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.
Think back to some of the happiest times in your life. Chances are that these are also the days when you felt your most confident. Maybe you excelled at sports during that time, or you aced a project at work. Confidence can be a huge happiness booster. But why wait for something good to happen in your life? Why not work on boosting your self-confidence, which will increase your feeling of happiness.
There are all sorts of things you can do to boost your confidence. We’ll run through a few of them here. I also encourage you to read up on the topic, pay attention to times when you’re feeling more confident, and then work out a plan to intentionally boost your self-confidence based on your own research and experience.
The challenge with boosting confidence is that we tend to respond to different strategies, techniques, and events. Some of us thrive on words of encouragement, while others want to see results or succeed on kind actions from others. Are you the type of person who puts more meaning into a kind word from your boss, a raise, or a promotion? Or how about some public recognition at the latest company meeting. We all have different confidence triggers and the trick is to figure out what yours is and how you can get more of those types of boosts.
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General confidence boosters include words of encouragement, seeing how far we’ve come, listening to some upbeat music, going out for a run, and positively dealing with failure. Give each of those and any other interesting confidence-boosting tip you come across a try. Then sit back and notice how much confidence impacts overall happiness.
If you respond well to compliments and words of encouragement, call a friend or anyone else in your life who makes a great cheerleader. Get those positive verbal affirmations whenever you need a little boost. Keep a journal so you can look back and see how much progress you’ve made. This is particularly sound advice if you’re trying to change your life, your habits, or make progress on a long-term project. Being able to flip back and see how far you’ve come can be very encouraging.
Listening to music/confidence building content, or heading outside for a little fresh air and exercise can be another great way to boost your confidence and mood. Combine the two for even better results. Last but not least, let’s look at how to deal with failure. When things go wrong – and let’s face it, they will sooner or later – you can either allow it to bring you down and undermine your confidence, or you can look at it as a learning experience. Guess which view is better for your self-esteem?
I hope you take these suggestions to heart and make an effort to work on your confidence. Not only will it make you a happier person, but you also get more done and become more successful in the long run.
Sleep is important for your health, well-being, and how alert you are. Not getting a good night’s sleep can impact your performance during the day. Chronic lack of sleep can cause several health issues and even weight gain. It can also lead to depression. In other words, not getting the sleep you need makes you feel bad.
On the flip side, ensuring you get sufficient rest can help you feel more energized. You get more done, which boosts your self-confidence and in turn, your overall happiness. Making sure you get your beauty rest makes a lot of sense then.
I’m sure you’ve seen this in action. When we don’t sleep well or don’t get a chance to get enough rest, we end up grumpy and agitated. Our stress levels go way up, which in turn makes us feel worse. We don’t get our work done; we start to feel depressed, which leads to more sleepless nights. It’s a vicious cycle.
If we can break that cycle and make sleep a priority, on the other hand, everything changes for the better. We wake up in a great mood and ready to tackle the day. It’s easier to get work and chores done and still have time to relax and unwind. That, in turn, leads to a better night’s sleep and an even better morning.
The big question then is how do we get to this state of sleep-full bliss and a solid 8 hours of rest at night? We do it by making sleep a priority. Yes, there are times in our lives (like the arrival of a newborn, for example) when getting a good night’s sleep isn’t a possibility for quite some time, but for most of us, working on a reasonable bedtime routine is not that hard to achieve.
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And routine is the keyword here. Good sleep is a habit and learned behavior. It takes a little work on your part to change your habits and establish a good sleep and bedtime routine, but it will be well worth it. I promise.
Start by setting a regular bedtime and do your best to stick to it – even on the weekend and holidays. Our bodies get in a rhythm of walking and resting hours. Help your body get there by staying on schedule. Spend some time in the hours before bed to relax and calm down. Stop working, don’t exercise too late in the day, avoid caffeine a few hours before bed, and turn off screens at least an hour before you’re ready to fall asleep. Turning down the lights, playing soft music, and reading an old-fashioned paper book are all great ways to relax and prepare both body and mind for sleep. Taking a warm bath or shower can help as well.
If you’re still having a hard time going to sleep after implementing a routine, consider supplementing with magnesium and /or melatonin. A lack of either one of those substances in your body can make it much harder to fall and stay asleep. Stick with your routine and get into a habit of getting plenty of sleep. That, in turn, will lead to happier, more energetic, and more productive days.
Moods are contagious. If you’re around a bunch of sad and depressed people, you’ll start to feel down. On the other hand, if you are in a group of happy people, you can’t help but start to smile. It makes sense then to surround yourself with happy people if you want your own level of happiness to increase.
Does this mean you should shut all people who aren’t super happy out of your life? Of course not. We all have important people in our lives whom we love and cherish, even if they don’t have the sunniest outlook on life. Plus, we all have happier and sadder seasons in our lives. It would be horrible if we avoided loved ones during tough times.
Instead, I suggest that you take note of who the happy people in your life are. Who are your cheerleaders that will cheer you on no matter what and who will put a smile on your face anytime you spend time with them? Take note of those positive people, be their friends, family, or even just acquaintances. Build a support system of happy people that you can turn to when you’re feeling down.
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Along the same lines, you want to be careful about the negative and sad people around you and how they affect your mood. When you’re having a hard time and are struggling with your own happiness levels, it may be better to avoid people that you know will bring you further down. Those are the times when you want to spend time with your team of cheerleaders or your happiness support system. Again, this doesn’t mean that you need to shut people out of your life completely; just note their energy and how they affect you and spend time with them accordingly.
When you are happy, don’t be afraid to share that happiness and spread it around. Smiling, laughing, and feeling good about life is contagious. Spread the joy and soak it up from happy people around you when you’re not feeling your personal best. Call up that friend that can instantly make you feel better and talk to people around you who love and care for you about this idea of contagious happiness. Let them know when you could use some cheering up and then return the favor. Because, let’s face it, we all have times when we’re happier and in a much better mood than other days. Make it a habit to build each other up and create that happiness support system. It will make a huge difference in your life and those around you.
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