I more or less agree with that statement. My motto about troubling issues from the past (or present) is "Fix it and move on. Unfixable? Accept it and move on."

People have criticized me for advising others to do this; they say it's just "bottling up your feelings". But this supposes that negative emotions are like hydraulic pressure - they have to go somewhere or else they'll damage all the innerworkings and then catastrophically burst out. I don't agree that this how emotions actually work. We often experience an emotion - nobody can help that - but then add to it with thoughts of exaggeration, conspiracy, and doubling down on the negativity.

Example: I used to struggle with feelings of worthlessness, failure, and lack of purpose in life. My negative moods might develop something like this:
1. (Something undesirable happens at work)
2. "Man, I really hate this job. I wish I could find a better one."
3. "But I can't and never will. It's too late for me."
4. "I'm going to die without ever achieving anything or really enjoying life."
5. "I'm going to spend my entire life overworked and broke, and no woman will ever go for a man like that."
6. "Since there's no prospect of any enjoyment or meaning in this kind of life, why go on?"
7. "Suicide would be like going to sleep forever. No more pain; no more facing my shortcomings. Just eternal rest."

I read a ton of books on self-improvement and positive psychology over the years, but perhaps the biggest takeaway for me was that you need to watch out for this "catastrophizing" and cut it off before it puts you in a seriously dark place. There's always going to be some twinge of negative emotion when bad things happen to us, but it frequently goes away very quickly if you can avoid exaggerating and building on it. My life improved a great deal when I put this into practice. I can say it's been six years - probably more - since I contemplated suicide.

There are two ways of looking at happiness:
A) Happiness is something that others must deliver to you. People have to always behave how you think they should and give you everything you believe you're entitled to from them. If they fall short on those obligations, they're guilty of MAKING you unhappy. They're destroying any chance of you being happy by their actions.
B) Happiness is largely the result of a mindset. You won't be up and over the moon every single day. But you can enjoy the good things in your life without being crippled by fear of losing them. And you can't stop bad things from ever happening to you, but you can come to terms with these things and accept that they are part of reality.

As long as someone subscribes to mindset A, their happiness will be rare and fleeting. That's just how it is. I know this isn't what people *want* to hear, but just as with physical ailments, we often have to hear and accept things that we don't necessarily like. It's a bitter pill that will make you much better off in the long run if you can swallow it.

I realize this turned into a pretty big post and may have veered a bit off topic, but I've been wanting to share this with people and see what others think. I hope it can help others the way it helped me.