Dear N:

I want to explain better what I meant  in my post  to you, the one before last, where I wrote: “you wrote that you know that your friends are happy because during a summer vacation, they were ‘gushing ab out boyfriends…”- the  happiness you witnessed was their talking about relationships that  in  practice may be full of  trouble”-

it’s the telling itself that makes them happy. It  is something  like this: a group of people  are  on a long hike across a long desert.  Very difficult, hot, uncomfortable and they are miserable. Later on, when comfortable in a group gathering at home,  they talk about that hike in glowing terms, happily.

It is not at all that they were happy during the hike, that they were focusing on the happy parts of the hike. Their happiness is about talking about something that happened and they are glad it is in the past and that they are comfortable  now.  Your friends may have happy experiences  in relationships and their jobs,  but the talking about these  things happily is not an indication of happy relationships and jobs.

Let’s look at  what  you are unhappy about:

1. “not being able to get hired in my field”

2.  “not  being able to move out of my parents house”

3. “being single and hardly being able to date”

4. “my job now and how it’s  not what I want to be doing”

5. “not having privacy for  staying in my family living room”

My suggestion:

-if associating with your friends make you feel  worse about your life, don’t associate with them, not for as long as the association makes you feel worse.

-regarding “the amount  of people who preach always being positive”- stay away from Positivity Preachers. What if we don’t  think of Positive vs Negative at all?

-Look at 1-5, make a plan. Don’t compare yourself to others, some are doing better, some are doing worse, some  are dead. This is your life, accept it as is, and then make it  better according to a plan.  Make the plan small to start with, develop it as you go along, make changes in it, be patient.

anita