Becoming Happier
For most people, happiness is the holy grail, Of course, the question is how to get happier. These ideas may not sufficiently help mental illness sufferers but should be of value to people with garden-variety malaise.
Preventing sadness
The following ideas are mainly common sense but alas, many people forget the obvious.
Spend as much time doing what makes you happiest, and, to the extent feasible, excise activities and people who too often make you unhappy. For example, don't reflexively embrace what society deems sources of happiness, for example, parties, dancing, travel, or watching sports. You might instead prefer work, hiking, and binge-watching.
Accept yourself. No, of course, don't accept that you're a serial killer. But, for example, let's say you hate your nose and aren't about to get a nose job. You might try not thinking about it and when you catch your face in a mirror, consciously suppress thoughts of it and distract yourself to the next positive thing you can do.
Find reasons to be grateful Even if your life is in the tank, you can feel happier if you look for even little things to be grateful for, for example, a pretty flower, that you live in a nice climate, and that first bite of food —That may partly explain why saying grace has endured for so long.
Ameliorating sadness
Of course, because we’re human, we don’t behave as uniformly as electrons do. So accept, reject, or adapt these suggestions to fit you.
Suppress and distract what’s out of your control: the job application you sent, the trauma you experienced, your current or past mistakes. Even if I was an axe murderer, I believe the best I could do would be to not wallow in the guilt and shame but to distract myself from thinking more about my ill deed by asking myself, “What’s my next baby step forward?”: be kind, start writing a book on lessons learned, whatever.
Some people argue that we should allow extended time to process such events, but my clients and I have generally found that the benefits of extended rumination are outweighed by the pain of the sad event remaining top-of-mind. For example, a client insisted on taking months to process the loss of his beloved wife, but over the months, he remained equally sad. Only when he pushed forward and started to date, reminding himself that his wife would want him to, did he become happier.
Face the worst realistic possibility. Let’s say you’re afraid your spouse will leave you. You fear you’ll never meet someone as good and that you’ll be alone forever, which would make you very sad. Facing that worst-case could help you realize that perhaps you’re better off alone for a while, or that especially if you changed a couple things about yourself and made an effort, you could find a new partner, perhaps an even better one. Or facing that worst-case could motivate you to work on your current relationship, for example, with a Relationship Summit.
Change the topic. Some problems are irresolvable. What works in my marriage is recognizing those situations and saying, “Let’s change the topic.” Some people might balk at our avoiding the issue, but it’s worked for my wife of 44 years and for some of my clients.
Move attention away from yourself. Among the more potent yet side-effect-free anti-sadness "medications" is to focus on other people or on your work or avocations.
Anger
Put ten people in a room in which a loud buzzer unexpectedly sounds and some will barely react while others will jump out of their seats. The latter go from 0 to 60 in one second. When some stimulus triggers them, they may reflexively, for example, yell, although fortunately, rarely in that one second hit someone. Forgive yourself that one second — That’s out of your control. But get in the habit of, after that first second, taking a deep breath. That will slow your heart rate and blood pressure and give yourself a moment to realize that yelling, let alone hitting is a mistake.
That said, there are very occasional times you’ll elect to get angry, for example, with a supervisee who, despite ability to do the work, shirks, and has ignored your gentle encouragements.
The takeaway
Of course, one size does not fit all and in severe mental illness, more may well be required, but for common malaise, the aforementioned could well make you happier.