Everyone wants to know how to be happy. Yet, desperately seeking happiness makes it harder to achieve. Try these simple, amazing, powerful tips.
How to Be Happy: Easy Ways to Achieve Happiness
Do you want to know how to be happy? If a crash course could teach it, most people would sign up. However, you don’t need lessons on how to be happy. Instead, try these simple, amazing, powerful tips.
Be Satisfied With What You Have
Striving to climb the corporate ladder, earn more than anyone else, or buy a bigger house or more expensive car will not ensure happiness. You may be excited briefly, but constantly yearning for something more is counter-productive. Besides, dissatisfaction with your current state is a known contributor to depression and anxiety. That’s anything but happiness.
“Contentment is the foundation of true happiness. It is accepting and embracing the present moment as it is.” – Jeremiah Say
How to Be Happy: Engage Your Curiosity
Here’s an easy tip for how to be happy: Be curious. When you’re actively learning something new, your brain reacts with excitement. Curiosity is the key to deepening our understanding of life and the world around us.
“The secret of happiness is curiosity.” – Norman Douglas
Besides, research shows that curious people experience greater well-being, lower anxiety, higher positive emotions, and greater satisfaction with life. In short, they’re happy.
Be Kind to Yourself and Others
Another powerful way to be happy is to be kind to yourself and others. Why is this true? When you’re kind and gentle to yourself and when you show kindness to others, the brain boosts dopamine and serotonin, increasing satisfaction.
Furthermore, the decision to extend kindness is purely yours. No one can make you kind to others. Giving makes you feel good, knowing you’re making a difference, however slight. You can do the same for yourself with self-care, enjoying a good book, walking outside, and doing what you love.
How to Be Happy: Pursue Your Dreams
If you want to know how to be happy, pursue your dreams. Everyone has an inner desire to achieve something. It may be a challenging goal or one that requires time. However, when you push aside your dreams and believe that you must settle for less, your joy in life decreases. Instead of living with zest and determination each day, you go through the motions.
That’s not happiness. It’s emptiness.
- However, when you revisit your dream goals, look for ways to make small steps toward success. Even the slightest progress increases your happiness, for you’re actively pursuing what you want.
Challenge Your Mind
When you stimulate your mind, you’re not bored. Challenges are like curiosity. They fire up the brain to seek and expect a reward.
- Besides, being engrossed in mental challenges like puzzles, finding solutions to complex problems, learning a new language, and retaining information exercise the brain.
- Mastering challenges helps you stay mentally sharp, improves memory, boosts focus and clarity, and makes you feel more satisfied and happy.
Be Grateful for Your Blessings
Everyone has blessings, even if we don’t recognize them every day. However, when you are grateful for all the good things in your life, such as health, friends, family, job, opportunities, financial stability, educational achievements, and more, you recognize that you are blessed.
- Besides, taking a moment now and then to mentally run through your blessings allows you to acknowledge and be grateful for them.
- Furthermore, gratitude is an essential part of what it means to be happy.
Enjoy Your Health
Good health is another crucial part of happiness. Being physically and mentally fit is the key to enjoying life to the fullest extent possible.
- To maintain good health, eat well, get sufficient sleep, take medications, see your doctors regularly, exercise, and minimize stress.
- However, if your health isn’t excellent, you can still make diet and lifestyle changes to improve it. Ask your physician for suggestions on what you can do.
- Remember, your medical team can partner with you to develop a plan.
How to Be Happy: Explore New Activities
Being active helps you discover things you don’t know about yourself and your capabilities. It lets you broaden your horizons, identify opportunities, challenge yourself, and meet new friends.
Tips:
- Try a new destination for your next vacation. Make it a family trip so everyone can benefit from the experience. For example, how about adventure travel?
- Have you always wanted to learn photography, gourmet cooking, woodworking, tai chi, yoga, meditation, or downhill skiing? Join a group, take a class, and watch educational videos.
- Remember that everyone starts from the beginning. Even if you have some background or experience in the activity, you can learn to become more proficient.
- Above all, enjoy yourself. This is a vital aspect of how to be happy.
Share Your Knowledge and Expertise
An excellent teacher who loves their career knows how happy they are seeing their students “get” the lessons. Learning something new and sharing your knowledge and expertise is exciting. Similarly, mentors feel a sense of purpose in helping people advance their careers, gain self-confidence, and become self-sufficient and successful.
- However, you don’t have to be a teacher or mentor to share what you know with others. Parents do this all the time. So do helpful co-workers, a supportive supervisor, neighbors, and friends.
- Besides, if someone asks for help, you can make a huge difference by offering to assist. That residual good feeling you get is a component of happiness.
Cherish Family and Friends
Saving the best for last, remember to cherish family and friends. Without them, life would be lonely and empty. You can be the wealthiest person in the world and be miserable if you have no one to laugh with and enjoy life.
- However, if you have no family or anyone you consider a friend, you can still make friends if you try.
- Remember that friendship is a two-way relationship. To get the most out of it, give more than you receive. Honest, caring, and positive interactions will help ensure lasting friendships.
- Furthermore, your deepest relationships are the ones that provide the most happiness.
