Faking happiness

I’m starting to struggle for topics, but a random blog generator churned this topic out after about 26 clicks which I found interesting, so here goes!

Faking happiness. Is that a bad thing?

Not if you're these guys!

Seriously though, no I don’t really think it is always a bad thing. If you feel really low, and you have nothing to be happy about, faking happiness, whilst being insincere in the short term isn’t really a bad thing. If its all you have in the world that makes you feel human, then of course it isn’t a bad thing. Some people say that on the road out of clinical depression faking happiness is the first step. Faking it is better than being depressed.

Faking happiness shouldn’t be a failsafe mask for stuff going on underneath. 

I challenge you to find one person who is truly and utterly happy. Its ok if you aren't! We all have doubts, insecurities and fears that creep in occasionally to question our happiness. My opinion is that the way you address these things influences what makes us happy. Ignoring your feelings will never resolve them, it just makes them all the more deep seated.

Apologies for the crude example, but it’s just like faking an orgasm really – they think they’ve done a great job and it gets ‘it’ over with if that’s what you want, but later on you’ll have to have the awkward conversation where next time you have to tell them what to do. You still have to deal with it.

It’s the same with deadlines. Not looking at your calendar won’t make it go away.

Sometimes, by letting something out of your system by addressing it can help you to stop faking your happiness and moving on to actual happiness. You have to question why you want to hide this stuff away, why you want to fake happiness. Is it for you or is it because you don’t want others to think of you as vulnerable? For a lot of people the second answer is true.

Whatever the reasons are for faking happiness in the first place, it is rarely fulfilling and I only ever see it as a short term fix before you feel strong enough to deal with why you started pretending to feel ok.

On a lighter note, I fed some ducks and ate some ice cream today, and I have an actual tan for the first time ever!!! Does anyone know why all drawings and pictures of ducks are yellow? Have you ever seen a real life yellow duck? What is that about?