Choosing Happiness

A recent top tip was to embrace the line “It’s my responsibility, what am I going to do about it?”

Or perhaps you were more taken by the more direct “Who’s responsible? You f*@king are!” version on offer.

Either way we looked at how you can use this guiding principle to reduce stressful situations and take ownership of outcomes.

It is also a great tool to improve your happiness. 

Take an inventory of things that cause you unhappiness and then focus on what you can do about it. An easy way to increase your overall happiness is very simply to get rid of the things that make you unhappy.

Some stuff will be out of your control but other things you’ll have complete control over. Others you’ll have at least some influence over.

Now, for each of these items that cause you unhappiness, ask yourself the question:

“It’s my responsibility, what am I going to do about it?”

Count ‘Em One Hand

This could mean getting rid of (so-called) friends. There are probably people in your life who annoy you or depress you or who always let you down. We call these people drains.

Maybe you feel sorry for them or you keep giving them one more chance, but hang on a minute, it's your life and they are bringing you down. It might be better for you - and them - to just quietly drop them. 

You don’t need to make an announcement, just drift apart. This happens naturally enough in life so let it happen here. Don't invite them, be too busy to see them.

Favourite Waste Of Time

This could also mean situations, teams, or clubs that you don't want to be in any more. 

Maybe you've grown out of them or got bored with them, or the people have changed, and you are finding them a bit of a chore. 

Maybe you once agreed to help run them but now you wish you hadn't. Well, maybe it's time to give notice and ask them to find someone else. 

But what if they can't find anyone else? Don’t be daft. Firstly, this is not your responsibility. This is the opposite to our mantra isn’t it? 

They'll just have to take responsibility for themselves and find someone. Of course, they will by the way. Just watch.  

You don't need to feel guilty, you've already done your bit and helped, and anyway, even if you haven’t it’s your life. 

Maybe it is a bit selfish of you to leave, but then maybe they are selfish putting pressure on you to stay and help them run it?

Keep The Customer Satisfied

At work this "getting rid of the bad" could mean suppliers or customers. There must be a better supplier somewhere, and you could begin the search today. 

And customers or clients, well, that's a whole big subject, but you can probably at least consider firing the occasional customer - if they make you unhappy for whatever reason. 

Maybe they are a bully, or annoying, unreliable, fussy, keep changing their mind, whatever. If you look at the detail, when you factor in the time required to deal with them, you might not even make any profit from their custom. 

So what to do? You could consider putting the price right up to the point where they either leave or are worth having. Would that take away the unhappiness? The maxim is about being solution focused remember.

Men At Work

You can't get rid of colleagues at work who make you unhappy, though you could perhaps avoid them, or move office maybe!

As a last resort you could consider being assertive with them and tell them what it is that they are doing which makes you unhappy. 

This is a whole subject on it’s own to be fair. Perhaps it might be useful to take some training on Assertiveness, Saying No or Dealing With Difficult People. If only there were people who delivered fun and entertaining training sessions on stuff like this. Hmmm.

So this weekend enjoy thinking about what makes you unhappy, and if you could take responsibility to reduce it or get it right out of your life completely.