5 Steps to Find Everyday Happiness & Eliminate Unnecessary Stress
The wifi went out.
The pot on the stove boiled over.
The dog chewed your shoes … again.
Someone cut you off in traffic.
You didn’t get the gift you expected for your birthday.
Your coworker won’t stop talking loudly in his cubicle next door!
These experiences may not be life threatening but it can make you feel nibbled to death by negativity. Instead of focusing on the negatives in life – focus on 5 steps to find everyday happiness and eliminate unnecessary stress and remember how fortunate we truly are. We often sweat the wrong stuff.
1. Set the Right Expectations
Our expectations get us into trouble. We are guilty of expecting too much from ourselves and too much from others. For the first years of my marriage, I was constantly frustrated that my husband didn’t have the same expectations as I did around neatness. It took time (and wasted emotional energy) for me to finally figure out that it wasn’t that he didn’t care, it simply because I assumed he would have the same ideas as myself. After all, neatness habits seem so obvious to ME. I didn’t bother to communicate the specifics of what I thought ‘neat’ was. I assumed he would just get it.
We expect for others to realize they just cut us off in traffic. Or worse, that they did it on purpose.
We expect that our partners know how we need to feel loved (without us telling them).
We expect that our friends will understand how we will feel about leaving us out of loop.
I have heard a good friend say: “Well if I have to tell them what I expect then that means they just don’t care. They should know!” I have news for you: we aren’t born mind readers (and you wouldn’t want to anyway). We are born to communicate! But why are we so BAD at it?!
We aren’t mind-readers and we evolved speech for a reason. It’s a good idea to use your vocal chords to communicate your expectations to others instead of expecting them to just ‘get it’. For a host of reasons: other people do not have the same life perspective we do. Besides, if we were all the same, life would be boring! What may appear as obvious to you may be a big mystery to someone else. Communicate! The number one breakdown in relationships is typically because of poor communication.
2. Check Your Perspective
The problem with our perspective is that we assume we’re right based on the information we have. But we rarely have all of the information. Your perspective is the lens through which you interpret everything you experience in the world around you. Your perspective is shaped by your mood, your circumstances, how you were raised, and your cultural background … to name a few.
It’s like wearing glasses that aren’t quite focused right. You are so used to it, you don’t even see anything wrong. You may not realize that you need a new prescription until you take your glasses off for a while. It’s important to step back objectively or open yourself up to a different viewpoint. It’s so easy to let our galloping emotions take over and carry us from assumption to forgone conclusion instantly without the facts!
“I just know I’m going to be fired!” said a friend to me one day. I was alarmed, but (being a bit more objective) I started asking questions. It turns out that a simple misunderstanding of the context in an email had sent her into a tailspin of distress. In actuality, her boss appreciates her and gave her a promotion a month later.
“You sure didn’t look busy to me when I saw you today” said the snide text message from an acquaintance. I had politely declined meeting them because I had a very full schedule that afternoon. As he happened to see me in passing – he immediately assumed that I was out goofing off. Just because he was ticked that I couldn’t make the meeting when he wanted it – he assumed the worst about me based on his bad mood.
Check your facts before you make assumptions.
3. Understand Your Influence
How many times have you sat behind the wheel of your vehicle and yelled out loud to the person in front of you? I admit that I have. We assume that the other person meant to act like an idiot and we often take it personally. Later on, when the emotion has left the situation, we realize that “I got upset over something I can’t control”.
What about our loved ones? Have you (or are you now) trying to change someone you care about? In a recent conference, I asked the audience: “Who in here, right now, is trying to change their partner or family member for their own good?” Around 95% of the hands waved in the air. YES, we are guilty of thinking we can control or change other people!
I became leadership development certified because I had the idealistic notion that I could change bad leaders … That was a stupid idea. As Marshall Goldsmith said in a recent workshop at Rice University in Houston TX: “Focus on helping successful leaders become even better.” Why? Because they have the right mindset already. Stop banging your head against the wall with people that aren’t open to change.
We have choices in life! Healthy choices begin with a genuine understanding of what we can impact and what we can’t. We can either pound the steering wheel in frustration and be managed by something outside of our influence – or we can accept the situation and focus on what we CAN control: ourselves.
Stop sweating the wrong stuff!
4. Own Your Impact
We put a lot of energy into things we cannot change. Sometimes we allow our emotions to get the best of us. Your mood and your attitude affects your outcomes. This skewed focus can become fixed if we do not become AWARE.
