You are dissatisfied but cannot grasp, why? Maybe the problem lies in your habits.
Many of us have those days where we wonder what we got up for in the first place – after all, we don’t seem to have done anything productive with the day. Certainly: A day does not necessarily become successful because it was filled with productivity.
And yet we get an unpleasant feeling when we’re at work and after seven hours we don’t seem to have anything to show for it: the to-do list is still as long as it was before, we didn’t give the big heart project the time it needed deserved – and yet we sat in front of the computer all day and hurt our backs a bit further. For what actually?
If we then pick up our cell phones and see on social media how everyone around us seems incredibly happy, successful and good-looking, our mood and self-esteem go completely down the drain. So we come home, are grumpy towards our partner, go to bed brooding and already dread the next day, which will come much too quickly and in which the whole tragedy will start all over again.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. Many of us may well know such days, such feelings, combined with all the frustration. But few know what they do unconsciously to make themselves feel so miserable. We’ve collected a few habits that secretly make us unhappy.
The mobile phone, our constant, toxic companion
Most of us can still remember a time without smartphones, let alone cell phones. We all seemed to have no problem functioning. But that’s no longer the case these days: According to one study the smartphone has long since become the most important online tool for us. People under 40 spend an average of 31 hours online on their cell phones per week; in 2022 it was an average of 20 hours across all age groups. And what are we doing on the internet? In 2017, more than two-thirds of those surveyed use according to one Statista survey the mobile phone for social media (68 percent).
Several studies have already worked out that excessive use of social media has negative effects on our psyche. And beyond that, there are good reasons not to be distracted by your smartphone: It’s rude when interacting with our loved ones, and on top of that, it distracts us from other tasks, which makes us unhappy – After all, we hardly make any progress with the really important things if we spend most of our time looking up what’s going on with Heidi Klum.
We are not as dependent on the smartphone as we sometimes feel. If you feel the need to grab your smartphone, take a deep breath and resolve that if you still feel the need by then, you will check it in ten minutes.
Procrastination is not genetic
Author Nir Eyal writes in his article for “Psychology Today” that he has repeatedly heard from his fellow human beings that they are “hopeless procrastinators” – propensity to procrastinate is not a human trait from which there is no escaping, such as the occasional feeling of envy and jealousy. “It’s an emotion regulation problem,” Eyal explains. The project ahead of us triggers negative emotions such as insecurity, boredom or even fear. And to avoid these emotions, we avoid engaging further with the project.
And that ultimately only leads to us being dissatisfied and latently stressed, after all, such projects (like a presentation for work) are rarely something that we can just put aside. According to Eyal, however, we should rather ask ourselves: What exactly am I feeling right now? “Write down your emotions and deal with them,” advises the author. Because if you try not to mentally deal with the issues that bother you, you would only make sure that they were all the more present in our heads.
Neighbor’s cherries don’t necessarily taste better
Everyone knows this: We look left and right at our fellow human beings and compare ourselves to our friends and colleagues in the things that we ourselves consider desirable, such as a high job position or money. This phenomenon is not new and is known by the term “Social Comparisons” (translated: “social comparison”). What is meant is that we compare certain aspects of our own, such as our behavior, our opinions, our success or status, with those of others in order to better assess ourselves.
And to a certain extent, it is also important for human beings as social beings to compare themselves with others in order to be able to better assess their place in society. But as with so many things, there is also a “too much” when comparing with other people, namely when our self-esteem is only dependent on external (extrinsic) factors. In contrast, intrinsic motivation is the desire to do something for its own sake: the action is the reward. So instead of focusing on the success of others and their eventual recognition, you should devote yourself to yourself and find motivation in your own actions.
Sources used: psychologytoday.com, de.statista.com, postbank.de, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, positivepsychology.com, sciencedirect.com