How to be Happy

What does happiness mean to you? How to be happy, authentic happiness is a subjective evaluation – what makes me happy may not be what makes you happy. And what does being happy mean to you?

Some people define happiness as an excitement, something arousing; other people describe it as contentment, a gentle satisfaction with life and their place in it. It is often younger people who equate happiness with excitement and as we progress through life, a sense of peaceful contentment becomes a more fitting description of what a happy life means to us. Being happy is perhaps the most universal human yearning, but this simple goal often alludes us.

Happiness is a choice

First and foremost, happiness is a choice. Before I expand on this, I’m not saying that we can whitewash over our heartaches, losses and problems in life. But we do have a choice as to how we let the problems affect us long term.

In the case of the death of a loved one, happiness is going to be far from our mind. Grief can be gut-wrenchingly painful and is experienced in different ways by different people. Grief generally follows a course of several stages and it’s important that those stages are allowed to pass fully and as deeply as necessary for that individual to eventually rejoin the normal pace of life.

However, at some point, we arrive at a moment when we can choose to smile or laugh at someone or something, maybe ourselves, and it’s then that we have the decision to opt for happiness and the light in our lives begins to shine a little brighter as we learn to walk with the shadow of those we have loved and lost right beside us.

Pain is a drain

Some people live in constant pain. I know how debilitating it can be. It can be very difficult to dig deep and cultivate that often elusive happiness. Even if it’s smiling at someone to have that smile returned, taking pleasure in watching your children or grandchildren play, enjoying listening to someone have an excited conversation, watching the birds in the trees, feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin, there is still a choice to be made, and by making the choice to be happy, you will find that your mental state will be improved which will help you to cope more functionally with the physical pain.

If pain is a constant, bone related, companion, you might be interested to try hypnotherapy specifically designed to help manage pain associated with bone conditions such as cancer, ankylosing spondylitis, arthritis, rheumatism, osteoporosis. When I volunteered in hospice, several of my clients used the Pain Management for Bones hypnosis download to successfully achieve relief from pain.

Cultivating Happiness

Happiness doesn’t just happen. You have to cultivate an attitude to want to live a happy life. Some of the happiest people I know have been through unspeakable horrors and difficulties in their lives, yet they have made the choice to not let those bad experiences shape who they are. Whatever happened in the past, stays in the past.

They know they have the same opportunity as everyone else to live a life bursting with happiness on as many occasions as possible. And when the proverbial hits the fan, they deal with it, then move on. They don’t let their pasts rob them of experiencing authentic happiness.

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So how do we live a happy life?

Foster an attitude of gratitude

Happy people are grateful people. They have a knack of appreciating what they have and making the best of it, rather than pining for what they don’t have. Research has proven that no matter how excited we might be to buy a new car or the latest gadget, the thrill soon wears off and we are back to where we started out.

Gratitude involves using the resources that you have and being grateful for the simple things in life. The happy people tend to regard the luxuries as just that, occasional treats that enhance their lives, but which aren’t necessary in order to live a contented life. When you start looking outside of yourself for “things” to make you happy, you push true happiness out of reach. Authentic happiness comes from within.

Start the day with happy intentions

Begin your day with the intention to be happy and to make the best of what comes your way. As my Grandfather used to say: “I woke up alive, so it’s all good”. So go and live your best possible day.

Establish a morning routine

Nearly every successful person I know does this, so give it a go – it works! Begin your day with a set routine and let that routine become a habit. Even if you have to wake an hour earlier to get it done, it will have such a positive impact on the rest of your day (and life), that any sleep you lose will be made up for with a positive outlook and calm brain.

If you want to learn more about effective habit creation, I recommend you read some of Steve Scott’s books. He has become a habit guru and having read several of his books, I am confident to recommend him to you. You can find him here: http://www.developgoodhabits.com/

Flush the toxins!

When you wake up, drink a large glass of warm water, ideally with the juice of half a lemon squeezed into it. Can you imagine staying awake for 7 or 8 hours and not drinking anything? Well that’s what your body does overnight every night. The brain is made up of 75% water. If you are dehydrated, so is your brain. And a thirsty brain will not function as efficiently as a brain which is well watered.

Even if you don’t feel thirsty in the morning, the chances are your body is dehydrated, particularly if you get hot in bed. Water helps to flush out the toxins within your system that have accumulated overnight helping to create a healthy environment. The lemon juice adds a boost of vitamin C and a variety of minerals that boost your immune system, detox your liver, aid digestion and even help you to lose weight.