“Contentment in life doesn’t come from the absence of conflict; it comes from not giving away our emotional control …” – Mike Bechtle
Like that lens that determines our perspective in life, it is also critical for our emotional well-being to run a check on our energy outputs. Are we focusing on things we can impact or are we allowing situations to drive our reactions? Instead of wasting energy frustrated about traffic or politics, perhaps we could focus more on forming healthy relationships with those close to us.
Scarily, we often attract that which we focus on. Whether you realize it or not, we have a way of creating the very situation we want to avoid because we are fixated on it.
If I expect my husband to tick me off – guess what? He will! However, if I expect him to just be the wonderful person he is: that’s what I will experience. This is possible because what lens we choose will determine what we see. In other words, if I were to expect my husband to say something hurtful, for instance, I will be scanning his behavior for any signs to validate being hurt. My senses will be on the alert for any perceived wrongdoing. Also, I will be more likely to alter a potentially innocent action or statement to suit my expectations.
This same process holds true in any part of your life. What you expect, you will attract. The same goes for what ‘energy’ you put into your environment. If you are always negative, it’s likely that you will experience negative things although it might not be perceived the same way if you had a more positive outlook. Your attitude determines your outcomes.
5. Change Yourself First
We can control our choices and attitudes. There is a certain feeling of freedom when you realize that you cannot control the traffic, other people, the weather, or politics – and you let it all go. When you accept that the only thing you can control is YOU, it allows you to own your impact. Only when we take responsibility for our choices can we can begin to hope to control our influence. You become response-able instead of reactive. You can start to become self-aware and live intentionally.
An old man once said: “When I was young I wanted to change the world. In my 30’s I realized that the world was too big and I focused on changing my country. As time passed I understood that my country wasn’t influenced by me so I hoped to impact my community. As an older man, I realized that even the community was too large and I tried to influence my family. Now: as a very old man … I focus on changing myself. If I change, then can I influence my family. My family can impact the community. The community can change the country which may then change the world.”
All real change starts inside.
Find Everyday Happiness
Life is not smooth sailing. It’s unrealistic to think that we will reach a time in our lives where there are no challenges to overcome. Life doesn’t care about your plans! However, it is possible to have serenity. The more we choose the lens of truth and learn to focus on the right stuff instead of choosing to sweat the wrong stuff: it will be easier to find everyday happiness and eliminate unnecessary stress. The healthier our emotional well-being will become.
Like any discipline, your attitude will not take care of itself. That’s why it must be attended to daily.” – John Maxwell
Shifting your perspective and choosing your attitude doesn’t happen automatically. Becoming self-aware takes time and attention. In order to do so, you need to be intentional about your attitude. As I’ve learned the hard way, it’s worth the energy! To find everyday happiness and eliminate unnecessary stress it’s critical to understand how to focus on the right stuff and not to sweat the wrong stuff.
Ask yourself these 3 questions:
- Can I influence or control it?
- Is it worth my energy?
- Will it matter in 5 years?
A little bit about me …. my name is Erin Urban (LSSBB, CPDC), I’m a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, a keynote speaker, a certified career growth and leadership development coach with almost a decade of mentoring and coaching successful professional transformations.
Such excellent suggestions. Issues with expectations and perspective have shown up a lot in our marriage. I’ve come to believe that expectations are one of the main determining factors of happiness!
This is sage advice! Holding the rest of the world to your values or your expectations results in a bucketload of disappointment in life. I have a family member who is constantly disappointed by other people and that weighs heavily on that individual’s mental health. I watch with sadness thinking that if only the diversity and differences of others could be acknowledged and celebrated as something that makes the world more colorful, that person’s life would also be much happier. Thanks, great article.
I love what you said about “owning your impact.” And the reminder that I have *so* much influence not only on my thoughts, but also the actual outcomes of circumstances around me.
Working in the mental health field, my mantra has become: perspective is 90% of health! How we view things matters, as you said-it impacts all of who we are and what we do. What you focus your mind on is imperative, and it goes way beyond the cup being half empty or half full. It is tricky to navigate the road with both lanes of being the only one responsible for self (self is the only one we can control/change), but being completely impacted by everyone and thing around us. Shifting our focus to healthier things (also known as things that help us heal, stay stable, stabilize, or create positive experiences), takes a lot of practice and effort. It is definitely worth it, though!