A friend of mine recently posted a video on Facebook about being unhappy and how to overcome the feeling. Firstly I have to commend her effort and courage to come out in the public and to share her thoughts, though she never did lack the courage. 

To shed some background (with generous amounts of paraphrasing), she talks about being being unhappy or emotionally unwell, and how such a feeling is normal that we all have undergone this feeling at some point in our lives. She further says, that things are NOT going to be Okay and reasons that whatever you think will make you happy will only make you happy momentarily until you need something more/different. Her solution to being happy is to set aside yourself an hour a day as “me-time” and pretend to be “happy and you do not have any problems and indulge in an activity of your choice”. 

The advice at its core is quite good and the intentions are nothing but genuine. The core idea of pretending is a sound psychological tool which has been proven plenty of times, lots of self improvement ideologies do encourage the “Fake it, till you make it” approach. However, there are a few things I would have to disagree upon, here are my 5p worth of thoughts. 

Ignoring the problems is not a solution and taking a stance of all the problems that exist external to you is not very responsible. For facing problems could be traumatizing, one should also be accepting of the consequences for their actions. But to build on the hour-a-day habit, taking this time to self evaluate the causes of the problems. Using the time to forgive and be compassionate to yourself. Sometimes we are so engrossed in success that we fail to see the scope of the challenges we have undertaken. And in other times. there is nothing you can do but to plough through, and come out a better person on the other side. 

It is going to be Okay!