It’s getting close to New Years again and the articles are already popping up.
Be happier in 2014.
20 tips to improve your happiness in the coming year.
Healthy and Happy in 2014.
I have issues with articles like these because Happiness is subjective.
60% of the time my response to “Are you happy?” is “Meh, I’m not unhappy.”
The other 40% of the time I am anxious, depressed, or just even slightly down in the dumps with no real reason for being. That’s my base state.
I have a good life, good job, home, a bouncy neurotic dog, and all the normal things that can go right or wrong in a life. But I am also an introvert and a writer which means I think about things like “Am I happy?”…constantly. I over think things and tear myself and my life apart looking for flaws and ways I can improve.
This has culminated into what I call Study Days. Two or three days a week I go home after work and instead of getting on the internet or losing myself in crap TV, I work on something. Normally it’s acoustic guitar or French, but sometimes it’s just cleaning the house for 30 minutes or working on a project I have been putting off. The idea is to take 2 hours a week or so to improve yourself or your life in someway. I have been trying to get this into a consistent habit for years, as evidenced by the entire shelf of used How to learn French books.
If you ask someone struggling to get their basic needs if they are depressed they will most often say no, simply because they don’t even have the energy to contemplate the fact that they might be. But if treated for depression most people will show massive improvements in their lives. It’s only once your basic needs are taken care of that you can have the time and energy to examine your life and try to make changes.
So what changes are you going to make this New Year?