating or addictive behavior is the only singular and lonely tool you have in your toolbox, then hallelujah! Your self-love survival instinct is alive and well. You are choosing the one action that you think will help you feel better.

Eventually, though, you’ll find that the fix from the food or addiction doesn’t last very long. It may feel good in the short term, but not so great in the long term. The consequences of your actions end up being more than you bargained for. For example, emotional or stress eating can lead to excess weight and associated health problems. Bulimia can cause cardiac arrhythmia. Anorexia can lead to impaired mental processing. The results are not intended, but the often unconscious and underlying intention was love, self-preservation, and feeling good.

If you could remove all the emotional judgment, shame, and sense of failure from your eating behavior, you would be able to see that your deepest desire is an attempt to feel good. Using food, lack of food, or some other external gratification to cope does not mean you are sick or defective. In fact, you are a competent manager of your own life. You may be stuck in a coping method that has gotten complicated and doesn’t work as well anymore, but you’re still coping and managing life nonetheless.

Take heart! New solutions to feel better are possible. Gaining this sense of happiness doesn’t require a deep understanding of what happened in your past, or even just how dysfunctional your family was. Instead, feeling happier requires that you commit to developing new patterns of thought and action.

what is happiness

Let’s take a closer look at the definition of happiness. Scientifically speaking, happiness is a basic sense of satisfaction with oneself and one’s environment.

To better understand this claim, psychologist Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky offered this conclusion based on a 1994 study: “Happy people don’t experience one success after another and unhappy people one failure after another. Instead, surveys show that Happy and unhappy people tend to have had very similar life experiences.The difference is that the average unhappy person spends more than twice as much time thinking about unpleasant events in their lives, while happy people tend to seek and trust information that enlightens them. his personal perspective.

This conclusion shows that chronically happy and unhappy individuals differ in the specific thoughts and types of motivational strategies they use. For example, happy people interpret life events and everyday situations in ways that maintain their happiness, while unhappy people interpret experiences in ways that reinforce unhappiness. Happy people are more aware of the joy and happiness available in any situation, while unhappy people register more sadness and difficulty. This is the glass half empty versus glass half full perspective.

wow! This is important information. The implication is that you can learn to feel happier. You can decide to take your own unhappy situation into your own hands. You can stop analyzing why you feel so bad, stop blaming your parents, your childhood. You can even stop blaming yourself for your problems. Instead, you can focus on changing your thoughts and actions. Instead of focusing on the problem, you can learn to focus on the solution.

Everybody feels unhappy sometimes

Recognize that everyone has experiences of being unhappy. Blame it on getting out on the wrong side of the bed, hormones or the weather, it doesn’t matter. A basic truth in life is that not every day is going to be an easy and miraculously happy day. Happiness expands when you make the decision to support yourself no matter what experience or emotion you are currently experiencing.

Unhappy and happy are emotions

It may help to remember that happiness and unhappiness are emotions. This means that, like all emotions, they don’t last forever. Sometimes you can change from happy to unhappy over time. Allow more time and you will be happy again. In other words, this too shall pass.

accept being unhappy

Acceptance is a tool you can use to deal with unhappy days. For example, since unhappiness is an emotion, it means that it is a normal and natural state. You don’t have to fight how you feel. Instead, decide to be at peace with the experience you are having. This doesn’t mean wallowing in self-pity or drowning in depression, it means acknowledging to yourself that this is the life experience you’re having right now. Take several deep breaths and let it be. Once you allow acceptance, the burden of unhappiness from being “wrong” falls away. Some pressure of perfectionism disappears. A whole new way of relaxing and taking care of yourself opens up.

Once unhappiness is acceptable, you may be curious about new, self-sufficient actions. For example, instead of eating to suppress unhappy feelings, you can discover new ways to calm yourself down while feeling unhappy. ask yourself,

o What actions can I take to love myself while feeling unhappy?

or Can I choose to be okay with this emotion?

or Can I choose to feel happy and feel unhappy at the same time? The glass is half empty and half full at the same time.

o Can I be thankful for my life even when I am currently unhappy?

o What can I do right now while I am unhappy to produce pleasant experiences?

remember the happy times

It is part of human nature to easily forget the happy moments in our lives, while the terrible moments easily entrench themselves in our minds. Our perspective is unbalanced, and often when we feel sad, we don’t remember ever feeling happy. Also, we have a tendency to ‘play with the problem’ or fixate on something negative. It seems so easy to dwell on unhappy thoughts and so difficult to train ourselves to bring optimistic thoughts and attitudes towards ourselves.

The next time you’re feeling unhappy, remind yourself of your larger perspective. Changing some of your thoughts can often be the fastest way to feel good and not so lost. For example, you could say, “Even though I’m not happy…

o My life makes sense.

o There is value in what I am feeling.

o It’s okay to feel what I’m feeling.

o We all have happy and unhappy moods, feelings don’t last forever.

o The world is safe, and I don’t have to be happy every moment.

o This too shall pass.

o I can choose to pamper myself while in this unhappy place.

Choose self-support actions

When you’re feeling unhappy, you know you don’t need more food or addictive substances, you need to love yourself in whole new ways. This is a perfect time to focus on new opportunities to be gentle with yourself. What can you do to feel better? Start thinking about what actions would make you feel a little better. You don’t have to erase your unhappy feeling, you just have to support yourself through it. For example:

o Take a walk outside.

o Play with your pets.

o Walk to the nearest mirror and give yourself that much-needed pep talk.

o Remind yourself that you are worthy of loving yourself even when you are not happy.

o Support yourself with a healthy, colorful and nutritious meal.

o Add some protein to your meals for better balance and grounding.

o Get a balanced perspective by writing in your journal.

o Write a gratitude list.

o Get a 20-minute flesh massage.

o Sit outside and breathe the air.

Now that you know that happiness requires action, you can start taking care of yourself in new and different ways. Learn to see the positive in life. Your new actions won’t immediately replace your emotional or stress eating, and they won’t immediately replace your addictive behaviors, but add enough new actions and watch as you begin to realize the power you have over your own happiness!