How to Feel Happy When Nothing Seems to Work

Don’t Feel Happy

Don’t feel happy? I have a confession to make. I don’t feel happy all the time either. No one does.

There is no such thing as rainbows and puppies every second of every day.

No matter what social media may portray, we all get sad, frustrated, and angry sometimes.

Wait, now I want to sit under a rainbow and play with a puppy. I wish that was a thing. Moving on.

Life is messy. It just is. What is important is that we learn to deal with the messiness in healthy ways and make the choice to start feeling better.

Let me tell you, my life is incredibly messy at the moment. I am a full-time teacher deep in the throes of the back-to-school season and a single mom of two kids who are also going back to school. So many school supplies and clothing shopping happening right now.

Ahhhh!!

I can also tell you with a hundred percent certainty that most teachers do not have summers off.

I spent mine starting a blog, attending several weeks of professional development training, mapped out an entirely new curriculum, and did I mention the fact that I am flipping my fiance’s house as well? It was built in 1893 and nothing in it is square from the floors to the walls to the ceilings. It is old and charming, but so much work.

Oh, and it’s an hour away from where I live, so I commute back and forth several times a week packing and unpacking a bag over and over and over again. All of this while attempting to maintain my own house and failing miserably.

Pretty sure my neighbors are shocked every time I actually get around to mowing my own lawn. I am not going to lie, sometimes my neighbor just mows the section of my lawn that touches his, because he probably gets sick of waiting for me to finally be home and to do it myself.

And struggling to make ends meet on a teacher’s salary as a single mom, yeah I deal with that too.

There is a misconception out there that teachers get paid all summer. The truth is that they take our yearly pay and stretch it out to teeny tiny portions that they then distribute throughout the year.

I wish I really had an entire summer off at the beach and they just sent new money to me every two weeks. That sounds amazing. How do I sign up for that job?

It must be way better than the reality I’m facing like how many times can I feed the kids beans and rice this week before they start complaining?

So welcome to my life. It is crazy sometimes, I get completely depleted and exhausted sometimes, and I even cry sometimes.

But those are also the reasons why I’m so happy the rest of the time. Because I recognize when I don’t feel happy, I accept it, and I know how to make myself start feeling better.

How to Feel Happy

These 8 steps will show you exactly how to feel happier when nothing seems to work:

1. Take care of your emotional needs.
2. Take care of your physical needs.
3. Talk honestly about your feelings.
4. Write honestly about your feelings.
5. Make alone time a priority.
6. Let your thoughts wander.
7. Rest and restore.
8. Do anything that makes you happy.

I choose to put in the effort to start feeling better. It does not just come to me, and it will not just come to you. And I truly believe that the first step is realizing that you want to feel better, that you are capable of feeling better, and that it’s okay when you just don’t feel happy from time to time.

The reason I think this is so important to recognize is that I used to have a tendency to get sad and then it would spiral out of control quickly until I felt that absolutely everything was completely falling apart in my life, that no one else really cared about me and wanted me to be happy, and that I was just not good enough.

I am a zero to one hundred kind of person, and I suspect that some of you are like that too.

Now I deal with my feelings when I have them. I don’t wait until they compound and suddenly I am left feeling sad about the last thirty bad things that happened to me all at once. That is not healthy. It did not serve me at all. And it certainly will not serve you either.

Now I give myself permission to feel sad about something right when it’s happening, and then I move on quickly without spiraling into feelings of hopelessness and depression. And I don’t let myself focus on past regrets. I only focus on the here and now. Seriously, this will work wonders for you too.

Trust me, you will not die of embarrassment when you start being honest about your feelings.

Be honest with yourself and be honest with others.

When someone I have just met asks me how I am, of course, I say I’m doing well. But when someone close to me asks, I just tell them the truth. If I’m feeling down, I say I’m feeling down. If I’m tired, I say I’m tired. If I’m hungry, I say I’m hungry.

We’re so socially conditioned to pretend like everything is perfect all the time that most of us never admit when we just don’t feel happy. And because of that, we are left without the skills we need in order to start feeling better.

And just think, the person asking how you are doing might be feeling completely stressed out themselves and when you say that you are great with your perfectly fake smile, now they feel like they have to pretend too. And that doesn’t help either one of you.

So, accept the fact that sometimes you just don’t feel happy and learn how to start feeling better by using these 8 steps. And better yet, share them with others.

Let’s make this year the year we all feel like the amazingly awesome people that we truly are.

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