A link to a helpful article on the benefits of lemon juice can be found at the bottom of this page.

Stretch

Stretching feels so good! And it helps to realign our posture, send nutrients pounding through our bodies and helps to energize us for the day ahead. When we’ve been lying down all night long, we need to rejig our bodies to prime them for the day ahead. Stretching helps to elongate tight muscles, redistribute synovial fluid around joints and boosts our circulation. Do stretches that you feel comfortable with. Anything that makes your muscles stretch out will be beneficial for you.

A link is at the bottom of the page to an article with 5 easy yoga stretches to get your day off to a good start.

Meditate

Meditation in the morning sets you up for a more present and calm day ahead. If you have only five minutes to meditate, do it. Even just a few minutes of focused meditation helps the body and mind to relax, thoughts to clear and life to be more easily savoured. Spend as long as you have available that fits into your schedule and be something you can achieve with just a small amount of commitment.

By starting your day in this way, you are taking control of it. Once you have mastered the art of meditation you will find it increasingly easier to achieve mental clarity and calmness. And I do believe meditation is an art. I am of the very busy-brain tribe, and find that it takes me a good few days to get into the whole turning off my mind vibe, but it does happen eventually, and I always feel better for doing it.

A link is at the bottom of the page to an article about how meditation helps to overcome cluttered brain syndrome.

InteraXon Muse: the brain sensing headband – Color: Black

The Muse headband is a meditation headband and has transformed meditative practices particularly for busy-brained people. The Muse headband is an electronic tool that helps you learn how to meditate and is ideal for busy minds.

First of all it calibrates itself to your brain in normal active mode. Once you begin meditating (with the headband on), it uses the sound of the wind, to tell you how well your brain is achieving meditation. So if you start getting a busy brain, the wind starts whooshing up. While you’re relaxed and in the zone, the wind is calm and settled.

For techno lovers it offers graphs and charts to show you how well you did in each session. It’s a fun and easy tool to use and helps you to get really good at meditating.

Prioritise

Write down the one task you absolutely must get done each day. Ideally make this task the one you dread doing the most. You know what it is, because it will have been nagging away at you like a dull toothache. Avoid draining your energy with this. If it’s something that makes you anxious, try and rise above the image you have of yourself doing the anxious thing.

Detach yourself from any negative emotions, be brave and get it done anyway. It will give you a huge self-esteem boost to have crossed it off your list, it will make the next tricky task easier to perform and it will free up your mental energy to move on to the next task.

Intentions

Create a good intention for the day. This is different from writing a to–do list. Good intentions could be about being brave and not letting your anxieties take control of you. They could be to deal with everyone in a non-judgmental and open manner or to put the best care possible into whatever it is you need to do. Not only will the people around you feel happier, so will you. So be positive, smile, rise above the petty nonsenses and live your day as though it’s your last.

No comparisons

Be true to who you are and live up to your own expectations, not someone else’s. Get working on your own grass and don’t worry about what your neighbour’s is looking like. Don’t compare yourself to others. We tend not to appreciate our own unique qualities, because we live with ourselves constantly. We are even cruel to ourselves and beat ourselves up for the things we haven’t achieved rather than praising ourselves for the things we have accomplished. Start to talk to yourself as though you are your own best friend. Be kind to yourself and make being you a rewarding lifetime achievement.

Be realistic

Don’t beat yourself up for things that haven’t turned out as you imagined. Forgive yourself, and move on. If you think you’ve done something badly, let that be a driver to do better next time. Keep moving forward to your own tempo taking your own needs and resources into consideration. Your life is entirely unique, so be bold and live it uniquely. Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.

Sleep well

Make sure you sleep well. We all get crabby when we’re tired and a tired mind and body will make more errors of judgment and be less productive. If you are working all hours of the day and night, ask yourself if this is something you really need to be doing? You are not a machine.

Learn to treat yourself kindly, give yourself a break, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. It is a known fact that once you earn enough to pay your bills, the extra happiness you get from a £10k pay rise diminishes as the amount goes up. One hour of extra sleep will make you a whole lot happier and healthier than that extra dough.

Ditch the screens

Ditch the television and computer screens. Research has shown that many hours spent in front of screens is detrimental to our health. Our posture suffers and we end up with overstretched back and shoulder muscles and tight chest muscles making us look like replica Quasimodos.

Our brains are so frazzled by trying to absorb all the stimulation we see on the screen we end up wearing ourselves out mentally, feeling exhausted and not being able to relax or sleep due to the overstimulation.

