A 45-year-old client, I’ll call Marco, started psychotherapy with me by saying, “I’m unhappy, and I’ve been unhappy for so long it feels like a habit.” Marco lived with his girlfriend of seven years and had a job he felt suited him well. He said he did not know how to enjoy the things that used to make him feel good, like watching sports and traveling. He and his girlfriend were not “in a rush” to get married because neither wanted children.
I suggested he get a complete physical exam to rule out any physical causes for his feelings of unhappiness and depression. After physical causes were ruled out, it became clear that Marco had a habit of “spinning everything negative.” His girlfriend had expressed annoyance that he could somehow take a “perfect day” and spin it into a negative experience.
The Causes of Unhappiness
In William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the title character delivers the line, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” The modern version of that quote might read, “There is nothing either good or bad, but our judgments make it so.” A mind that jumps to rate, rank, judge, criticize, and ridicule is very unhappy.
Cognitive psychologists have long noted that all thoughts are distortions or interpretations of reality. For example, in our conflict management training, we lead participants in an exercise to demonstrate how this works. We ask participants to close their eyes and take a few deep breaths. Participants are instructed to listen to the word we are about to say and then write down the first thing they think of when they think of that word.
Then we say, “And the word is DOG.”
After a few moments of writing, we asked each participant what they thought about when they heard the word DOG. One subject thought about his black labrador retriever, which he loved. We asked about the dog’s age, and the person shared details and happy feelings. Another shared a traumatic memory of being attacked as a child by a pit bull. One woman said she thought about a cat. Another person thought about their dog that recently passed away. No two participants had the same thoughts or feelings about the concrete word DOG.
The exercise aims to show how quickly we interpret reality based on past experiences. Yet, we assume others share the same interpretation. This gets even trickier with abstract ideas like love, justice, happiness, and respect. Our interpretations shape our emotional reactions. Our thoughts also trigger physiological sensations and nervous system responses. Those nervous system responses can become wired together networks of neurons in the brain. Those habits of thinking and feeling keep us stuck.
How Thinking Differently Can Make You Happier
If you want to feel happier, start by noticing your habits of thought. Do you look at people and immediately find fault with their appearance, speech, or behavior? Monitor your inner monologue. Do you call yourself an idiot when you make a mistake? Notice how often you judge yourself and others. Observe the judgments without convincing yourself of their validity. Recognize that they are not truth but interpretations and stories that fuel your distress.
Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School, researches the neuroscience of emotions. Her research demonstrates how the mind constructs our feelings. She says the mind constantly uses concepts to explain and predict our world. You enroll in a college course, and your mind has the concept of classrooms, professors, and textbooks that help you predict your first day of class. Physical sensations, like butterflies in the stomach, get interpreted as either excitement or anxiety, depending on your interpretation. We analyze and predict to budget our energy for the expected demands of the day. Dr. Barrett calls that our body budget. She writes:
Words seed your concepts, concepts drive your predictions, predictions regulate your body budget, and your body budget determines how you feel (Barrett, L. F. 2017).
The words we use to describe our experience fuel our body’s response. If we expect to hear criticism from our boss on the way to work, our body tightens up in preparation for something challenging. Our body budget is the energy we reserve to manage our life’s demands. If we feel low energy, our emotions lean negative, and we can quickly feel overwhelmed.
Happiness Essential Reads
We can change the thoughts that drain us of energy, the pessimistic predictions, the unnecessary critical judgments, and the mental rehearsals of arguments and conflicts. Since we make it all up anyway, why not change the trajectory of thought to allow for more joy?
How to Welcome More Joy
To feel more joy, we need to make space for it inside. A mind cluttered with anxiety, stress, anger, resentment, cynicism, and negative judgment has no room for happiness to bubble up.
Remember that those pessimistic thoughts seed your concepts. Concepts like “People cannot be trusted,” “My boss is a jerk,” and “I’m a failure” drain the body of energy and motivation. Once you believe these concepts, habits of thinking can keep you stuck. With practice, you can rewire your brain to form habits of thought that allow happiness to emerge.
Try these evidence-based tips:
- Commit to something bigger than yourself. Studies show that couples who commit to marriage tend to have a higher level of well-being (Dush et al., 2005).
- Summon gratitude for the challenges in your life. Gratitude improves life satisfaction (Kerry et al., 2023). We grow the most from the challenges, hardships, and difficulties we endure. For example, a friend, Felena Hansen, traces much of her entrepreneurial courage and success back to lessons from a near-fatal car crash that changed her life (Hanson, 2016).
- Imagine a future of accomplished dreams. Write about those dreams and all the hard work you did to get there. Studies show increased optimism and better health from imagining a fulfilling future (Malouff and Schutte, 2017).
In time, Marco learned to challenge his automatic pessimistic interpretations. He began to imagine a happier future. His childhood struggles became sources of strength. In time, he even asked his long-term girlfriend to marry him. She said, “Yes.”
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