Last week I talked about how we don’t actually want to be happy all the time so telling yourself you “just want to be happy” is not helpful. Life is a 50/50 thing. 50% of the time we are going to be happy. 50% of the time we are going to be sad. There’s a full spectrum of emotions in between happy and sad, but 50% of the time we are going to have negative emotions and that’s actually a good thing. Most of us logically understand that to know what joy is, we have to have felt sorrow, but when life happens and we start feeling those negative emotions our brain freaks out and tries to tell us we should “just be happy.” People try to argue against the 50/50 and say they want it to be more like 80/20, but as Brene Brown says, you can argue with reality but you are going to lose every time. People get sick. Babies die. Accidents happy. People get fired. Bad things happen to good people. It seems like accepting this means we are giving up and not going to try to fight for what we feel is right, but the opposite is true. When you push against the reality of these things happening, you spend all of your time trying change the past which is impossible. When you accept them as facts now you can move forward and ask yourself, now what? What do you want to do now that your friend has cancer, or you lost your job, or your manger sucks, or that terrible accident happened? Now what? By answering now what, it sets you up for moving forward in a way that actually helps you feel so much better. Now maybe you are going to help fundraise for cancer research, or start applying to jobs to find work, or tell your manager what you need to grow your career, or volunteer to help people in need. Moving forward and trying to help feels so much better than being angry because it should not have happened. Life, it’s a 50/50 game and accepting that is so much more empowering than just wanting to be happy. If you want help figuring out what this looks like for you, let’s jump on the phone and figure it out together. Sign up for free coaching here.
Believing “I just want to be happy” is a lie Part 2
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Hey, I’m Lindsay Lyman
I spent the last 11 years growing my career at one of the largest tech companies in the world. I’ve built teams, launched new products, and created my own jobs. As a certified coach, I teach people how to manage the noise in their head to feel motivated and valued at work again.