No Need To Wait, Be Happy Now

We are all looking to be happier in life.  There are some simple steps that you can take each moment to improve your happiness, and they are all easy to master. You need to have a consciousness of your life and take action toward a more fulfilling result.

Being generally happier about things in your life is a choice, and if you look at things and genuinely aren’t excited about the way they are going,  then changes need to be made with a few simple changes. You can turn things around right now, today, just by changing your focus. From the negative life throws at you to the positive surrounding you everywhere.

See The Good In Your Life

Is the glass half empty, or is it half full?  This perspective is how you can start evaluating your mental state in your life.  If your thoughts are frequently about what is missing in your life, what you don’t have, or what you need to acquire to be happy, you, my friend, are a glass-half-empty kind of person.  And I can pretty much guarantee that if you honestly ask yourself the question, am I happy?  The answer would be no.  How can you be satisfied when continually looking at what you don’t have or are lacking?

One of the most straightforward steps towards happiness is recognizing and appreciating any good thing you have in your life.  Show your gratitude by writing it down and talking about it during the day.   I have walked on the pessimist’s side of the street before. I know from my own experience that negative thinking only leads to more negative behavior, and you can NOT be happy if you are thinking about how much you are missing in life.   So make the simple choice to think positively about what is

good in your life. Perhaps the fifteen minutes of silent contemplation you get on your ride to and from work every day allows you to stay organized and be more productive.  No matter who you are, there are always things that you can think about that are good, and when you start to do this, you will find that a look toward more positive things will lead to many more positive emotions, experiences, and circumstances occurring in your life.

It can all start with a simple list of things you are grateful for in your life and a sincere appreciation for them, and you will start turning things from negative to positive.

Do Something Nice Just because you can…

It is not a difficult concept to understand that people like it when others do something nice for them.  It is even more appreciated when it comes from an unexpected source.  It is less understood that doing something nice for someone else will make you feel good about yourself.   When you do something to make someone else feel better, there is an almost automatic rise in your self-esteem and the way you think about yourself.  It is unstoppable and undeniable.  This feeling inside you is happiness because, as people, we all want to be more accepted and appreciated. If you can comfort or help another feel good or experience joy, your happiness will rise even if the act was anonymous.   As impressive as this sounds, you will become happier by making someone else more comfortable.  There is no way around it and no debating this point.  Do something nice for someone else just because you can, and you will be happier.

Smile more often and Mean It!

Another simple way to be happier is to smile more often.  You can fake it at first if you are so pessimistic and angry that you don’t have an authentic smile in you.  There is a physiological response inside us that if we put on a smile, it is only natural that our entire demeanor, both inside and outside, will try to match that happy look.  If you don’t believe me, try it.  Focus on smiling more every day, even when there is nobody around.

You will not be able to stop yourself from thinking of things that have made you smile in the past or that make you smile today, or that would make you smile and feel happy tomorrow.  You won’t be able to stop it.   You will be just as comfortable as you choose to be.    It is as simple as learning to smile more and meaning it!

 Find Happy People and Do What They Do

Birds of a feather flock together.  It is an old saying, but in most cases, it is true.  If you intend to be an unhappy, negative, and generally miserable person, you are going to seek out people and invest time in people who are going to promote that point of view for you.  You will find “friends” who are cynical about everything in their life and will get confirmation that they are right about how crappy the world is from you.  These people will avoid relationships with happy people because they will have to confront whatever makes them so damn miserable to maintain the relationship.  It is much easier for them to attack the happier person and try to minimize them as a person, usually by saying something negative about them behind their back.  If you want to be happy, getting rid of this behavior has to happen.  Here’s how.

You should find the positive people in your life and look to attach yourself to them.  You will start to see how they look at life and, more importantly, how they think about life.  These thought patterns are what you are looking to emulate because as you feel, so you are.

When you have relationships with people who don’t think life sucks and everyone is out to screw them, you will feel happier.  I can picture negative associations and make it easy to embrace negative thoughts about everything and everybody.  If you have ever worked in a place where this mentality is dominant, then you can understand how difficult it can be to be happy around that black cloud of misery, “this sucks,” “the boss is mean,” “they are trying to waste my time.”

Compare that to the work atmosphere infused with positive energy, which makes what you are doing seem to count and that you are an essential part of that process. You won’t be able to stop loving your job and doing it to the best of your ability.   In most work environments, you will have the opportunity to experience either kind of person, be positive and try to be happy, and like a moth to a flame, you will draw people looking for that attitude.   Please don’t allow the negative into your life. It is all up to your choices.

Let Go Of Bad Experiences and Anger Towards Others

One of the more helpful things that I have learned is that what has happened in the past affects your life today as you let it have.  Think about that for a moment.  We all have experiences that have not been pleasant to experience in our history.  We have all made bad decisions, and we have all made mistakes. We have all done wrong things.  That is life, and that is the way of it.  However, how we choose to live with these decisions or mistakes is totally up to us as people and directly leads to the amount of happiness you can experience.

I read a book about letting go, and it advised that when you think of a person or a situation, and you get an instant kind of burning feeling inside, there is something that you haven’t let go of.  Perhaps an experience you had from circumstances in your childhood, or it could be someone you feel has done something wrong to you.  There were both people and events that I was holding bad feelings against because I thought they had mistreated me and weren’t the people I thought they were.

I was holding on to the anger, hoping for some payback, and silently wishing bad things would happen to them so that they could feel as badly as I did.  When I started to release these feelings, I realized that I had the problem and not them.  I really began to look at things from other people’s perspectives, and by letting go of the anger, I found peace and even love.

Letting go of bad experiences is pretty a simple concept, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to do.   You think of the situation that brings up the negative emotions and asks yourself, can I let this go?  Then answer yourself honestly.  If the answer is yes, you will feel the difference almost immediately, and all of the negative will leave.

If honestly, the answer is no, you will still feel better about dealing with it. All you have to do to release it is to keep asking yourself, for me, eventually, anything that harmed me, I could let go.  This process is more complicated than it sounds because, as people, we sometimes have allowed negative experiences to define our lives.  If not for the long-term, for the short-term.  Letting go of these events and the people surrounding them can be scary.  But more dangerous still is the prospect of carrying the anger, guilt, shame, fear, etc., around you and being miserable for the rest of your life.  Practice letting goes, release the negative, and be much happier.

Happiness and joy are a choice, and the magnitude and measure of your life experiences these positives are based on your thinking.  Focus on gratitude, caring, kindness, and giving, and you will find a lot of happy moments.  Choose to focus on things you don’t have or the negative actions of others. Life is a tune that is meant to be played with positive notes. Any other music is played out of fear. Put the fear behind you.