5 Toxic Habits That Steal Your Happiness

Our habits define us in  adversity and adversity because they can act not only as strategies to help us overcome obstacles, but also as a poisonous apple that, despite its delicious appearance, hides a trap.

Despite the fact that many of our ways allow us to optimize our efforts and are considered healthy, there are many others that are, after all, toxic to our  health and to life itself, preventing us from being happy.

It’s even possible that the habits you consider relatively good aren’t that good, or you may not even be aware of the consequences of your numerous habits. In this article, we’ll talk about five toxic habits that might stop you from being happy.

1. Thinking negatively

We usually have a bad way of thinking negatively. We are experts in what we don’t want, what we don’t have, what we don’t deserve, what we can’t and focus our attention on. The proliferation of negative thoughts can be a bad habit that will eventually begin to constrain us on both a social and individual level. Because if you think you can’t, are you really going to even try?

Negative thoughts can grow into our great enemy who gradually traps us in his spider web,  turning everything around us into a gray mist that in the most extreme cases turns into e.g. depression.

The difficulty has its roots in the fact that we are already used to it and getting rid of it is not so easy. Therefore,  we need to start paying attention to how we think. This is inevitably tied to the way we talk and criticize ourselves. In addition, getting your attention to what you want is also a tool that allows you to attract light out of the middle of a thick gray mist.

2. Blaming others for everything

Blaming others for what happens to you is avoiding responsibility for your own actions and even your own feelings. In this way, you tell yourself that you are not the master of your own life and that instead of you yourself, other people or circumstances themselves control you.

It is necessary to remember that  you are in control of yourself and only you have the answers to what is happening to you. Famous Air Force pilot and religious leader Dieter Uchtdorf once said, “The older we get, the more we look back and realize that external conditions don’t really matter and they don’t define our happiness.”

Happiness is an attitude and if you decide to blame others for what is happening to you instead of being aware of what you can do to move forward, it will be difficult for you to enjoy it.

3. You are trying to be someone you are not

You can live your life trying to be yourself or instead the way others want you to be. You decide, but of course  if you become the kind of person others want you to be, you are deceiving your own way of living. Think about it. How can you be happy if you are not yourself?

Putting a mask on your face is a double-edged sword, a trap that over time pushes you further away from yourself and the person you believe you are. Therefore, find yourself, Learn to accept yourself, love yourself, and show yourself who you are; it is the only way your relationship with yourself and others can be genuine.

4. Comparing yourself to others

Comparing ourselves to others does not serve any purpose because each of us is unique and priceless, and each has had different experiences. Their stories, you and me, have nothing to do with each other so why compare ourselves to each other? To comfort ourselves or to believe we are better? What are the goals we are pursuing with this?

There is no point in comparing different experiences assuming that there are no similar conditions for different people.

My happiness can be very different from my friend’s happiness, so if I do the same as he does, does it make me a happy person? Ask yourself: What is happiness for me? This way you will find a way to act. Gratitude is the antibody of comparison and the best medicine to achieve happiness.  Write down every day the things that make your life wonderful, no matter how small things. The ones that make you happy.

5. You don’t learn from your mistakes

Mistakes can be our best teachers if we learn from them. If we make a mistake but let it happen without thinking about what happened and what we can learn from it, something similar is likely to happen to us again.

To understand this way of thinking, you just have to follow the words that Thomas Edison once said to a reporter who asked him about his light bulb invention: “I have not failed. I’ve only found 10,000 ways that don’t work. ”  So you can see that with  perseverance and good deeds, mistakes and failures are only part of the path to your journey to success.

Thinking negatively, blaming others, wearing a mask, comparing ourselves to others, or the fact that we don’t learn from our mistakes are just five different habits that can have negative effects on our mental state without actually being aware of them. At the same time, they prevent us from being happy.

Happiness is within us. We create it and contribute to its development. Don’t forget this. Pay attention to your habits and change them if necessary.