psychology
Eliminate two words from your vocabulary and become happier
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How do we find happiness? For example, by saying goodbye to two words at once – and thus adopting a more positive thought pattern.
Being happy – if only it were as easy as it sounds! To a certain extent, however, we really do have our happiness in our own hands. Of course there are always things in life that we cannot control. Be it the weather, the behavior of others or unexpected strokes of fate. But what we can definitely influence is how we deal with it.
Over the years, certain thought patterns have crept into each of us, which we often no longer notice. They are like the small, external quirks where objects on the desk have to be meticulously arranged or foam kisses always have to be eaten from below. Everyone has them, some are visible, others are beneath the surface. And we don’t mean the cookie crumbs that disappear under the table, no, rather the words that we crumble into our mental vocabulary and that feel more comfortable there than we thought.
Psychology and the power of what-if thoughts
Some of these “inner quirks” can make life really difficult for us. Because they get stuck and unconsciously stand in the way of our happiness. Spirals of thoughts, ruminations and fears come out – and suddenly we don’t feel so happy anymore. These thought patterns can be very individual, and everyone probably has their own little thing to carry. But one of them we encounter again and again in everyday life and should seem familiar to the brooding candidates among us. It contains two words. And they are “what” and “if”.
- What if I’m stuck in traffic and late for my first day at work?
- What if my friend has an accident while she is visiting me by car?
- What if my:e partner:in stops loving me at some point – and would rather live it out again?
Well, caught? Some thought spirals begin in this way or something similar, in which our head lets us play a mean trick and all horror scenarios. Most of them start with the words “What if…” and rarely end with a positive, motivating impulse.
Incidentally, in psychology such trains of thought are called counterfactual thinking. Because they revolve around things that are not real at the moment – and only happen in our imagination. Incidentally, the whole thing also works backwards if we constantly ask ourselves what would have happened if situation XY had turned out differently.
Life is about change, everything is constantly changing and we only play a very small part in it. Our brains use what-if scenarios to try to prepare for all possible futures. It’s just that we won’t be able to protect ourselves from things by worrying about them beforehand – on the contrary, we deprive ourselves of moments of ease and spoil our happiness in the first place by fearing something that most likely won’t even happen .
Very few of the horror scenarios that we have imagined at night come true. And if we are confronted with upheavals and changes, we will face them the moment they appear – only then, not weeks, months and years before. What-if thoughts create us a life of fear. Instead, we can become a little more mindful and just stop thinking sentences that start with these two words in our head. Over time, we can train ourselves to get rid of these thoughts and thus contribute to being happier.
Sources used: Psychology Today, Lexicon of Psychology