What is the biggest cause of unhappiness?

Do you ever just want to scream at the top of your lungs because your head is so full of thoughts and there is so much you don’t understand and you are pretty sure you never will?  It is so maddening but so beautiful all at the same time.  When you start accepting life for what it is and your feelings for what they are you really start to live.  My thoughts are all over the map everyday and sometimes I want to cut my head off and try to dump some of those thoughts out so I can have a moment of silence and stillness.  But if I did that then I would no longer be me.  Although the insane number of thoughts can be overwhelming they are a part of who I am.  They are my character.  Life really is like a movie that each of us plays a role in.  We experience all of the emotions and some of these emotions are harder to work through than others but I am starting to learn that once you start accepting and truly feeling those emotions your feelings of guilt and sorrow start to fade because you realize that it is these feelings that make you one of a kind, your own unique individual.  No one in the whole wide world is going to feel exactly how you feel ever.  There may be similarities but until they crawl into your skin and become your thoughts and emotions they will never know exactly what you feel and they are unable to say they feel the exact same way.  That thought is pretty wonderful but really scary as well.  It gives us our own individuality but in the same you are unsure if anyone is truly able to understand or relate to you.  In a sense you really are all alone in this world.  It’s a test.  A test of your own strength.  I believe it is part of the purpose.  In a kind of crazy way, it really is survival of the fittest.

As you can see from most of my blogs, I usually ramble my jumbled thoughts in the first paragraph.  Sometimes I write my thoughts so spontaneously because they are itching to get out of me.  I think my last few sentences are the reason most people live in long, drawn out states of unhappiness.  I think people are living in a state of fear.  We really do live in a society where we are unsure who to be anymore.  Fear is everywhere.  Take a moment to think about the things you fear.  Now think about where that fear originated.  Most likely, someone or some outside source instilled this fear in you because of their own fears.  We want certain things but we are afraid of failure or afraid of getting hurt and we internally beat ourselves up because of these fears.  I cannot speak for all people obviously, but how many times throughout your life have you questioned yourself or been upset because you felt like you were not good enough for some reason or another?  I really believe unhappiness comes from an outside source that is brought within ourselves.  Society has moved at such a rapid pace and we are all racing to keep up with the trends and what society is telling us is the way to be.  This is why I have issues with government.  I am not saying either way what I believe in.  I just cannot understand why certain groups are elected to determine how we should be as a whole.  Why are their thoughts and opinions right overall.  We are this big cultural melting pot that people are constantly trying to mold into one big robot.  People are unable to be themselves anymore because of so many rules and regulations.  I am working on my Masters in the Counseling field and the amount of red tape there is is absolutely insane.  My goal is just to tell people to be themselves and find themselves and still there are issues with that method.  How in the world are there issues and regulations on striving to someone to find themselves and embrace that person.  There is red tape everywhere and I think, without even knowing it, people are unhappy because they feel very limited in life.  Those that go out there and do their own thing are considered weird and odd.  I have met artists of so many forms that are expressing themselves in various ways.  It has been so obvious they love their art (whatever form it may be) and that is their way of getting their emotions out of them and sharing with the world.  In the same I have seen so many of these people criticized and called crazy and eccentric (not that that is an insult).  It seems that even when people try to be themselves they are judged and interrogated by the world.

These are the things I think about day in and day out.  I enjoy life and I love learning.  I love meeting random people and trying to learn their stories.  I love hearing about how people have overcame obstacles because it gives me hope that I can overcome mine.  My fears are what have made me unhappy at certain points in my life but for the first time I am getting a grip on these fears and facing them head on.  I have heard several times that after doing something for 21 days it becomes a habit (I don’t know whether this ever works when it comes to working out-hahaha).  I have been so focused on taking on a new perspective and opening up my mind to things that are so different.  I, honestly, feel changed as a person.  It is a strange feeling because I no longer can feel the person who I was before.  The person I was before seems almost like someone else.  There is no way that person could have been me.  Both of these people have had great fun in life and have really taken so much in but I really like the person I am now.  Instead of internally bashing myself for every little thing I do wrong or not fitting some mold, I embrace who I am because I am starting to learn there is no one else in charge of my thoughts but me.  I once read a quote that said “If you talked to your friends the way you talk to yourself sometimes, would they want to be friends with you?”  I held onto that because at the time I read that I knew immediately that the answer was no.  Unhappiness really is a choice.  There may be times (someone dies, a relationship ends, losing a job) that it is so overwhelming and you will experience unhappiness and that is completely ok but it is still a choice.  You can choose how long you want to be unhappy for.  Is an unhappy person who you really are?  If you answered yes to that question, I now ask why you would want to live that kind of life?  What is the benefit in that at all?  These are the things that I have to remind myself everyday when I am feeling like the world is against me.  The only person that controls me is me.  If I choose to be unhappy I cannot blame anyone or anything else for that.

Even in your darkest times, there is happiness available to you every minute of everyday in some form.  You just need to find it and hold onto it.  Will it always be easy?  Absolutely not.  Will you not be able to do it some days or even through lengths of time?  You bet.  But the fact still remains that happiness is a part of you.  It is and always will be your choice to feel it.  Happiness is the bliss that lives inside of you that sometimes gets pushed deep down.  I believe that if each of us focused on this then we could potentially see this world change.  The problem is that is would take work and this is a different kind of work that people are used to.  It all comes down to deciding what you want.  A life of unhappiness or a life of happiness and bliss?  The choice is yours! :0)