The 3 Mistakes I Made as a Happiness Seeker

When you’re new at anything, you’re bound to make mistakes, right? Well, it was no different for me as a happiness seeker. Between my late teens and early 30s, I made plenty o’ mistakes when it came to the quest for genuine happiness. To save you years and tears of doing the same, I share with you “The 3 Mistakes I Made as a Happiness Seeker”.

1. I tried to focus on the positive– all of the time.

Focus on the good, focus on the positive, focus and see the light… there is so much inspirational and motivational material out there (whether on social media, in articles and books, on our mugs, etc) and it is certainly well-intentioned. There is absolutely nothing wrong with focusing on the good, focusing on the positive, and seeing the light. The problem begins when these messages land in the wrong hands at the wrong time. And that’s exactly what it did for me.

I learned that in order to be happy, I needed to focus on the good. So I focused on the good as much as I could. I focused on the good when things were good, I focused on the good when things were bad, and I focused on the good when things were kind of mediocre. When I couldn’t control what was happening, I challenged myself to control the way I responded, and the way I responded was by seeing the positive.

 

 

“Is she bonkers?!” you might be thinking… “What’s wrong with seeing the good all of the time?”

Well, when you’re seeing the good all of the time, guess what? You’re not seeing the true. You’re ignoring the real. You’re denying what’s genuine.

I am a natural optimist, born with a smile on my face– so for me, it was no big deal! I smiled my way through my frustration, I grinned while feeling disappointed, and I beamed although I was fuming with anger inside.

Not too long after, I began to question the validity of always focusing on the positive. “If focusing on the positive is supposed to make me feel happy, then why do I feel like crap?” I soon learned that focusing on the positive was merely a temporary solution to some very specific problems. It was by no means an antidote to deep feelings of sadness, frustration, disappointment, anger, and irritation that I may have felt from day to day. So I kept focusing on the positive sometimes (like when it was in front of me but I was missing it, as the practice of gratitude might have us do), and the rest of the time I focused on the real and true.

Are you interested to learn the 2nd and 3rd mistakes that I made as a happiness seeker?

I cover these in a video segment in The Happiness Hub, The Happiness Doctor’s all-exclusive community. If you are a happiness seeker and/or maker and are interested in cultivating the genuine, authentic kind of joy, then click here to join us, listen in on # 2 and #3, and join the group conversation!