Negative Attitudes that Lead to Long-Term Unhappiness

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Negative attitudes can be pervasive and before you know it, they are starting to run your life. Everyone has negative attitudes and it is easy to fall into them. Take the time to learn about the most common negative attitudes and how they can affect your life. This gives you the chance to identify the negative attitudes that you possess so that you can make changes and improve your life and happiness.

You Often Think that You Are Not Good Enough

One of the fastest ways to find unhappiness is to think that you are not good enough for many things in life. This prevents you from taking risks and pursuing your dreams and goals. For example, you never know if you will get the job if you never apply due to thinking that you are not good enough for the position.

Seeing Things in a Negative Light

Some things in life are negative, but in most cases, people only see certain situations in a negative light. For example, if someone else gets the promotion that you applied for, this is not always a negative thing. You can use this as a learning experience so that you can make improvements and get the promotion the next time that it is available. The next time that you see something as a negative, really think about the situation and you will see that it often has something positive about it that you can use to improve yourself.

You Constantly Compare Yourself to Others

It is easy to look at other people and compare yourself to see if you stack up. However, this does nothing positive for your life. You want to understand that you are an individual and that everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Put your focus on yours so that you can improve your weaknesses and accentuate your strengths. The next time you find yourself feeling like you are not good enough compared to other people, take a minute and focus on the positive things in your life and you will see that you are just as good as everyone around you.

You Cannot Forgive Yourself

Things happen and it is important that you do not beat yourself up when things do not go according to plan. Think about bad decisions and past actions that you are not happy with. If you are still kicking yourself over these, let them go. One exercise that people often use is to write down what you want to forgive on a sheet of paper and then burn it. This provides you with the physical act of letting go and finding forgiveness.

Trying to Assess Blame

When bad things happen, some people put a lot of effort in trying to find someone to blame. In some cases, there is no one to blame and you have to accept this. Those who constantly look for someone else to blame can end up feeling powerless and bitter as they get older. When things go wrong, assess the situation without using the victim mentality. This often shows that things sometimes just happen and the best thing that you can do is just move on and concentrate on the positive things happening in your life.

You Live in the Past

Everyone has a past where things have happened that are not great. It is easy to put emphasis on these past situations and concentrate on them. However, this does not get you anywhere and focusing on the past will not do anything to improve your future. Take the lessons you learned from past mistakes and use these lessons to help build a more positive and productive future.

You Fear Mistakes and Failure

No one wants to fail or make mistakes, but these are actually an important part of life because you can learn from them. Work toward living in the moment and not focusing on the things that have gone wrong. This removes a lot of pressure and it allows you to remove the limits that this pressure imposes. You will never be positive about all mistakes, but trying to see the silver lining in them will help you.

Working to defeat these attitudes before they can defeat you will help to ensure long-lasting happiness. Remember that it takes a long time to develop negative attitudes, so it will take time to reverse them and be happier. Take your time and tackle one of your negative attitudes at a time so that you can build happiness that will last.

- Rosemary Kitchen

Resources

Chernoff, M. (2015) 8 Things Unhappy People Refuse to Admit. Retrieved on March 19, 2015 from http://www.marcandangel.com/2013/08/29/8-things-unhappy-people-refuse-to-admit/