Pursuing Happiness All Year Round
Exactly how do we go about pursuing happiness? We know happiness is far more than just money, fame or power. There are lots of people who have all three who are not especially happy. What are the secrets to living a happy, fulfilling life? Are there reliable road maps to happiness?
If you want to live a happy life, study happy people. Understand what they do, appreciate why it works so well and then adopt their behaviors and beliefs. This is the approach that was used to develop the Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People which will be released in book form later this year. Here are some secrets from habitually happy people:
Exercise your freedom to choose happiness. Decide who you want to become, what kind of person you want to be. Define yourself as a happy, spiritually successful person. Let that goal become a sort of role that is genuine and authentic for you. Try to be your Best Self all of the time. When we don’t consciously decide what sort of person we want to be, our environment and experiences tend to define our identity and our destiny for us.
Rebel against people or situations that try to drag your spirits down. Don’t willingly or easily hand control of your thoughts, actions, feelings and well-being over to outside circumstances that can rob your happiness. Cultivate an indomitably strong, good spirit.
Choose emotional independence. Decide how you want to think and feel. Just because something bad happens, that doesn’t mean you have to feel sad. Remember, you must be at your best to do your best. Choose actions and attitudes that help you to succeed and be happy.
Make Goodness a Guiding Goal. We are always amazed how truly happy genuinely good people are. “Goodness for goodness sake,” one said. Habitually happy people are especially kind, caring and compassionate. The Dutch proverb that says, “Happy people are never wicked” was proven by our research.
Give freely and without strings attached. Habitually happy people are genuinely altruistic, they do good for the joy of doing good. They give without strings attached, they do not give just in order to get. Goodness is it’s own reward. They rarely pass up an opportunity to do good when it costs them little or risks them little.
Don’t be a people pleaser. Enjoy sharing joy and making other people happy, but don’t depend on other people’s approval to be happy yourself. We can feel good simply by knowing we have done well.
Take care of yourself, value yourself. Habitually happy people value their time, their talents and their resources. They continually develop themselves, strengthen their skills and gain a greater understanding of the world and the people around them.
Be adventuresome. Habitually happy people continually try new things and do new things to stay fresh and to constantly experience difference and change. It helps them grow and enhance their positive spirits. One commented, “I get bored with the same old stuff, I want each day to be new, different, something special.”
Don’t beat yourself up. Habitually happy people move from problems to solutions quickly. They know time spent dwelling on problems tends to reinforce mistakes they want to avoid. They don’t condemn themselves for errors. They channel their angst over their mistakes toward finding solutions or rectifying the problem. They do not intentionally hurt themselves.
Avoid The Fault Finding Feel Goods - Criticism, blame, ridicule, bigotry, all falsely elevate our sense of power and self worth by finding fault with something else. These feel goods are fed by a negative focus. You cannot be truly happy by continually finding fault, focusing on negatives, judging or criticizing. Habitually happy people don’t do these things and they avoid people who do.
Have high integrity and live according to your values. When you live by high, good values you can feel confident that, even if you fail, you have done YOUR best. Few things are worse than compromising your integrity and then failing. Habitually happy people cherish good values and live according to them.
Love is an active verb. Love is an action, it is something we do. It is an emotion we can decide to feel and project to others. It’s not just something that happens to us. Love propels happiness. The more we love, the happier we become.
Don’t be a snob. Happy people don’t have to feel better than others in order to feel good about themselves. They try to find something of interest and value in everyone they meet. And they try to touch each person they meet with a bright, positive spirit.
Continually celebrate success. Habitually happy people continually celebrate success, their own and other people’s success. This fuels everyone’s positive energy, confidence, desire to do well and propels people to achieve more.
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved.
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Michele Moore is author of the Happiness Habit Blog, http://www.HappinessBlog.com and Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People which will be released later this year. See www.HappinessHabit.com for more information. She writes and speaks on the subjects of happiness, sparkle and well-being from her home in Atlanta.