Are We Blocking Ourselves from Happiness?

this meow meow has the happiest life

I have admittedly felt a little low these days and have some days feel like it's hard to shake this emotional distress out. That is after I watched a video and I felt a little better and makes me think a little harder as well on how this emotional dilemma I'm facing is mostly self inflicted.

Sometimes there are reasons why we are worried and sometimes there is no cause of worry but we still do so. Because of this self inflicted emotional state of  mind, we fail to see what we have in life that we forget about but instead, should be grateful for.

The video makes me realise that I let myself get carried away with emotions when I compare myself unconsciously with others and thinking how their lives seem to be way better than mine. I had the wrong focus. Instead, I should focus on me. Keep my mind occupied and doing things that matter to keep my mind away from feeling lost and helpless. In other words, focus on me. I know it sounds as though it's so egoistic but if you put it in the write context, you are just making sure that time matters on your side, by doing things you love or make you happy.

For example, I should appreciate the fact that my cards are well received and that I should be thankful that I receive orders which help me to earn some money and keep my time occupied making them. And then reward myself with some time to watch Netflix or play some games when I'm done or almost done.

Other things that make happy and look forward to are of course, my workout classes after work. In that one hour, I just forget about things that cause me to worry and feel low and just focus on getting the steps right and to enjoy myself while sweating my butt off.

I also enjoy watching shows on Netflix. Some shows make me so trigger happy like my last post because they were so fun to watch. 

And then this issue about body confidence. I felt a little low as in I felt I didn't focus on making progress in terms of weight loss as compared to my other colleague who didn't do much except to cut down on so many food based on 'doctors' advice'. I put it in inverted commas because I highly doubt the doctor would restrict until like that and I highly suspect that it's just her doing it mostly for vanity for compliments.

Look, I don't want to judge her whatsoever because it will just make me look bad because what I am doing is basically putting her down and making me feel worse off. As in, I will start to compare myself to her, like I just did in my last paragraph, and instead, I should actually focus on doing what is right for my health and body. It's her own prerogative and if she lives for the compliments, I don't really care. I don't stand to benefit anything. But I will benefit instead if I make better decisions on improving my life and being closer to God.

I think a lot of this sense of low confidence we have is because we put ourselves down too much when we start to compare. In the video, the old lady was saying her secret to happiness is that she doesn't envy others or hate others. Don't you think the world will be a better place if many people have this mentality? So I don't hate people for saying things that upset me or judging me for all the wrong reasons. People can say what they want but we know it ourselves if we are really like that.

But if we do, we take it as a learning point. Like how my brother pointed out my mistakes and even though I feel that it's not a 100% true, admittedly I wasn't being a good listener. So I tried to make it better by seeing from his point of view and give him my listening ear.

And lastly, how I hate this nature of mine where I will calculate money down to the last dollar and then being quite obsessive over it. I don't think it's bad to know how much I have left but in a sense, I must be thankful as well with whatever I have, and to be less worrisome, I need to actually be more practical over things and not being too caught with consumerism. Because let's face it, the economy may be doing well and the price we are paying for it is the higher cost of living. And to be able to sustain ourselves in this economy, we have to play smart as well by making sure that we live within our means.

So let's chill out, be more caring, adopt a positive attitude and be more practical with more focus on ourselves. Practise kindness and compassion and if you're a Muslim, and this being the holy month, let us have more focus on our spirituality too.