Get outdoors

Exposure to ultra violet light, i.e. daylight, directly onto our skin has significant health benefits, providing we make sure we don’t burn or overdo it in strong sunlight. UV stimulates Vitamin D production in the body which is necessary for a mulititude of reasons.

Vitamin D is needed for the creation and maintenance of healthy bones by promoting the absorption of calcium. I always thought that Rickets was a disease left behind in the middle ages, but it is back again in increasing numbers, as more and more people spend less time outside. Not only does vitamin D help to stave off rickets, it helps to reduce the risk of developing osteoporosis (brittle bone disease) and osteomalacia (softening of the bones). It has also been linked to decreasing the risk of developing certain types of cancers, type 1 diabetes, lowering blood pressure and reducing the risk of suffering a heart attack.

A lack of UV can also disrupt your pineal gland’s production of melatonin and serotonin. Melatonin is a hormone and an antioxidant. Among its many uses in the body, melatonin secretion is highest during the darkest hours and helps to promote good sleep. Serotonin is a hormone which regulates our moods and we need a healthy amount to keep us feeling fresh, happy and balanced. One of the best ways to boost melatonin and serotonin production is to make sure you get a minimum of 30 minutes UV exposure every day.

Exercise

The benefits of exercise are numerous. Exercise helps us to tone our muscles, improves lymphatic flow around our bodies, keeps our weight healthy, forms stronger bones and lifts our mood. Exercise is one of the best ways to keep stress at bay as it uses up the stress hormones we develop and don’t use throughout the day.

When many of us are overworked and feel overwhelmed, this triggers the fight and flight response in our bodies which results in the release of stress hormones: adrenalin and cortisol. When we are sat in front of our computers feeling frazzled from a hard day’s work, there is no way of helping the stress hormones to dissipate, except for doing physical exercise.

In our hunter-gatherer days we would be active for much of the time, and any real or perceived threats would be dealt with by either facing the enemy and fighting, or running before the enemy could catch up with us … hopefully! Modern living is conducive to a buildup of pent-up stress and we need to actively take control of how we care for our bodies, by making sure we exercise regularly. If you want good health, to exercise or not isn’t the question; rather it’s what exercise are you going to do?

If you want good health, to exercise or not isn’t the question; rather it’s what exercise are you going to do? Click To Tweet

Eat well

Nutrition is another aspect of our lives that we need to take responsibility for. If you keep filling your body with rubbish, you’re only going to get rubbish back out and will suffer the health consequences that inevitably follow as life progresses.

Eating moderate portion sizes, cutting out processed foods, reducing sugars, particularly refined sugars, adding more fresh vegetables and salads to our plates, eating healthy and ethically sourced meat and fish will go a long way to improving our long term health, slimming our waistlines and investing in our bodies for a healthy future. A well-nourished body is a happy body.

A well-nourished body is a happy body. Click To Tweet

Help other people

Be kind to other people, even when they annoy the pants off you. You will find that you waste a lot less nervous energy by spreading the love. When we let people get under our skin, we ruminate about it and can waste time imagining scenarios when we wished we’d said something different, or we wish we’d behaved differently.

Learn to let it go. If you are kind, not only will you feel better about yourself, you can potentially cut off the opportunity for a situation to get out of hand and become a negative experience. Helping others is known to increase the amount of endorphins in our blood stream which has health benefits as well as making us feel better about ourselves.

As well as helping others, give them the opportunity to help you out when you need it. None of us can manage to do absolutely everything despite how we often think we can. Allow some of your vulnerability to show through and allow people in. Both you and they will benefit. Be so busy loving your life that you have no time for hate, regret or fear.

Be so busy loving your life that you have no time for hate, regret or fear. Click To Tweet

Foster new friendships

Make new friends. It’s refreshing to meet or talk to new people. Surround yourself with people who are achieving what you want to achieve. Their behaviour and attitudes will begin to rub off on you and you’ll learn things you were never even aware of. Maintain your special friendships, ditch the negative ones and expand your circle of friends while extending your interests in life.

Be a good role model

A quote from Mother Teresa: “Spread love everywhere you go, let no one ever come to you without leaving happier. Be so happy that when others look at you they become happy too.”

Emotions are contagious, so if you’re going to spread anything, let it be positive emotions. Smile, laugh, hug, listen. It’s often the simplest deeds which offer the greatest value.

