We have all heard that you deserve to be happy. Some of us are happy, some of us not so happy, and some of us are downright miserable. So let’s be honest happy is better than miserable. What if you could just take a happy pill and suddenly be happy? Most people will do so, but unfortunately there’s no pill. There are however other things that are time tested that can help you achieve happiness. You are the captain of your happiness ship, as cliche and silly as that sounds, but you are. What you decide to do, and how you do it, and how you think, are all ways they can make you happier. Here are some things that you can think about.
Your happiness first
Well, as obvious as it may sound, put your happiness first. Most people seem to put other people’s happiness ahead of their own. This is all fine and dandy, and it might make you happy putting other people’s happiness ahead of your own, but realize that your happiness has to come first. If you’re a happy person, it will rub off on others. If you are an overworked mother and always stressed because you are working hard and putting your children’s happiness before your own, what do you think they will remember? They will remember you were always stressed. You need to make sure that you are happy before you can truly make anyone else happy.
Make the world a better place
Look around you and realise that if you try and make the world a happier place, it will come back and make you happy as well. If everybody lives in their own little world and doesn’t care about anybody else, there will be nobody there to make you happy or cheer up your day. So think about that, look at other people and say something nice to them, give them a compliment, or you can just nod and smile, because that’s one of the times when karma really does exist. The more you can make the world a better place and a happier one, the more the ripples will come back to help you be happy as well.
Get some sleep
You need to get at least eight hours of sleep a day. This is just a fact, you might not think of this as a fact, but it is. There are people with need less sleep than 8 hours, but they are as rare as being struck by lightning. So even if you think you are doing well on less than 8 hours sleep, you probably are not. One of the things of sleep deprivation is the inability to judge oneself well, so you’re losing your performance and your happiness by just not getting enough sleep. Get more sleep, on a regular basis, and it will make it much easier to be happy.
Exercise
Okay you’ve heard this one for almost everything, exercise. But it’s true. You need to get exercise. As much as you might not want to go to the gym, that doesn’t mean you can’t go have a good walk when you have the chance. The thing is we never have a chance asa we talk ourselves out of it, but we have to make that chance. You’ll be surprised what a walk in the park for half an hour can do. If you’re just there to enjoy it and think thoughts do yourself, you will gain many insights to your life. Get some exercise, even if it’s small, and it will make a very big difference to your emotional stability.
Control what you can and forget what you can’t
One of the problems that makes people unhappy is there are too many things that are happening in their life that are negative. You are overwhelmed and you feel like you can’t handle it. One easy way to deal with this, is to write down all the things that you have control over, and all the things that you do not have control over, and then cross out the list of the ones you do not have control over. You will suddenly find that you have less than half of the problems you had before. If you can’t do anything about it, don’t worry about it. It’s like the old expression that you can’t cry over spilled milk. It’s very true, all you can do is clean it up, you cannot get upset that you spilled it as whats done is done. Deal with what you can and not with what you can’t.
Negativity
You first have to understand what negativity is and recognized it. Very often, someone will tell you you’re being negative and we bet you do not understand why. To you, you think you’re being positive, or just saying the truth. When in reality you’re being negative and looking on the dark side of things. If you cannot recognize, this how can you fix it. So start really looking at what people say and see if they are negative or positive. Ask yourself does this make the situation any better or worse, before you reply on things. To eradicate negativity, you have to understand what it is and how you’re using it. This is one of the more difficult things but once mastered you will find that your outlook on life is much much better.
Just do it
When people are unhappy and want to improve their lives, they read all sorts of self-help books, search online, listen to YouTube videos, and all sorts of other things. This is all very fine and dandy, (even reading this article), but if you don’t do it and put it into use, it isn’t going to work. You need to actually take the steps and do it. If you want to learn how to dance, you can watch all the videos in the world but until you stand up and start trying to dance you aren’t going to learn. So don’t use the books, and the articles, as an excuse not to start. Pick something simple in your life that you need to improve or change to make yourself happy, and just start doing it.
Being happy is easy. As long as you pay attention. Realize that it’s not just a temporary issue to be happy. It’s like a diet, you want to lose weight so we eat less food, and then you go back to eating as you always did after and gain more weight than you did in the first place. To diet successfully, it needs to be a life-changing diet that you keep for the rest of your life. Happiness is exactly the same. It’s not something you do temporarily and then go back to your old habits, it’s making completely new habits that you stick to. If you stick to these habits long enough you’ll find that nothing much bothers you and people think you’re one of the happiest people around. Your psyche will thank you and your heart will thank you. You just have to make the effort.
