What causes sadness?

A new study was made to find out which emotion would last more than others. As the title implies it was found that sadness was the emotion that lasts longer than all other emotions. Emotions such as shame and fear were among the ones that lasted for very short periods of time compared to others.

Now how can you make use of such a study and what are the actions you can do to prevent sadness from hunting you for long periods of time?

Before i answer those questions i first need to tell you why do you sometimes experience sadness. Sadness is an emotion that precedes depression, it happens when a problem occurs in one of the life areas that matters a lot to you. The more you are concerned about that life area the stronger sadness will be. (see also Where do emotions come from)

If sadness prolonged for a long period of time then there is a high possibility that it might turn into depression. Now in order to prevent that you need to understand the reasons that make sadness last for long periods of time.

3 Reasons why sadness lasts longer than other emotions

1) Because you do nothing about it: Ever asked yourself why do sadness last much longer than fear? Simply because when you feel afraid you move to a safer place immediately. When was the last time you experienced intense fear? Do you remember what you did? you quickly took action and moved to another place. Now what do you do when you feel sad? if you are like most people then most probably you try to forget about sadness instead of taking an action to fix it. Imagine you decided to distract yourself once you felt afraid, Will that work? certainly no and the same goes for sadness
2) Because you are vulnerable: Lets suppose a woman wanted to lose weight but was doing nothing to achieve that goal. Now if anybody made a remark about her weight then there is a great possibility that she will feel sad. Now most probably this sadness won't go away any soon because the problem is still the same. When you ignore your important goals you make yourself much more vulnerable to sadness.
3) Because you don't know how to stay happy for long periods of time: Do you have any idea why happiness fades away quickly? In my book, The ultimate guide to getting over depression i said that happiness fades away when we get reminded of an important life problem that has no current solution. Now if you want happiness to last for prolonged periods of time (my high score is 5 years of intense continues happiness) then you need to solve all of your life problems at once or at least work on a plan to end them. Only then nothing will be able to spoil your happiness (see also How to be the happiest person on the planet)

How to be happy

If you read the previous points carefully then most probably you reached the conclusion that there are only two ways to deal with sadness. The first is to ignore it, distract yourself, escape from it, try to keep yourself busy or develop some kind of a bad habit to forget about it. And of course the first method never solves the problem that caused the sadness and thus sadness remains for long periods of time. (see also The ultimate solution to all life problems)

The second approach is to move, do something, become aware of the problem, try to find a solution, seek knowledge, talk to experts, try new creative methods and do whatever it takes to change it. And as you may have already guessed ending the root cause of sadness won't just end sadness but it will make you much less vulnerable to that unpleasant emotion.

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