logo
logo
Sign in

CONDITIONAL HAPPINESS: AN AWESOME PATH TO MISERY AND WHY YOU SHOULD AVOID IT

avatar
Mithun Ivalkar
CONDITIONAL HAPPINESS: AN AWESOME PATH TO MISERY AND WHY YOU SHOULD AVOID IT

When I was a kid, I was a hyperactive child. When I look back at those days, I wonder how my parents handled me, for I used to be a restless person, dabbling in several things all at once. While I turned passionate about studies and excelled in academics later in life, those days would have been tumultuous to say the least.

I remember my mom frequently saying to her visiting relatives that she would be happy the day I completed at least my schooling. It was later followed with completion of my college and then with getting a job which was later followed by my wedding. I would be amused at her diatribe. Those words kept repeating in my life, sometimes from people around me, at others from my own mouth. A lot of people attach an “If” label to that future moment when they hope they would be happy. Psychologists call it the “I’ll be happy when” syndrome.

But here is what I’ve found the reality to be:

Placing a condition for your future happiness presents an open field for misery.

For one, you keep focusing on a distant future when things the way they would stand then, would make you happy. Or so you feel today and now. “I will be happy when I save a million dollars” or “I will be happy when I can run that marathon”. What it does is that it makes it appear that happiness is not here in the present moment but in that distant horizon, somewhere in the future. Which effectively means you’re in misery at this very moment! At another level, such thoughts deprive you from feeling contended and happy. Read more


collect
0
avatar
Mithun Ivalkar
guide
Zupyak is the world’s largest content marketing community, with over 400 000 members and 3 million articles. Explore and get your content discovered.
Read more