10 Ways You Can Be Mean to Yourself (and Prevent Your Own Happiness)

No wonder many of us are not happy; sometimes we bring our misery on to ourselves by being mean to ourselves and not letting ourselves be happy and free.

I was catching up with my friend the other day – it took us 6 weeks to find a time to meet. I had nothing to do and flexible with my time as I was not working and spend my days recuperating. However, she was either travelling for work, or in the office slaving through projects. Then when she had time she would attend birthday dinners and farewell parties and other invitations. It seemed she never had a moment where she could decide what to do – she was always obliged to do something else or be somewhere for somebody else.

I was enlightened after our “catch up” coffee, which she had to cut short too because work called her and she went back to the office on a Sunday afternoon.

We are quite mean to ourselves without knowing.

Take a deep breath and a huge step back, and see if you are good at being mean to yourselves in the following ways:

1. Say “Yes” to every invitation and leave no time for yourself.
2. Take on too much at work at the office because you are afraid of saying “No” and let other colleagues abuse this fear and push more work that is not yours onto your desk.
3. Criticize yourself harshly at every single thing you do, and ignore the good bits.
4. Be quick to judge everything, even if it is none of your business.
5. Try to be nice to everyone and please them, thereby losing yourself.
6. Feel obliged to make decisions immediately.
7. Surround yourself with people who have negative thoughts and complain all day.
8. Worry excessively that everything would go wrong.
9. Discount your efforts and achievements.
10. Sleep as little as possible to pull all-nighters at work.

We need to put ourselves first in some situations, and make sure we are rested, have time for ourselves, and do not do what we do not want to do. Until then, we really cannot complain we are not happy – we can be, we just prevent ourselves from being so.

(Photo credit: Image of a Mobster via Shutterstock)