Finding what makes you unhapy

I've never written too much about what makes me unhappy. It's only because such things seemed fairly obvious to me. Things that make me unhappy are probably things that make us all unhappy. For example, here's a short list of things that make me unhappy (in no particular order):

• Injustice
• When things don't "go" my way 
• When people are upset with me
• When there's no more coffee in my cup

And this is all fairly straightforward. 

Rather, most people spend their time trying to find what "truly makes them happy".  So we try a lot of different things to see what makes us happy. And by extension, most people spend their time trying to find someone "who makes them happy" -- this almost sounds selfish to write but it's true. 

And that's all good and all. 

But an interesting thing I've recently discovered about myself is that the things that make me happy don't make me feel as happy as I thought they would. Or maybe those things truly make me happy but happiness is naturally transient, yet if this is truly the case, then the rest of the blog doesn't make sense... so let's say this isn't the case.  Still, in the midst of all this trouble trying to find out what/whom makes me happy, I forgot to spend time and effort on trying to mend the things in my life that make me unhappy. 

And the kicker is: I realize now that a lot of things about myself make me unhappy. These are truths about myself that have been built and layered upon the large -- and small -- mistakes that I've let fester and run amok in my life.  These are things that were fairly benign at first, but left alone for a while... they grew.

So I started to ask myself very existential questions like "why can't I be happy?" and "why do I do things that make things worse?"  And I've come up with two not-mutually-exclusive possibilities:

1. I try so hard to be happy that I've neglected the parts of myself that make me unhappy.

2. I try so hard to be happy in order to avoid the aspects of myself that make me unhappy. 

Both possibilities are probably true (and probably the same or correlated). But the more I reflect the more I realize this truly terrifying thing:  the crappy parts of me really do control my life and behavior far more than I imagined. And it's a real mind-bender. 

*****

It's hard to accurately describe the aspects of myself that make me unhappy -- besides the fact that they are really personal. If I had to typify these aspects, they're clearly things to do with self-doubt about oneself that seem immutable.  Perhaps they really are objectively immutable or unlikely to change. And the fact that I can't control these aspects really frustrate me... to the point where I sputter that sad surrender: "what's the point? what's the use?"

Maybe I can't change these things. But being aware of them and how great their impact is on my mental/emotional game (they have tremendous impact) can help me move on... can give me a better chance for change or successful coping methods. Maybe all along all I needed was just to be able to pin-point the true source of my inability for lasting happiness: the unhappiness at my core.