By using this one little word often

we massively ruin our own happiness

Actually, we are all crazy. Yes sorry, I can't wrap it up any nicer.

Because do you know why? We always make life so damn difficult for ourselves. While we all have so much to be happy about. Do you ever stop to think about the fact that we live in a safe country, we have the freedom to do what we want every day, and that we (usually) have a watertight roof over our heads? And that there is central heating with minus 18 outside? And that we have supermarkets full of nice food that we can get whenever we crave tomatoes or wasabi peas? Exactly. A trip to South Africa made me appreciate all of this more. We should be grateful in our Dutch hands.

But still... I can still be upset when I have a pimple. Or that I've gained that kilo in love handles again while I'm dutifully eating crackers and drinking vegetable juice - which I don't even like. And yes, sometimes I still have stress about tiny little things. Just like everyone else. And now scientists know why: we massively ruin our own happiness. We spoil our happy feeling. Our happy moment. And yes, that's why we are all crazy. Because no matter how good we have it, we can always make it more negative than it is. If it were a sport, yes, then we Dutch would win.

Because what is the case? By using one word all day long, we make ourselves unhappier. Of course, sometimes you can't avoid the word, but if you have the chance... Pay attention. Check this sentence: “I am super happy with who I am and with what I do every day after the alarm goes off, but sometimes I do worry about how it all should go on and I become insecure when I think about my future.” Do you see it? The word ‘but‘. That is the ultimate culprit. Spoken language is permeated with it. Because we say this so often, we don't even notice it anymore. We easily negate every compliment and turn every fairy tale moment into an average incident. If someone says you have a nice skirt on. ’Oh, thank you, but that wasn't expensive at all!“. Or eh: ”That new job being offered to me sounds great, but I doubt whether I can do it.“ ”I exercised today but I had to, because I didn't go last week.“ ”I am so happy with my best friend but I haven't seen her in weeks.“ Does that sound familiar to you? It does to me. Unconsciously we say it all the time.

Now that you know, you can of course pay better attention to it. Give yourself a compliment, let that worrying go and be happy. Just super simple happy. No but this and but that. Difficult, but definitely worth it. Okay, that was my last time. Pinky promise. Let’s go.

FACTS

• There are about 24 million people who speak and write Dutch. It is therefore one of the 40 most spoken languages in the world
• There are infinitely many words in our language, because we can create compounds of all sorts of things for eternity. Elderflower berry syrup cocktail, something like that. It is estimated that we know 3 to 5 million different real words in Dutch.
• The dictionary of the Dutch language consists of 45,805 filled pages