Putting your happiness before others is a huge step in being comfortable with yourself. I have struggled with this my entire life and still struggle with it. Sometimes it is conscious and most of the time, it is not. I often make decisions based on what others will think and how they react, and personally, I believe that it's a pretty terrible way to live.
Discovering your own happiness is easy. You can find things that make you very happy and you can know why they make you happy. On the other hand, it's hard to achieve and reach these things when you are constantly worried about others. So many people tell me to not care what others think. Other people tell me they look up to me so much for not caring what others think, but I have news for you: it's all a lie.
I do care what others think. I wonder what people think of me, if they like me, if they don't like me, why they have certain feelings toward me. I live in constant fear of disappointing everyone and making the wrong decisions to make them mad at me. I realize you can't make everyone happy at the same time, but in a certain moment, I want to make the most important ones happy.
Living like this in turn makes you not happy. Go figure. It eats at you because you try so hard to put your happiness aside to appeal to others that you start to become the most unhappy. Say you thought you made a poor choice in your life and aren't comfortable with the choice you made and want to fix it. Now everyone has finally come to terms with the choice you have made but you hate it and you're up all night thinking how you want to fix it but are worried about what people will think. You stay up worrying and worrying—until eventually you have an anxiety attack for the third time this week because you're so scared about what people will think. This is a constant battle between you and your emotions and as much as you try to make yourself happy, you can't because your main concern is what your family and friends think of you.
The feeling of not being in control of your own life is the worst feeling that actually dehumanizes you. You're not unhappy on purpose. You're not unhappy because you had a traumatic event in your life. You're not unhappy because you have been diagnosed with anxiety and depression. You're just unhappy because you don't know how to put yourself first. You're unhappy because you care way too much about how others will react. You're unhappy because you are confused about your life and made a rash decision. Finally, you are unhappy because instead of expressing your feelings and having a confrontation, you have to write an article and hope those you are trying to please won't read it. You also hope they might and get a small message.
I don't know if I'll ever truly be happy because I don't know if I'll ever stop putting other people's feelings before my own. Many people don't even know I'm unhappy, because all the time I act like I'm happy to please everyone. I want to say it gets better for those experiencing a similar thing, but the answer is, I actually don't know. I don't know if it will but I will try my hardest to make it better. And if I fail, I'll know I tried.