Learn to Forgive

There are times in life where we all have been treated badly by others, whether it’s a brute of a lover who has betrayed you, a complete idiot in a car who dangerously cut you up and then swore at you!, a crappy friend who has revealed your innermost secret, a drunken buffoon who has been violent towards you … I’m not bitter and twisted really! …. I have learned to forgive ….

marguerite-74886_640-min Forgiveness is for you, not for them. Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning the bad experience of the past, rather it means you are freeing yourself from the negative energy and emotion that you have vested in that experience. Hanging on to negative emotions eats up your energy and can make you feel bitter. By not forgiving you are giving power to the person who wronged you.

By leaving the negative experience in the past, resolving to cut off any energy you are expending on thinking or ruminating or hating what has happened, you are freeing yourself to a life without those negative emotions. So leave it in the past and empower your future with positivity.

Take action

Take 100% responsibility for your life. It’s your life, so don’t wait for someone to come along and fix it for you. That won’t happen.

Don’t wait for life to improve. Don’t hide from change. Don’t be afraid to take risks.

Learn from your failures – we all have them. Step out of your comfort zone. Foster a culture of courage. If there’s something that needs fixing, fix it. If you can’t fix it, move on.

Be choosy about what impresses you

Don’t be impressed by money, followers, degrees and titles. Be impressed by humility, integrity, generosity, and kindness. Integrity is choosing your thoughts and actions based on values rather than personal gains. Stay true to your human nature, otherwise inner conflict will plague you. Just imagine how much happier our world would be if everyone committed to being kind and humble.

Avoid toxic people

Don’t ever feel bad for making a decision about your own life that upsets other people. Those who have your best interests at heart will love you for your successes as well as your failures.

You’re responsible for your own happiness. Anyone who wants you to live in misery for their own gains should not be in your life to begin with. Happiness starts with you – not with your relationships, not with your job, not with your money, but with you.

Be crazy, be stupid, be silly, be weird, be whatever. Because life is too short to be anything but happy.

A link is at the bottom of the page to an article about How to Spot Toxic People and How to Deal with Them.

Declutter

Do something cathartic like cleaning out your wardrobe. Not only does it give you a sense of achievement, it also helps to get rid of the masses of stuff we surround ourselves with and never or rarely use. Apart from special garments, if you’ve not worn certain clothes for two years, really question whether you need them any longer. Can they be given to someone else who would now appreciate them more? The same applies for shoes. If you don’t wear them, give them away.

A tidy house helps to create a tidy mind. Try it and be amazed. Just don’t go buying more stuff to replace the clothes you’ve just given away!

Avoid overwhelm

We are overwhelmed these days by the vast array of choices we need to make on a daily basis. No longer do we have the choice simply of one or two television models, there are so many different sizes, screen variations, colour variations, sound options, wall mounted, not wall mounted, rocket launcher included or not included …. the list goes on.

Making a choice has become a stress in and of itself. What if I buy the wrong one? Heck, I’ve just been studying the various models for the past two weeks, and still I am no closer to coming to a decision, apart from knowing I would like a colour TV. And once I’ve bought it, what if there was something better, bigger or smaller that I should have chosen instead?! Have I really made the right choice?

My house needs painting. Have you any idea of the hundreds of colour blends there are, and then which brand to go for? What size tub to choose? If it’s guaranteed for 6 years, what does that really mean?!

No wonder we feel overwhelmed and stressed. We are paralysed by choice and then when we finally make a choice, we end up being less satisfied, because we have that nagging doubt in the back of our minds as to whether we really did make the right choice after all.

That’s why it’s so important to focus on the things that really are important in life. If I paint my house a colour that isn’t the absolute best, so what? If the TV I choose doesn’t work as well as I had hoped, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not important.

What is important is making time for each other, keeping ourselves fit and healthy, making the time to love our nearest and dearest, as well as ourselves. By being able to differentiate between the really important things and the superficial detritus will help to set us along a road where attaining authentic happiness becomes a day to day reality.

Amass your happy tokens

Creating a life where you are able to feel happy for most of the time will create a safe haven for those times when life throws its most difficult challenges at you. If you can build up the amount of happy tokens you own, you will find yourself in a place where you can dig deep and refuel, find your resources and regroup sooner than if your happy bucket was empty.

Wear odd socks. I don’t know why, but this makes me insanely happy.

Don’t be afraid of what might go wrong, think about what might go right.

Happiness is letting go of what you think your life should be and celebrating it for everything it is.

How to be Happy: Silver Linings Hypnosis download

To reinforce everything you have read above, you might be interested to download the How to be Happy: Silver Linings hypnosis mp3. It will help you achieve an optimistic outlook on life as well as learn to appreciate the beauty of what surrounds us every day.