Have you ever felt lousy? If not, then you are very lucky. It’s difficult to live happily when nothing really pleases. The things you have are boring and what you haven’t seems inaccessible. Hands drop and depression started to roll in. At such moments, the easiest way is to indulge in a negative emotional stream and suffer, or you can try to look at what is happening from the other side.

Happiness, albeit achievable, is changeable, which people often tend to forget. You can’t always be happy. It’s the same as always feeling the taste of a sweet cake, always feeling the pleasant aroma of coffee, or humming the tune of your favorite song in your head. Constant emotional stimuli are harmful and the pursuit of them leads neither to happiness, but to pernicious addiction. Overeating, gambling addiction, shopping in its terminal state are the same attempts to catch happiness as alcohol or drugs. Therefore, the first step is to stop chasing for new doses of pleasure. It is not necessary to become yogis and ascetics, it is enough to be moderate in your desires. It’s like drinking tea without six cubes of sugar or eating food without adding half a bottle of ketchup in it. The pleasure from such consumption will disappear completely at first, but later on the taste will return and become more sophisticated. By exercising moderation in your daily life, it will become easier to enjoy the little things that enhance your happiness.

The next step on the path to inner harmony is getting rid of envy both towards other people and towards ourselves. The destructiveness of the constant comparison of oneself with others has been noticed for a long time, and the point is not even that it is always possible to find someone more beautiful, stronger, and successful, but in the senselessness of such a comparison. It is only justified in professional sports or when being the best is an achievable goal. If you don’t get a cup or a medal for victory, then a comparison according to the principle “better or worse” can only spoil the mood. “To be richer than anyone” or “more successful” are bad goals.

Next in line is “self-envy”. A strange wording, but this kind of envy is even more common than it might seem. The person we envy is ourselves, with the difference that he or she made the right decision at the right time 10 years ago, succeeded where we failed and already achieved everything, while for us the moment completely lost. Every time we want to change the past or condemn ourselves for wrong actions, we compare ourselves with an imaginary ideal that did not make these mistakes and therefore is better than us. The result of the comparison is anger, demotivation, and spoiled mood. The principle is simple: “If you want the result – act, if you want to suffer – envy.”

The last obstacle to happiness is dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction is any desire that we cannot fulfill at the snap of our fingers. Difficulties in relationships, finances, studies and work, lack of days off – anything will poison our life until we figure it out. By itself, the need to satisfy desires is positive, it becomes a starting point and motivation for action. Problems begin when we fixate on the result and the fact of its absence at the present moment. To avoid it, it is enough to plunge headlong into the “process”. Vacation and change of scenery are good examples. For many, this is the only working option to temporarily break out of a repetitive cycle of stress. But the process can be anything: hobbies, meditation, alcohol, jogging, or even working on a problem’s solution. If you feel dissatisfaction, look for the processes that you like, implement through them. Change desires-results to desires-processes, strive for inner harmony and do not chase after emotions. Then happiness will appear.