How To Be Happier
in 2018 or Any Year

You need to learn how to be happier in 2018.   The most important effort to undertake at the end of the year, or anytime, is to determine what makes you happy and then set about making that happen.  The end of year is a great time to focus on this.

But you should do this anytime something is amiss in your life.  Evaluating your life and making adjustments is one of the most satisfying things you can do.

Most of you are not really that happy. Some of you are borderline depressed.

Your life is at best....mediocre.  Filled with all kinds of situations that leave you irritated, frustrated, stagnant and maybe even miserable.

You find yourself bored or overworked at your job.  Your wages are low and leave you short of money every month.  The bills come at you all the time paying for things you did not even want.

You have very little little time off to do anything fun and no money for it anyway. 

Your health insurance is a massive payment every month.  When when you or a family member do go to the doctor to take care of a health issue that you cannot delay anymore, you find gigantic bills, the insurance refuses to pay in your mailbox a few months later.

You're so busy doing stupid things for other people that you have no time to take care of yourself.  You look and feel like the typical overworked, weak, pale, slouched over man that you see everywhere.

You certainly have no free time to do anything you want to do.

Some of you may have a life of excruciating misery.

You may be so far in debt, you have no way to even pay the minimum payments and pay your normal living expenses...utilities, insurance, rent... and still feed your family and you.

An unexpected expense turns your world upside down.

Or you may be in a job where you worry about getting laid off every Friday.  Some Fridays you do get laid off and live the extremely low income unemployed lifestyle of barely getting by worrying if you will get called back.

You may be living under constant, withering verbal abuse from your wife where you constantly have to walk on eggshells around her and nothing you do is right.

When you finally work up the courage and put in the massive effort to get past some of this misery, you still have a tremendous amount of work to do just to get back to zero.

You get laid off from a job you don't even like for many months. Your income disappears.  You try to get another job, but cannot because what you do is no longer needed.

You may even finally get a somewhat related job many months later with a good income and benefits.  In the meanwhile your debts pile up because you cannot pay them with the paltry unemployment checks.

When you finally get a better job after months of effort, you are so far behind, it takes you years to recover.

How to Be Happier
Keep Making Changes

These situations did not just happen to you.  They happened to me.

I've lived with these horrible circumstances for years.  I've suffered for most of my life.

I know countless men live this way too.  These terrible things happening to you seem like the normal way to live, since this is how you are living and you see that most men seem to live this way too. 

You do not spend any time thinking how to be happier, because happiness is only for other people.

Your life sucks so much that happiness is not something you even consider.


How to Be Happier From Steve Pavlina

Happiness First, Then Everything Else

Favorite quote -

Social conditioning may have convinced you that sacrificing your happiness to maintain a certain bank balance, to send timely payments to corporations to which you’re indebted, or to pay for someone else’s needs and expenses is the proper way to live.


Plus, there is the constant din of societal idiots saying how anything that does not kill you makes you stronger.  Making you feel like a bad life is normal and you are expected to suffer.

Movies constantly depict the main character suffering in some way and him overcoming all this at the end.

Religions all talk about the glory of suffering.

Governments and corporations find a way to tax, fee and fine as much money out of you as possible.  They are only too eager to tell you what to buy and how to live trying to convince you that you are too stupid to make any of your own decisions.

It seems hopeless. 

And it is hopeless if you roll over and let them do this to you. 

But, if you look at life differently and make the changes necessary...and keep making changes...a life of suffering is totally unnecessary.

The only way to learn how to be happier is to keep making changes, thinking differently and taking actions that make you happy..

ahappierman.comI am certainly far happier now than at any time in my life. I know how to be happier in my own life

Learning how to be happier does not just happen without you doing something. Just like any other good thing in your life, you have to put in effort and time.  And be willing to keep making changes with effort and time until you get your life dialed in to be better.

Yes, you may have to keep doing this, making changes, over and over again.  Especially if you keep thinking the wrong things will make you happy.

There are happiness killers that most men cannot seem to get past.  Most men are not able to get past these shoved down our throats societal constraints.

These pressures on us are almost impossible to overcome.  And it is not your fault.  The system is rigged against you at every turn by forces of incredibly complex power.

Your only hope is to "see" this for what it is and keep vigilant against it.  Which means you can never totally let your guard down.  You'll put in an incredible amount of energy into fixing one of these areas of your life only to get hooked and dragged down in another area.  The effort needed does not seem worth it at times.

