Why Do You Feel Unhappy All The Time?
It is a perplexing dilemma for the unlucky people who tend towards pessimism, negativity, rumination, and neuroticism as their default mental state: Why do other people seem so happy all the time? What is wrong with me that I seem to feel unhappy by default? Was it early childhood experiences that made me unhappy? Is it the fault of my parents?
While our upbringing can absolutely shape our personalities, what many people don’t know is that our genes play a huge role in our default happiness levels. In his excellent book, The Happiness Hypothesis, writer and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes being a happy person by default as “winning the cortical lottery”.
The cortical lottery refers to the fact that some people are lucky enough to be born with naturally higher proclivities for optimism and joy. Others are less fortunate and tend to be biologically wired to experience unhappiness as their default state.
Your upbringing and current life conditions of course impact how happy or content you feel. However, hope is not lost for people who are not lucky enough to win the cortical lottery. There are several excellent ways to improve default happiness levels and become a happier person.
What is Happiness?
Happiness is a state of experience characterized by positive thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Some of the happiest people you’ll ever meet live a life of squalor compared to what you are used to in Western society. I have lived extensively in Thailand, a developing country, and encountered many more happy people there than years of living in Ireland.
Outside circumstances can affect happiness levels to a certain extent, but they don’t tell anywhere near the full story. As mentioned, some people are lucky enough to be born happy. Other people become happy by default thanks to being raised in a positive, encouraging environment.
But what explains my admittedly anecdotal observation that people in poorer countries seem happier? To me, it is the power of community and social connection. Individualism is the predominant mindset in the West. People strive to prove how independent and self-reliant they are.
But this individualism brings with it a problem; the loss of community values and social connections. People in richer nations typically stay indoors outside of work hours, watching Netflix or browsing the Internet. There is a real loss of community values bred by focusing on only oneself. Isolation is rampant in the West.
Poorer nations tend to have more of a social culture with friends eating together, people selling food on the road, night markets, friends drinking in little pop-up bars at the side of the road. Humans are tribal by nature—we function best in social situations via collaboration, similar to how ants and bees also function best by working together. It is no surprise, therefore, that social isolation breeds unhappiness.
Note that while my observation about happiness in rich vs poor nations is anecdotal, it is also a widely shared perspective. Ask anyone who has travelled to Thailand or other Southeast Asian nations and they’ll tell you one of the most striking things was how happy people seemed despite their relative poverty. The same is often said by people visiting Africa and South America.
How to Become a Happier Person
Before delving into specific tips, it’s a good idea, first of all, to clarify why you would want to change your default happiness levels. The old saying goes that misery loves company, and it is actually quite easy to become attached to your own negativity. It can be difficult to let that part of you go, which is why changing your affective style, as it is termed, is difficult.
Furthermore, change is often scary. Sometimes it is easier to stay entrenched in current ways of feeling, thinking, and behaving. We worry about what awaits us on the other side and we’d rather the certainty of knowing what life is like in our current state than the uncertainty of finding out who we are and how we live when we are happier people.
The happier you might decide to end a relationship because you realize you were in the relationship out of fear of being alone. The happier you might dump your current batch of friends because they are toxic and hanging out with them makes you unhappy. Your parents might not understand where the happier you has come from and why you seem so different.
These are not small life changes. You need to understand that becoming a happier person is likely to lead to at least a few major life disruptions. But it is precisely these changes that provide a good reason to try and change your default happiness levels.
Change is where growth occurs. It is easy to carry on the way you’ve been living, even if you rarely feel happy. It is hard to change but it is a worthwhile endeavor. If you are convinced, then try adopting these five proven ways to become a happier person.
Meditate 15 Minutes Each Day
Pretty much everyone has either read or heard about the benefits of meditation by now. The thing about meditation is that not all of us have the time to spend entire days like Buddhist monks, cross-legged and contemplating the breath.
But you don’t need to meditate all day to receive its happiness benefits. A 15-minute meditation session suffices. Meditation does not need to be remotely religious or spiritual. Treat meditation like an experiment you are conducting on your mind. What you are doing is training your mind not to attach so readily to thoughts.
Whether you sit down and cross your legs or lie down, it is up to you. The aim of meditation from a happiness perspective is that you want to get to a point where you attach less to your thoughts. You see your thoughts for what they are—transient things that come and go in your mind.
With consistent daily meditation practice, you attach less to the negativity that manifests in the form of your default thoughts. You come to an innate understanding that these thoughts are not you; they are the activity of the mind and they are constantly in flux.
The aim is to get to a point in which your thoughts are not sticky things that you attach to and get bogged down in.
Get Your Heart Rate Up
In one of the more informative episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast, Dr. Rhonda Patrick discusses the physical benefits of exercise in depth. But just as impactful as these physical benefits are the profound mental benefits of exercise.
