8 habits that keep us away from happiness

According to a study conducted by the University of California, “our happiness is, to a large extent, under our control”, since only 50% of happiness would depend on genetic or personal causes.

The other 50% we build ourselves, so it clearly depends on our habits. We often have habits, attitudes and ways of thinking that work against us, if we think in terms of being happy.

Some of the habits that go against our happiness and daily well-being are procrastinating, not resting, worrying and complaining constantly, criticizing and holding grudges.

  1. Procrastinating

Constantly postponing personal, work or domestic tasks or jobs that we know that, sooner or later, we will have to face is a way of plunging into one of those useless states that does not contribute anything and makes us feel bad.

Psychology specialists have a word to refer to this, of which we have already spoken on occasion: procrastinate. It consists of postponing or postponing a task, knowing that it must be done.

To avoid procrastinating there are different rules that can help us. First of all, the two-minute rule: if you are planning an action that can be done in less than two minutes, don’t plan it, do it. What if the task takes a little longer, you can extend it to 5 or 10 minutes at most. If you make this rule a habit, there will be many tasks that you will not be able to postpone.

Another strategy is to take a small first step. If you are afraid of a task, for whatever reason, plan to work only 5 minutes a day on it and then leave it. Many times, by taking that first step, you overcome that resistance and begin to see in a different way something that seemed impossible before. In fact, many times those 5 minutes turn, almost without the person realizing it, into a much longer time.

Finally, it is very useful to keep track of your time. That is, write down the tasks you perform every day and how much time you have dedicated to each of them. This way you generate an internal commitment that makes you more responsible with respect to how to optimize your time.

  1. Not resting

We live in a society where everything goes very fast. We eat fast, we walk fast and it seems that our life is a kind of obstacle course in which we permanently have the stopwatch in our hand.

The worst thing is that we are not aware of how much this haste affects us, that we assume it as normal. In many cases we even pass it on to our children, who spend their lives going from one extracurricular activity to another, running like we do. In this sense, it is essential to understand that children must have time to rest and be bored.

Another important aspect is not to neglect mealtimes, since we are losing the habit of having lunch, dinner or breakfast with the people we live with. We are even skipping some meals, for example, breakfast, from which we steal minutes to be able to sleep a little more.

Not resting, not going to bed early and not respecting the hours of sleep leads us to a constant tiredness that we can never get rid of and that prevents us from feeling good during the day.

One solution may be to set an alarm to go to sleep, just as we do to get up. Most people feel good with about 7-8 hours of sleep, so it is reasonable to think about what time we should get up so that we have time to do things calmly, including breakfast. From there, we should calculate 7-8 hours less and set an alarm to go to bed.

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  1. Complaining as a lifestyle

Complaining about everything, about everything and without doing anything to improve the situations that bother us also plunges us into a state that leads us nowhere. I am not referring to a person who complains about a specific problem, but to a person who makes complaining a way of life.

Faced with this, a more practical attitude should be adopted, i.e., solve the problems or ask for help. It is important to assume that there are problems that we cannot solve or modify, so it is necessary to do something to change those over which we do have a certain degree of control.

There are patients who want to change situations that do not depend on them, and who suffer chronically for not being able to solve this or that. The central point could be to be aware that there are people we can only help if they ask for our help.

  1. Constant worrying

Having a negative attitude, constantly putting ourselves in the worst case scenario and thinking about all possible calamities without coming up with solutions because we do not really have the problem in front of us yet.

This tendency to negativism is usually accompanied by a strong anxiety and a series of thoughts that do not usually translate into specific action plans, but in annoying thoughts that haunt our head and that we do not stop ruminating.

When a problem arises, we must focus on how to solve it. If we do not have a problem, we have to focus on the here and now, because excessive worry and anguish do not help us to evaluate the situation if the problem actually appears someday.

  1. Holding grudges

All wounds need time to heal, to heal, but holding a grudge only serves to hurt ourselves. And when I speak of harm, I mean that there are many people who hold grudges for years and that is not only not good for emotional health, but can also have physical consequences.

  1. Not ignoring one’s problems

The only thing we achieve when we deny problems is that they tend to grow. That is to say, the more we pretend they do not exist, the more enormous and unapproachable they seem to us.
However, it is important to know how to choose the battles we want to fight. It is not positive to argue about almost everything, but neither is it positive to never do so and to adopt a passive attitude in order to avoid conflicts.

In order not to fall into one or the other extreme, it is best to choose our battles well, since our energy is not infinite and arguing often does not compensate us in terms of loss of emotional well-being.

  1. Criticize

One of the best tips to have a peaceful life and contribute to our own happiness is not to criticize. It is necessary to get rid of that “criticizing” mentality, since it only shows that people cannot trust you, and that will end up turning against you.

  1. Choosing our friends

Ideally, we should surround ourselves with people who contribute to us, rather than detract from us. It is not about not supporting friends when they need help or have a problem. Rather, it is about distancing ourselves from those people who contribute absolutely nothing to us and only remember us at certain times and then disappear.

A friend is someone who, even if you don’t see often, you know you will always have there. It’s someone who will never knowingly hurt you, and who will always be glad that things are going well for you.