Life is hard. There’s no getting around that for most of us. Even when things are amazing, there will always be times when they aren’t. The heaviness can weigh you down as you continue to walk forward through the loss and suffering that you will inevitably experience.
It’s painful, and the pain can harden the heart if we don’t stay aware of how our suffering affects us. However, it doesn’t need to be that way. We can learn to carry our pain, walking forward one step at a time, and still find reasons to smile, be happier, and friendlier. Addressing these negative behaviors can help you to do that.
1. Holding on to your grudges.
As a formerly angry person, I would hold onto grudges for far too long. Someone would wrong me, or I would see something wrong, and I would just find myself seething angrily about it for long stretches of time – months, years, even decades in one case. I was bullied in school when I was younger, not as severely as some, but still severe enough that I felt anger toward those people well into my 30s.
I can personally attest to what Psychology Today shares about grudges, that they only undermine your physical and mental health, among other things. Life didn’t exactly get easier after high school because I was living with an undiagnosed mental illness, and it poured gasoline onto the flames of all of the anger and frustration. It became a perpetuating loop of suffering I inflicted on myself, long after any of these people stopped thinking about me at all.
The anger burns like an inferno, and it consumes while it does. It consumes emotional energy, making it harder for us to carry the other wounds we’ll experience in life. In my case, it was lost jobs, relationships, opportunities, and a lot more. It made me perpetually unhappy, angry, and I wrongly took it out on the people around me.
There are a number of sources attributed to variations of this quote, but I find it to be quite true and an inspirational reason to let go of the anger. “Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” It doesn’t work that way. All you do is poison yourself.
2. Snapping because you’re stressed out or tired.
We expend a lot of emotional energy carrying the weight of the suffering we experience in life. That depletes our ability to shoulder minor annoyances and irritations, which often causes us to snap at others out of frustration. It’s not necessarily anger, even though it may come with a flash of anger. It’s your brain being stretched thin, and then reacting defensively when something doesn’t go as planned.
Minor problems are just that, and we experience so many minor problems in life that it’s just not worth getting worked up over every single little thing that threatens to disturb the peace. However, it’s not always that simple, particularly if you’re dealing with a lot of stress that never fully gives you a chance to recover.
Still, we need to stay aware of this behavior and avoid snapping at people because no one wants to be snapped at. It just makes others feel angry and resentful.
3. Assuming the worst in others’ intentions.
Cynicism is a poison that will erode your happiness and worldview. It’s hard to be positive when you look around at the world and see so many bad actors, hustlers, and people trying to take advantage of one another. As you get older and see more patterns, it’s not an unreasonable response to be skeptical of anything that appears too good to be true.
The more you experience, the more skeptical and cynical you may find yourself. However, you can’t allow cynicism to poison your happiness or appreciation for life around you. Not everyone is working an angle, trying to take advantage of you. Are some? Absolutely. People are not always the best; however, most people aren’t doing it on purpose or out of maliciousness.
Most people are just trying to get through their day, trying to navigate their own hopes and dreams while balancing the stress and suffering of life. If you go into every social situation assuming the worst, then you’re not going to have an opportunity to build happy, healthy social connections because you’re already on the defensive when they have no idea what’s going on.
4. Being too blunt in the name of honesty.
So many people want to avoid responsibility for their words by imposing the full responsibility of emotional control onto others. Too many people take “bluntly honest” to mean they have no responsibility in crafting the words that they will use to convey their thoughts. As we get older, some tend to lose their filter with the excuse of, “I just call it like I see it,” or “I’m just being honest.”
The reality is that this is a selfish act. It’s not to help the other person. If this action was actually to help the other person, then the speaker would want to give some thought to how that person would receive the message. People don’t listen when they’re angry, afraid, or defensive. They just dig in deeper to their position.
Many people will interpret blunt honesty as offensiveness for the sake of being offensive. They won’t want to listen because they had their feelings hurt. And why would you want to spend your time around someone who makes you feel bad? Right? A filter is good to have because it facilitates communication, whereas blunt honesty closes it off.
5. Withdrawing instead of discussing what’s wrong.
After a while, it can start to feel like talking about problems doesn’t make any difference. Like, how many times can I talk about this problem I’m having and not just be reinforcing my own negative emotions? Sometimes life just sucks, and that’s the way it is. People lose jobs, opportunities, people, relationships, their safety and security – all for what?
There’s no greater reason than that life is chaos, and suffering is just part of life. However, closing yourself off completely isn’t healthy or helpful. Sometimes, we need to get it out and talk about it; otherwise, we just lock it away and let it fester in the dark, getting worse and worse. Some things need to be aired out, particularly if you’re having a problem with another person.
Why waste the time being angry or sad with someone when a conversation may clear it up? Furthermore, an unwillingness to communicate makes it hard for you to build connections. To build a social connection, you need to have some degree of vulnerability; otherwise, there’s nothing to connect to.
6. Believing that you’ve earned the right to stop self-reflecting and growing.
The lovely thing about life is that it is an ongoing learning experience if you let it be. Yes, things will change, and not always for the better, but we have to learn and adapt to keep moving forward. If you don’t, you can find yourself disconnected from the people around you because you stop learning, and it closes off your mind.
People tend to fear that which they don’t understand, and if they can’t admit they don’t understand something through self-reflection, then how will they find understanding and peace with it? You have so many older people who think of younger generations as less intelligent, less motivated, less everything, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
You don’t want to get stuck in your ways. Old dogs can definitely learn new tricks, but only if they want to be taught and they’re willing to learn. Self-improvement and growth don’t stop just because we get older. In fact, it’s a life-long project.
Final thoughts…
As you can see, there are a lot of behaviors and reasons that we may get meaner with age. The good news is that we can prevent that decline by staying proactive. Even though things can be hard, there’s still so much more to life if you will give yourself the freedom to experience it.
Is it easy? Hell no. Not at all. But it is worth it, because no one wants to spend their time around someone who’s perpetually bitter, angry, and mean to the world. Ask any end-of-life care nurse or hospice worker.