Exercise is a powerful treatment for depression, according to several studies. A 2017 study on exercise and depression concluded that exercise is an evidence-based medicine for depression. Personally I enjoy a brisk walk as much as anyone, but I do think you feel better when getting your heart rate up, whether by swimming, rowing, running, cycling, playing soccer. The key is to pick an activity that you enjoy.
CBT
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a therapeutic intervention that relies on challenging unhelpful cognitive distortions. These distortions are a collection of inaccurate thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves. The goal is to challenge these distortions and replace them with more realistic and adaptive thoughts.
By challenging one’s own distorted thoughts, the practitioner of CBT changes their feelings which in turn results in different, more positive behaviors. These behaviors then further reinforce new, more realistic and less neurotic ways of thinking.
The best book on CBT is still Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns. I would really recommend this book to get an excellent overview of what CBT is all about. Finding a good CBT therapist or psychologist is straightforward in most developed cities nowadays. I think many people would benefit more from CBT with the aid of a qualified CBT psychologist.
ACT
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a type of therapy that works well for people who don’t get any benefit or change from CBT. it also works for people who don’t particularly get on with the idea that we need to constantly challenge our thoughts.
ACT observes (correctly in my opinion) that constantly challenging our thoughts is a pain in the arse, tiring, and extremely difficult. What is nice about ACT is that it begins with the assumption that the human condition is often marked by negativity and suffering. This is in line with the Buddhist idea that life is marked by Dukkha, a sort of fundamental dissatisfaction.
ACT states that much of our suffering and unhappiness in life is caused by fusing with our thoughts. When we fuse with our thoughts, we avoid experiences that could potentially cause psychological growth. We become rigid in our ways of thinking, behaving, and interacting with the world.
To become happier, more psychologically flexible people, the ACT approach advocates taking action in line with personal values. In order to take such action, we first need to learn how to defuse from our thoughts. This is where ACT links nicely with meditation. You try to get to a point where you attach less to the content of your mind.
To learn more about ACT I really recommend a fantastic book called The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. I’ve read this book three times and it still takes a prime position on my bookshelf. You can also seek out a qualified ACT therapist but they can be awkward to find.
Antidepressants
We live in a world in which it is fashionable to rebel against the status quo. There are people who take pride in being cynical about certain things, and one of those things lately is Big Pharma and their apparent hidden agenda with antidepressant medications.
People speculate that these mammoth companies like Pfizer and co push these mental health drugs to the public for profit in full knowledge that they either barely work or that most people who take them don’t need them. But the truth is that generic competition for these brand names drugs means they are not as profitable as they once were and that many people do benefit from them.
Skepticism is often healthy but online wellness blogs, self-improvement forums and blogs, and YouTube video sections and comments too readily dismiss antidepressants like Prozac and Lexapro. Read the reviews on Drugs.com for depression meds like Prozac and you’ll see overwhelmingly positive reactions (and some negative reviews).
The truth is that antidepressants are viable options for those of us not lucky enough to win the cortical lottery. They can help those of us who have developed depressive personalities whether through bad genes, a less than optimal environment for our upbringing, and general life experiences so far.
I like the analogy Jonathan Haidt uses in the aforementioned book, The Happiness Hypothesis. He says that those of us who are not happy by default are like people who live life with functional yet cloudy eyesight. You would have no hesitation to give contact lenses to someone to improve their vision; how they see the world. The same should ring true for giving someone a tablet to change how happy they feel by default.
Antidepressant therapy does not work for everyone. But if you are truly unhappy in your default state and you have tried other methods, I see no harm in giving these medications at least a six-week trial. You can always stop taking them after the trial if there are no changes or stop during the trial if you can’t handle the side-effects.
Closing Thoughts
Saying that you can become a happier person and providing tips to do so isn’t the same as saying that happiness is some destination that you can arrive at. I look at happiness as an ongoing experience that comes and goes. There will always be pain and negative psychological suffering; it is part of the human experience.
But it is my firm belief that how much happiness we experience in our everyday lives is malleable through taking certain steps, such as exercising regularly, undergoing therapy, meditating, and taking antidepressants to correct genetic bad luck.
None of these things relies upon the modern consumerist view of happiness that if you achieve or have X, you will be happy. None of these things is easy; even though popping a pill sounds easy, antidepressants often come with side-effects that people can’t tolerate.
I recommend starting with exercise and meditation at a minimum, as both of these things have personally made the biggest impact on how happy I feel each day. From there, you can gauge how you feel and move on to therapy, medication, or both. Good luck and please leave a comment or share this post if you enjoyed it. I’ve provided some of the main reading recommendations below.
Nice post. I’ll be using these tips.
Good to hear Josh, hope you’ve found them useful.