It's easier to just let things slide.  Take it.  Tolerate it. Let someone else decide.  It's too much trouble to fight it.

There are some things that men stupidly do over and over again, thinking these things will make them happy.

The problem is, these things aren't how to be happier at all.

How to Be Happier
First Determine What Doesn't Make You Happy

Marriage

Maybe for a brief period in the past, marriage did make men happy.  Maybe you were even happy in your marriage like I was at the beginning.

But that period of happiness rarely lasts.  The overwhelming force of societal pressure ensures that men have no chance of living a good life once you are hooked in marriage.

Men are not happy being married.  You are only happy with a woman early in a relationship.  Sometimes it's obvious a girl is only good for an hour of happiness.  Sometimes after a few months you know the relationship has run it's course.

At most, you can expect to have 3 or 4 good years together before the crazy, dysfunctional parts of women come out and your life is now over.

Until you get smart and leave her, like I did.

I am very happy being single.  But I stayed married so long it is taking multiple years to get past the financially crippling aspects of a divorce.

Too many children

Children are a huge expense.  More than you can imagine when you don't have them.  Whatever amount you imagine needing to spend when you are childless, multiply it by 10 or more.

It isn't that kids are spoiled and they beg for every new thing that comes out, they do, of course.  When you love them, you want to give them what they want.

But that is not the real problem.

Children are expensive in other ways

  • You have to live in a good (meaning expensive are) school system. 
  • You have to have a much larger home.
  • You have to have a family, expensive health insurance plan.
  • They get sick a lot.  Multiple doctor visits, enormous co-pays, prescriptions and over the counter medications to buy.  You will be getting sick all the time being exposed to them.
  • They only eat certain foods that tend to be expensive and very unappetizing to adults.
  • They are constantly outgrowing their clothes and shoes.
  • You will not want to move around for better career opportunities.

I stopped at two.  This wasn't a popular decision either.  My wife wanted more.  Her family wanted more.  But I was able to get my way on this and had a vasectomy.

Living through your children

I never did this.  It seems like an absolutely horrible way to treat your children as well as making a joke out of your own life.

Care for them.  Raise them as well as you can.  Love them.  Spend money on them.  Do as best as you can for them.

But live your own life and let them live theirs.

A bad job

At some point, most jobs get bad.  They get stale.  You outgrow it.  What you do is no longer needed.  Maybe an entire economy tanks and what you do as well.  You will need to move on.

Doing too much for others

Men get the brunt of this.  We're thought of as pack mules, tamed animals, just good to work for others.  Always bending over backwards to please others.  Parents, teachers, siblings, friends, adult leaders of children's activities, bosses, the government, girlfriends, children and wives.

Until you just let go the idea of doing for others, your life will not be your own.

Too little money

Lack of money to spend on your desires is mostly this is caused by your misguided desire to take care of other people and their inexhaustible wants.

Even after you lose this crazy mindset, you will have years of catching up to do to get past this massive mistake.

Money is so important to your life you have to constantly plan, work and think about it.  It isn't just reducing your expenses or increasing your income.  You need to do both.

A few more thoughts on how to be happier with money

How to Be Happier  - It's Easiest to Know What Not To Do

You will find that much of your life will already be laid out for you. 

When You're a Kid You Have To

  • Obey your parents.
  • Go to school 
  • Obey all the adults and even other children in school
  • Do all kinds of things you don't want to do

Then when you grow up you'll find yourself following along doing the same thing you hated as a kid.  Going to college.  Joining groups.  Staying busy.  Spending what minimal money you do have on other people.

Life sucks when you follow this ridiculous script.

Bu, if you realize that you matter and that your life is the most important thing to you, you can just stop participating in most of this stupid nonsense and wrestle your life back from other people's agenda's.

How to be happier?  Move away from whatever is not working in your life.  Make whatever changes are needed and keep doing it.

› How to Be Happier

The only way I could become the happier man I am today was by leaving my wife.  You might be in the same situation I was in.  I suggest you take a look at my book - Leave Your Wife & Become a Happier Man with the 3 Step System.

Share a Comment About This Topic.

Do you have a comment about this or something to add? Share it!

[ ? ]

Author Information (optional)

To receive credit as the author, enter your information below.

(first or full name)

(e.g., City, State, Country)

Submit Your Contribution

  •  submission guidelines.


(You can preview and edit on the next page)