Some single people may wonder: “How can I be happy if I’m not married?” The answer is actually quite simple.
Your thoughts create your feelings. So if you have thoughts that are creating a feeling of happiness for you, then you can definitely be happy even if you are not married or in a relationship. And if you have thoughts that are creating a lot of sadness for you, you might want to try and change those thoughts.
The key to feeling more happiness in your unmarried life is to first look at your current thoughts. Each evening, write your thoughts down for a few minutes and then look at what you have. What kind of feelings do your thoughts create for you? Write down the feeling that each different sentence or thought creates.
Next, plug these thoughts into the self coaching model and see what results you are creating for yourself!
Here is the self-coaching model. (If you haven’t seen this model before, check out my article “how to solve all problems.”)
C: Circumstances trigger…
T: Thoughts, which create our…
F: Feelings, which fuel our…
A: Actions, which create our…
R: Results.
Brooke Castillo, The life coach school
So write down all of your thoughts one evening and then start putting them in the self-coaching model.
Some examples
Here are a few examples of how I would plug my thoughts into the model.
C: I am sitting in my room alone on a Friday night.
T: I will never find someone awesome to marry.
F: (How do you feel when you think the above thought?) depressed
A: (What do you do when you are depressed?) mope around, think about how awful my life is, be jealous of everyone who is married, don’t try to find more people to date because I don’t believe it will ever lead to anything.
R: I don’t take much action to find someone awesome to marry….so I don’t find someone awesome to marry.
Now, I don’t like the result of that thought (I will never find someone awesome to marry). So what is another thought that I could start trying to think? Maybe I could think: “There are wonderful people out there for me to meet and marry.” Now that might be hard to believe for you. If it is hard, then start trying to believe it for 10 minutes a day.
Let’s put that happier thought in the model and see what results that would produce if you really believed it.
C: I am sitting in my room alone on a Friday night.
T: There are wonderful people out there for me to meet and marry.”
F: excited
A: (What type of action do you take when you are excited?) Maybe I would smile more during my day, keep trying to meet people online even though I have had some bad experiences in the past, ask other people for date referrals,
R: If you keep taking action, you will end up meeting people and finding someone to marry.
The point is, you need to think thoughts that will motivate you to keep trying. It doesn’t matter how long it takes you to get there. It only matters that you don’t give up. But I’m getting a little off track. This blog post was supposed to be about how you can be happy even when you aren’t married.
Feeling Happy even when you aren’t married
So if you want to feel happy even when you aren’t married, what thoughts do you need to think to produce that happy feeling? Maybe thoughts like this:
- “If I learn to be happy now in my current circumstance, I will be able to be happy in any circumstance.” (that is true of anything).
- “I really like who I am becoming right now.”
- “I really like my job.”
- “I am in the exact place I need to be.”
- “Everything will work out perfectly for me.”
- “I love this weather!” (or sunset, or food that you are currently eating. Any chance you have to really be grateful for what you have or are doing is going to produce happy feelings).
- “I really like me.”
All of these thoughts produce happy feelings for me. But you can brainstorm and discover which thoughts are best for you. Then practice thinking those good thoughts. And see how you feel.
Happiness First
And guess what? If you really think that being married is going to make you happy, you are DEAD wrong. Believe me. I know because I’ve been there. And I’m still kind of there with my own challenges in life. Sometimes my brain wants to tell me that if my autistic nonverbal son was talking, THEN I would be happy. But it’s a lie. I have to learn to be happy even when he is not talking. And you can learn to be happy even when you are not married.
Now I don’t actually think a person can be happy 100% of the time. Part of this life is feeling negative emotion and being sad. But this article is to help you realize that you can be a little happier some of the time if you are aware of your thoughts.
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