It's valuable to periodically step back and decide how well you and your life are doing.

Common sources of unhappiness are unresolved problems, self criticism, loneliness, and lack of purpose.

The key is action: putting problems to rest, reaching out to others, focusing on doing rather than outcome.

Everyone has good and bad days. But if you step back and push aside those fantasies of being a billionaire or the most attractive person on the planet, and if you’re fortunate enough not to have to struggle with poverty, violence, or trauma, are you happy just being you on an average day? If not, what’s missing? What do you need to improve your self-esteem and outlook on life?

Like happiness, unhappiness is a byproduct of something else. Here are four common sources and their antidotes:

Many of my clients come to see me not because they are clinically depressed, but because their lives are cluttered with unresolved problems—a loss they never fully grieved, a divorce or estranged relationship that still gnaws at them, an ever-present worry about their health that they try to ignore, or even a leaky faucet they never had fixed.........

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