How To Be Happy

by Catherine Pratt
www.Life-With-Confidence.com

How can I be happy?
It sounds like such a simple thing, to be happy. Yet, why does it seem to be such a struggle to accomplish something that should be so basic and easy?

I think it comes down to a few basic things.

Photo by Ken Raeside, all rights reserved

1. What's your basic mindset about life?
Are you looking for the positive in situations or do you like to dwell on the negative? It's completely your decision as to what you focus on. What you choose to look for in the various situations you encounter will influence how you feel about your life. If you think everyone is out to cheat you, that's what you'll see in every situation. So, the trick is to pay attention to what you're choosing and deciding to concentrate on. You can see the opportunities or you can see the possibilities for disaster. You can see what you've gained or learned from the situation or you can see how someone has hurt you. It's completely up to you.

2. What are you beliefs in regards to what does happy mean to you?
It's important to actually figure out what happiness is to you. Happiness to one person is not going to satisfy someone else. To you, happiness might mean having a fulfilling career and enough money to do the activities you want to do when you want to do them. To someone else, happiness might be having a lot of family and friends. You need to know what makes you happy and to be aware of making that a priority for you.

3. Are you just reacting to your emotions or are you deciding how you want to respond to a situation?
Your emotions are tools for you to use. They're not meant to control your thoughts and actions. Listening to what you're telling yourself and then deciding to choose your thoughts will greatly increase your ability to understand and experience happiness.

You can find more information on this here:
Feeling Overwhelmed?
The Strangling Vine Theory

4. Allow yourself to feel joy
This might sound like a strange one but do you allow yourself to feel joy? It's easy to get caught up in thinking that you shouldn't enjoy the moment or that you're being irresponsible if you're not constantly being serious. Or feeling joy may even make you feel vulnerable. You might think that people can hurt you if you allow yourself to feel joy or get excited about something. Thinking this way only denies you your own happiness though.

Allowing yourself to feel job is also realizing that you deserve to feel joy. It's not something that just happens to other people. You deserve joy and happiness in your life. So, when you feel joy, allow yourself to deeply and fully experience the moment. Don't just brush it off. Feel it totally and completely. It's a wonderful feeling so enjoy it when it happens.

Joy and happiness can happen at any time. You see a beautiful flower or you see someone laughing or your dog does something silly. It doesn't have to be something huge and momentous. In fact, it's the little things that bring us the most happiness. Look for those things and when you see them, allow yourself to truly enjoy the moment.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Advice on How To Be Happy

How To Be Happy

1. Make up your mind to be happy. Learn to find pleasure in simple things.

2. Make the best of your circumstances. No one has everything, and everyone has something of sorrow intermingled with gladness of life. The trick is to make the laughter outweigh the tears.

3. Don't take yourself too seriously. Don't think that somehow you should be protected from misfortune that befalls other people.

4. You can't please everybody. Don't let criticism worry you.

5. Don't let your neighbor set your standards. Be yourself.

6. Do the things you enjoy doing but stay out of debt.

7. Never borrow trouble. Imaginary things are harder to bear than real ones.

8. Since hate poisons the soul, do not cherish jealousy, enmity, grudges. Avoid people who make you unhappy.

9. Have many interests. If you can't travel, read about new places.

10. Don't hold post-mortems. Don't spend your time brooding over sorrows or mistakes. Don't be one who never gets over things.

11. Do what you can for those less fortunate than yourself.

12. Keep busy at something. A busy person never has time to be unhappy.

Additional Resources on How To Be Happy

10 Things You Must Give Up To Move Forward
The Facebook page Suicide Shatters had a link to this great posting about 10 things you need to do to be happy with your life. It's a tribute to Stephen Covey and it's excellent advice. You could print this off and post it up somewhere to remind yourself every day how much power you do have to be happy about your life.

How To Be Happy ebook
The web site How To Be Happy provides an ebook on this exact topic which you can download for free. It's 48 pages of some pretty solid advice.

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