Want to Be Happier? Focus on What’s in Front of You!
Sometimes we create our own unhappiness by focusing on the wrong things
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We all say we want to be happy but not all of us live a life that seems to truly allow us to be happy. Many of us find ourselves feeling miserable, or at least not as happy as we want to be, and unable to pinpoint why.
If you ask around, people will give you plenty of advice and ideas for how to be happier. They’ll tell you to pick up a new hobby. Explore a new interest. Meet new people. Buy a bigger house, nicer car, expensive clothes or jewelry. Follow your dreams and open your own business, travel the world, or go live on that deserted tropical island you fantasize about.
But being happier might not require you to do, explore, or buy something new. It might not even require you to get outside your comfort zone at all. In fact, it might be as simple as letting go.
Let go of everything that’s not right in front of you
Take a moment right now to sit with your thoughts. Set a timer for 1–3 minutes and pay careful attention to the thoughts you have during that period.
If you’re like most of us, you have more thoughts than you can truly keep up with. And you also might have noticed something else: that those thoughts aren’t always about what’s happening right now.
Depending on how carefully you were able to pay attention to your thoughts, you probably noticed that there were at least a few thoughts about the past as well as a few about the future. And those are the thoughts that contribute to unhappiness.
Our thoughts frequently run on a loop, repeating themselves endlessly, unless we actively take steps to change them. So when we relive our past mistakes or worry about future events that may or may not happen, we give ourselves reasons to be unhappy.
And that’s what needs to stop.
