WARNING! THESE Behaviors Ruin YOUR Life!
No one can tell us how to live our lives. It is ours, and each person understands something completely different under key terms like "happiness" or "success". However, according to Leo Tolstoy, people are somehow always happy in the same way. Only in their unhappiness do they differ. If you make an honest effort and do not consciously harm anyone, you are already doing a lot of things right. Nevertheless, in this article we would like to introduce you to 7 deadly sins that you should never do to yourself and your life.
1. Underestimating the present
We live in the here and now. Yesterday is the past and tomorrow has not yet arrived. Yet many people waste their present by either mourning the past or betting everything on their future. Every day offers us 24 hours of opportunities if we seize them. We could learn something new every day, take a step in a direction we never dared and reinvent ourselves if we felt like it. In each new day lies an immeasurable number of chances for happiness, which we senselessly squander by not being mentally present, but while away in spheres that seem easier to us. Fact is however: Really we only have influence on today. As long as time travel has not been invented, there is no other place where we can actively shape our existence. Constantly hoping only for someday, the lottery win, the pension, the great love or the day when we suddenly awake overnight full of self-confidence, will bring us closer to exactly one goal: disappointment. We deceive ourselves by not paying attention to the here and now, or perhaps even by disregarding it. No moment, no blink of an eye, no second that has passed will ever return. We fritter away precious life time by constantly pretending that the present is only the passageway to a golden future.
2. Overtaxing or neglecting our own bodies.
Stress makes us sick in the long run, physically and mentally. Too little sleep, poor nutrition or the excessive consumption of alcohol and nicotine are stress factors that many people continue to underestimate. Once they have manifested themselves in our bodies, for example in the form of high blood pressure, obesity or depression, their damage is difficult to repair. Prevention is therefore the order of the day. We cannot always avoid stress. Many professions and the much-cited multiple stresses of job and family are virtually predestined to catapult us regularly to the brink. But it is precisely those people who lead a life in the fast lane who should then be all the more good to their body and soul. A daily routine that is as regular as possible, enough sleep, sunlight and a diet worthy of the name would be the ideal allies for a daily life at the limit.
3. Letting yourself down
No desire, no drive, no perspective. Yes, unfortunately, there are people who simply can’t wring anything nice out of life. We are not talking about depressives or other mentally ill people, but about the unfortunate masses who have not yet discovered their element and their strengths. People who spend their days scrolling their way to false nirvana on their smartphones or playing pointless computer games are not only damaging their brains and backs in the long run. These pointless activities are also the fastest way to really slip into depression or something similar. Fritter away your days like this and you open up an unholy cycle that doesn't bode well.
4. What do others have that I don't?
Comparing yourself to others kills any chance of becoming a happy person. Especially today, when outward appearance and image are everything and authenticity is increasingly relegated to the sidelines, we should question the colorful world of images we encounter every day. Fake people on social media or the real people in the neighborhood, at work or on the street - none of what we get to see shows us the real person or their whole life. Many people go to great lengths to create an image that they would like us to believe is true. You don't have to be a celebrity or a politician to want to look better than you really are. Most people would like to be more of everything, or at least have more. Beauty, money, prestige, power, success or status are the number one desires. Appearances deceive us much more often than they present us with facts. A few examples? Demonstratively displayed wealth, for example, often belongs to the bank for the most part. In 2021, over 413,000 households filed for bankruptcy in the US alone. As for happy appearances: in the US, about 21 million people are clinically depressed, and the number of unreported cases is likely many times higher. So the next time you catch yourself spontaneously envying someone, remember the facts. By the way, almost one in three marriages is now divorced.
5. Fear or glorify the future
Being afraid of the future is just as pointless and destructive as putting all your hopes in it. None of us can say here and now what will happen tomorrow or next year. Life is constantly in motion, and will continue to be so. The best way for us is to just let things come to us. We won't be able to change them anyway.
6. Maintain toxic relationships
We stay with partners who literally suck the life out of us. We keep jobs that subject us to bullying and psychological terror; we go there every day with a stomachache and return home in tears at night. We keep friendships that abuse us solely as personal wailing walls or private ATMs. Why do we do this? Life is too short not to want the ultimate best for ourselves.
7. Holding on to the past
Similarly devastating to waiting for the future is retroactively glorifying the past. After all, our memories are all too happy to deceive us here. The human brain is capable of making bad experiences disappear quite quickly. All that remains is pure nostalgia and the feeling that everything was better in the past. Not only are we completely wrong with this view, we also belittle the present with it, and it simply doesn't deserve that.
Today’s Conclusion: One life, all possibilities
Unfortunately, there are many ways to ruin one's life. The number one cardinal mistake is to blame other people, society or fate for everything that doesn't work out. The truth is: We are the architect of our own happiness and that is basically all we need to know. Modern life coaches would probably advise us to have a positive mindset. This insight is not new. Even the Roman poet Marcus Aurelius held, "Our life is what our thoughts make of it." That's it for today.