One of the fastest ways to stop any feeling of happiness in its track is to worry. We worry about things that haven’t happened yet, and we worry about things in the past that we can do nothing about. It’s sad to think about how many happy moments we miss out on because we are too worried about the past or the future.
One of the solutions to living a happier and more content life is to learn to live in the moment. You don’t want to miss out on all the amazing little things life has in store for you because you are too busy worrying and agonizing about things that are outside of your control. The goal then for a happier life is to learn to live in the moment.
Start by simply paying attention to what’s going on around you right now. Enjoy the people you are spending time with. Treasure the conversations and interactions you have with them. Look around you and notice the beauty in your surroundings. Each season brings new natural phenomena that can help you stay in the moment and make you happy. Notice how the light filters through the colorful leaves on a crisp fall day. Treasure the first few green sprouts at the end of winter. Laugh with your kids and play in the first snow of winter. Bask in the sun and look at how the light plays over the water on a hot summer day. Each day, each season, and each year has amazing treasures to offer if you take the time to stay in the moment and notice them.
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Slow down and don’t be afraid to stop and smell the roses. If you find yourself slipping back into your old ways of worrying about things you can’t change, remind yourself to stop and instead focus on something pretty in your surroundings. It doesn’t matter what it is. The idea is to train your mind to live in the moment instead of the past or the future.
Does this mean you have to stop all plotting and planning for the future? Does it mean that you shouldn’t look back on the past and learn from it? Of course not. Those are both important parts of life. There are times to plan a vacation, figure out what groceries we need for the week, or plot a move or job change in the future. Those are productive ways to look ahead. Along the same lines, there are times when we should look back on the past. Maybe we can right a wrong, improve on things, or, if nothing else, learn from them. That’s important as well. What isn’t important or productive is to dwell on the past or future events and worry about things we can’t change. Whenever that happens, stop yourself and focus on the present. It won’t take you long to get out of the habit of worrying about things outside of your control. That, in turn, gives you more time and energy to focus on what truly matters.
Life isn’t all happiness and sunshine. And that’s a good thing. How boring would it be to only have positive experiences? We need the negative, the sadness, and the disappointments to balance the happiness. They make the happy times stand out and shine all the brighter.
That being said, negative thoughts, emotions, and the events and people that cause them are part of life. We have to learn to deal with them and make the best of sad situations to live a happy and content life. Today I want to look at a few different ideas and strategies to help us do just that.
Put Them In Perspective
Before you allow yourself to wallow in sadness, try your best to step back and look at the situation from a different perspective. Get some sleep, go out for a walk, and come back and look at it again. Try your best to see the positive side of things. Yes, there are undeniably sad and bad situations in our lives, but even so, most of them have a tiny flicker of something good in them as well. Find that positivity and hang on to it.
There are also a lot of times and situations where we focus too much on negativity. A little distance and perspective can show us that it’s not as bad as we initially thought.
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There are also times when life just plain sucks. It’s ok to be sad. Don’t feel that you have to be happy 100% of the time. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to take the time to be sad and grieve. There is a lot of healing and coming to terms with things that can only happen when you let the sadness in. Feel it, so you can start to heal and recover. This will allow you to get back to the happier version of yourself.
Look On The Bright Side And Find Your Way Back To Happiness
To make sure that happens and you don’t spiral down into a hole of sadness, despair, and depression, you have to look for the right side or the tiny flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. Look for it, focus on it, and use it to find your way back to happiness. Maybe that little flicker of hope is simply that you’re not feeling quite as sad as you did yesterday. Or perhaps it’s a call from a friend or a neighbor dropping off a card. Grab on to it and use anything good and positive in your life to lead you back.
We’ve talked in the past about the fact that feeling grateful and acknowledging all the good things in our lives is a great way to increase our overall happiness. Getting in the habit of showing and experiencing more gratitude is one of the most powerful ways to increase your feeling of happiness.
It’s all good and well to resolve to feel more gratitude and become happier. Putting it into action is a little harder said than done. Thankfully there’s a simple little tool that will help you stay on track – a journal. A gratitude journal is a beautiful thing and something that can have a surprisingly significant positive impact on your life. Best of all, you don’t need anything fancy. Grab a notebook and a pen, or if you prefer, boot up your computer and open up a word document.
The idea is simple. Each day you want to write for a few minutes about the various things you feel grateful for. Think back on anything that made you happy throughout the day. By listing all the positive things in your life, you’re putting them into the forefront of your mind. That alone is bound to increase your mood and make you feel happier and more accomplished.
