How to find happiness in the pursuit of the real self?

Are you struggling to find happiness within yourself because you are so focused on what other people think about you, that you cannot live your real self? You may be living  according to everyone’s approval and living everyone’s life but your own, when you do not know yourself.   Are feeling unhappy that your life is going no where? You could be lacking self direction, self-satisfaction and motivation to follow the things that you really want in life, when you are not in touch with your true self. Find out how to find happiness in the pursuit of the real self.

Signs you cannot find happiness within yourself.

• Do you offer to help loved ones and then never have time to do the things that you want to do? Do you feel guilty if you haven’t seen your friend?
• Do you find it hard to say no, so you end up doing things that you’d rather not do? Do you feel you’re always compromising yourself to make others happy?
• Do you find it difficult to express yourself?
• Do you struggle to assert yourself in relationships and allow yourself to become passive, helpless, taken advantage of or abused?
• Do you accommodate the needs of others, so much so that you lose yourself in relationships? Do you end up feeling unhappy when your needs do not get met?
• Are you slowly fading away in the background, while you let others take over your life for you?

Are you struggling to find a way to be happy and live the life you want because you make others the priority,  allowing yourself to come last. So, you will notice that you do not think about yourself  or do the things that are worthwhile for you. Therefore, you sacrifice yourself for the sake of making others happy. This can mean you stop activating your ‘self’ in life or stop living your actual life.

In order to discover happiness within yourself it is important to get in touch with your real self. James Masterson describes those who heavily invest in others as having a false self, whereby the person adapts their behaviour to meet the needs of others, therefore giving up the real self that invests in themselves. Whenever we overly focus on others, and not yourself, you lose your capacity to function fully for yourself”, causing all kinds of problems in life, including depression, anxiety, relationship issues and so forth.

The false self appeases others based on the need to avoid feelings of inadequacy, fears of failure or feeling not good enough, which the person has internalised from their childhood. So, the real self hides behind the defensive false self in order to mask how they feel deep down. It is only by unmasking the real self that the person can chase the pursuit of happiness within themselves. This requires the individual to work on the negative self representations and modify these negative views that they have deep down, in order to unleash the real self and find happiness within themselves.

Do you find you struggle to be happy within yourself and live a purposeful life?

You might think that it is unfair that you do everything to please your wife and she complains that you do not take responsibility for yourself. You try to make her happy by doing what she wants and she tells you what to do.

Does it feels she constantly nags you, because you’ve given up yourself in order to please her, rather than function for yourself and take responsibility for yourself?

Reason why you cannot find happiness in your life

• Have you stopped living your own life because you’re so focused on making others happy, that you’re not living according to your real self?
• Do you passively comply to the needs of others, so much so, that you’re living everyone else’s life and not your own.
• You forget how to do things for yourself. You feel you’re a passenger in your life, with no self direction, letting others guide you, because you’ve stopped taking control of your ‘self’.

Searching for happiness stems from finding yourself and discovering your own needs in order to find self-fulfilment within yourself.

You If you recognize that you have stopped focusing on yourself, then perhaps you do not care about yourself, but prefer to please others and get your happiness from them. This pattern is problematic because it means you’re giving up on yourself in the hope that others can make you feel good about yourself. It usually means that you do not value yourself or feel unworthy deep down inside.

No one can change how you feel about yourself and focusing on making them happy just distracts you from focusing on yourself.

The more you negate yourself, the more unhappy you become when you end up living the lives of others and not your own. There’s nothing more unsatisfying than when you’ve given up on yourself, avoiding expressing yourself and investing in what makes you happy.

When you feel good about yourself, you can ask for what you need. However, when you do not feel good enough about yourself, you feel that you do not deserve things in life or refuse to put yourself out there because you feel unworthy of doing so.

You might give up on your health or avoid a job that you want. Instead, you may focus on pleasing your partner so you feel like you’re enough for them. Making others happy, at the expense of yourself, does not guarantee that they will make you happy. It is risky to put your happiness in the hands of others in order to make you feel better about yourself.

You may even escape these anxious feelings of not being enough by drinking or procrastinating. You may even ignore your wife when it feels that she nags you about not taking the initiative to do things for yourself. Perhaps you escape from feeling not good enough for your wife by ignoring her. But, the truth is, you’re running away from yourself, to avoid the dreaded feeling of not being good enough within yourself.  Yet, these feelings get projected onto others, so that you feel your wife is angry at you for not doing enough or telling you off.

