The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. — Eckhart Tolle

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.

Author: Eckhart Tolle

Insight: We tend to believe our circumstances are the problem. A job we hate, a relationship that's strained, money worries—these feel like the root cause of our unhappiness. But notice what actually happens when something difficult occurs: you suffer twice. First there's the thing itself, and then there's the running commentary in your head about how bad it is, how unfair, how it shouldn't be this way. That internal narrative often causes more pain than the situation warranted. This doesn't mean pretending your problems don't matter or that positive thinking fixes everything. It means recognizing the surprising amount of power you actually have. You can't always control what happens to you, but you can notice the thoughts that arise about it—and that noticing itself creates a tiny bit of space. In that space, you get to choose whether to believe the story your mind is telling or consider a different angle. Someone else in your exact situation might feel frustrated while you spiral into despair, not because their circumstances are better, but because they're thinking about it differently. The real shift comes when you stop fighting reality and start questioning the narrative. That's where actual freedom lives.

Source: A New Earth, p. 29, 2005