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Not only will your writing help you right away, as you compose each daily entry, you’re also creating a great memento of your gratitude and happiness journey. Pull out your journal, curl up on the couch and read through it whenever you need a little boost of happiness. Seeing, in black and white, how far you’ve come throughout the past weeks, months, and even years is truly amazing.
As you start to read about the events and people that you felt grateful for in the past, you’re beginning to relive those memories and those feelings. Think of your gratitude journal as a happiness battery. You’re storing your good feelings in an easy format that allows you to access and relive them on demand—what a powerful idea.
In addition, writing and reading your gratitude journal regularly will help you form new positive habits. You’ll start to have a more positive outlook in life as the journal forces you to think of and find the things and people you’re grateful for on any given day; your brain will automatically start to look for the positive instead of the negative. It’s easy to see how that can positively impact your life over time.
If you’re ready to practice gratitude and work on increasing your happiness, start writing a journal. You won’t regret it.
Here’s an interesting expression: “Fake It ‘Till You Make It.” You usually hear it in the business and show business world. The idea is that if you look like a success, others around you will treat you like a successful person and will send more projects and opportunities your way. At some point, the idea is that you can stop faking it because you’ve become what you’ve pretended to be. It sounds a little harsher than it is. Faking in this context isn’t as phony as it sounds. What you are really doing is modeling behaviors until you’ve internalized them. Once that happens, you will start to see results because you’ve been working hard at precisely the types of things a successful person does. It only makes sense then that you begin to see results.
The exciting thing is that this works in all sorts of different contexts. If you want to be a thin and fit person, start acting like one, eating the things they eat, working out, moving around more, etc. After a few months of doing that, it’s no wonder that you’re starting to slim down significantly.
Since happiness is on my mind a lot during this project, I did a little research to see if the same concept could also work for feelings – including increasing a sense of self-worth, wellbeing, and being happier. The good news is that it does. You really can fake happiness until your mood improves.
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Visualize yourself as happy, then live as you have already achieved it. This is a lot easier than you may think. You can start with nothing more complicated than smiling. A smile is a good start, but get your entire face, including your eyes, involved if you can. Give smiling your best effort, even if you aren’t feeling it.
After a bit of smiling, you should feel your mood start to increase. Remind yourself throughout the day to smile more for the best results. When you’re ready to kick it up a notch, give laughing a try. Again, if there’s nothing funny going on, just start giggling and laughing. It has a profound impact on the body. Not only will it instantly lift your bad mood and make you feel happier, but laughing has also been shown to increase your body’s ability to heal and it will improve your immune system.
Give it a try and start practicing faking happiness. You can smile and laugh at yourself in front of the bathroom mirror in the mornings. Then make an effort to smile more and often laugh as you go about your day. Not only will you notice your own happiness levels increase, but you’ll also make a difference in those around you.
Here’s an interesting exercise for you. Head out to do your errands, drive to work, or get to school and make it a point to make someone else’s day today. It could be something as simple as giving someone a big smile, having a meaningful conversation with a person who’s feeling a little lost or lonely, or it could be buying lunch for the homeless person on the corner. It doesn’t matter what you do, but do something today to make someone else’s day.
How does that make sure feel? It’s a pretty good feeling, right? It seems that a big key to our happiness lies in making people around us happy and helping out. It makes sense when you start to think about it, doesn’t it? We are social creatures who have to work together to thrive truly. It is logical then that helping those around us has built-in internal rewards systems. In other words, our happiness goes up as we improve the lives of those around us.
A great strategy to increase our own happiness is to cheer up those around us. Not only will it help make you feel better and happier, but you also have to improve your happiness and put that big smile on your face to make someone else’s day. It’s hard to do this kind of stuff when you’re feeling sad and depressed. But those are the times you need to force yourself to do it the most. By simply doing that, you make your mind increase the happiness you feel and that gets mingled with a feeling of pride for helping someone else.
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As with many of the other strategies, we’ve been discussing increasing your happiness. The key to making this work is to make it a habit. If it becomes well ingrained in your daily routine to make someone’s day as you go about living your life, you’ll automatically start to do it, even when (and especially when) you don’t feel like it. As you well know, those are when you particularly need to do something to increase your happiness and give yourself that little extra boost.
Start by thinking about a few different little things you can do to make someone’s day. It doesn’t have to be anything big or complicated. Instead, focus on small acts of kindness that you can do every single day. Bless your loved ones with this kindness or complete strangers who look like they could use a little cheering up. Help someone unload groceries, fix a meal for a neighbor who just had a new baby, or bring your spouse coffee in bed when they have a hard time. All these small acts of kindness will start to make a huge difference in you and the world around you.
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