The more you externalise your feelings onto others, you think others are judging you or belittling you, when in fact you belittle yourself. When you project your feelings onto others and think that others are judging you, you avoid doing the things in our life to avoid feeling judged. But you are only really escaping the internal judge within yourself that berates your ‘self’ for not being enough. So, you give up on doing things for your ‘self’ to avoid the inner critic within your self.

To avoid feeling not good about yourself, you think that your wife does not think you are good enough, by projecting your feelings onto her. The truth is, your wife is not really putting you down or berating you, she is pointing out the very thing that you disown about yourself, how you deny yourself by giving up on yourself  by not doing things for yourself or activating yourself, because you feel unworthy about yourself.

If you do not acknowledge your own self-critic within yourself and deny it, you will continue to think that others are judging you, by continuing to hold yourself back from embracing your actual self.

Whenever you place your focus on others, you lose sight of yourself and your focus becomes about seeking their approval, by trying to feel good enough for them. Your capacity to meet your own needs becomes diminished. The more you accommodate the needs of others and not your own, the more you sabotage your actual self.

Relationships fall apart when you search for happiness in others, instead of finding happiness within yourself.

It may be that you’ve become trapped in a pattern of pleasing others and negating yourself. You may not be aware of it, but perhaps you did not feel good enough or felt berated, unless you pleased your caregivers. Perhaps you acted out to get attention, to get your needs met from others.

If you learned to emotionally accommodate the emotional needs of a caregiver, then it is likely that you may replay this pattern of giving up yourself to accommodate the needs of others, in order to win their love or approval. This pattern keeps you stuck from activating your actual self.

So, when you’re focusing on saying and doing what others want, you are not being true to yourself and end up feeling unfulfilled when your own needs do not get met.

You may even start to blame your partner for your unhappiness and resent them, because the relationship becomes all about meeting their needs, not yours. You may not be aware of it, but deep down you may be feeling that your needs do not matter, you’re not important or you’re in the way.

You may not acknowledge these underlying negative feelings that you have about yourself that stem from your past. Instead, you may think that your partner is selfish, demanding or controlling, when you’ve let them get their way, out of your own pattern of pleasing them to obtain their approval and giving up yourself. Perhaps, you have let the relationship become about all about them, not about you.

The more you externalise your problems, the more you cannot find happiness within yourself. If you locate your happiness as coming from outside of yourself then you will most likely not find happiness, instead of searching for happiness within yourself.

If you do not take ownership for what happens to you and blame others, then you are not taking responsibility for yourself and remain passive to assert yourself in life.

How to find self-fulfilment and happiness within yourself?

Many escape these negative feelings within themselves, by focusing on others in order to feel good about themselves, further becoming discontent and unhappy.

When you look to others to be feel good enough, you do not develop the capacity within yourself to fully flourish, and it distracts you further away from exploring your real self.

Many feel lost or empty when they first approach themselves and not rely on others, until they overcome the negative false self‘ that appeases others in order to feel good enough. By overcoming the false self  with pleasing behaviour, the real self can fulling emerge

You may not even know what your needs are, because you’ve given up yourself for so long. You may not know how to express yourself because you’ve never done it before.

You may want to meet the needs of others so that you can feel good enough to others, because you do not feel good enough. You may rely on other people telling you what to do because you do not trust yourself to know what you want.

If you cannot locate your real self, then you will feel unhappy in all aspects of life, because you’re passively letting life go on by not being in control of yourself. You can only develop confidence in yourself when you do things that enhance your actual self and follow pursuits of the real self, so you can fully flourish in all aspects of life, including work, relationships and study.

Learn to embrace happiness and discover your true self

Counselling will help you to understand your real self, so that you can explore how you may be trapped in unwanted patterns that keep you stuck. When you undo unhealthy patterns and unwanted coping mechanisms, then you can be free to be yourself and allow yourself to flourish in work, relationships and all aspects of life. Find out how to pursue happiness by unleashing your real self.

Nancy Carbone offers Counselling Melbourne services with counselling for relationships to overcome stuck patterns to get more in touch with their real self, we also offer couple therapy Melbourne and depression counselling to assist individuals feel more content within themselves and find happiness in the pursuit of the real self.

All content is copyright Nancy Carbone 2018

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