I am sure that you have a desire to be happy. After all, that is probably why you are visiting this website with the name “Happy Thinking”! Unfortunately, as you know, the world you and I live in is full of stress and problems, which at times can make it challenging to find happiness.
However, while you may not be able to always control the things happening around you, one thing you can control is how your mind “thinks”. The “way you think” can determine if the problems you face make you remain happy or become unhappy. The ultimate goal of happy thinking is to help you to think in ways that allow you to be happy despite the problems around you.
To better understand how “the way one thinks” can affect one’s happiness, imagine that two people, holding very good jobs, have been suddenly told that their company no longer needs them and that they will have to leave immediately. Both these people are now in an unfortunate situation where they will lose their generous salaries and perks.
However, when facing this stressful situation, let’s imagine that the two people think differently to each other.
One of them might think, “Well that was a great job, but that is no more. No point thinking of what I have lost, instead, I need to start job hunting as soon as possible so I can pay my household bills.”
On the other hand, the other person might think, “How terrible! Bad things only happen to me. I will never get another job. There is no point trying as the world is useless.”
In this example, you can see that both people had to face the same problem, but each had a markedly different way of “thinking” when dealing with the problem.
The first person had ways of thinking that were positive as they did not make the person’s sadness worse. Rather, this person’s helpful ways of thinking kept his or her mind in a state where it could effectively think about potential solutions. This person’s positive outlook will help the person to move on and ultimately find a replacement job. This type of thinking helps the person be as happy as possible given the circumstances, and is what I would call, “helpful thinking”.
On the other hand, the second person’s thinking was unhelpful as it made a bad situation worse. This person may well spiral into depression, which itself may make finding another job difficult. This type of thinking just made the person feel worse and less able to solve his problems, and is what I call, ”unhelpful thinking”.
Despite facing the same stress, one person’s way of thinking made him or her remain happy while the other person’s way of thinking made that person unhappy. Two different outcomes, just by thinking differently.
Over your life, you may have developed unhelpful ways of thinking that can unnecessarily cause you to have an unhappy mental state. Such “unhelpful thinking” can create problems when none exists or if there are real problems, may make them negatively affect you more than they should (like in the example we just described). You may have developed the habit of thinking in such unhelpful ways so gradually that you may not even realise that you are thinking in such ways. Happy thinking is about changing unhelpful thinking, and the first step is to be able to recognise when such thinking occurs in yourself. If you are not able to recognise unhelpful thinking, how can you change it? Therefore, to help you to recognise when unhelpful thinking happens to you, in this website I will describe, in an easy-to-understand way, common types of unhelpful thinking that people do.
Of course, once you recognise unhelpful thinking, you will want to change such thinking. To help you with this, I will describe various methods that you can use to change unhelpful thinking. These methods are very practical and you will be able to use them in your daily life.
In addition to helping you to recognise and change unhelpful thinking, I will also share with you bits of wisdom about happiness that I have collected from various places. Wisdom can help one to see the world with a different and happier viewpoint. All these ingredients together make Happy Thinking, which will help you to achieve happiness.
On the next pages (i.e. first part of this website), I will explain to you in an easy-to-understand way, common types of unhelpful thinking that people do. As you learn about the common types of unhelpful thinking, see which ones apply to you and feel free to skim over the ones that seem to be not relevant to you.
Please note that in the first section of this website, I will not mention any of the methods that you can use to deal with unhelpful thinking. Those I will share with you after you understand the various types of unhelpful thinking.
Finally do not try to understand and remember every type of unhelpful thinking in one go. A lot of people think that by speed reading and clicking through pages, they would miraculously end up becoming happier. Unfortunately, by going too fast, the information will just bounce off one’s mind, rather than interacting with it.
Like lots of things, you need to go slow so that you can appreciate and digest knowledge. This website will always be there for you, so take as long as you like to read it. You are always welcome to keep visiting here.
Let’s move on to understand common types of unhelpful thinking. Let’s see how many will be relevant to you! In my case, I could recognise many of them in my own mind.