Happiness involves a simple equation, but why is it that most people find it difficult to achieve it? Is it specially designed for a specific group of people? Is there really a secret behind obtaining happiness?
These are not complicated formulas for happiness, but we need to keep in mind that setting our priorities in life can increase our chances of experiencing genuine happiness. This means that our choices can affect our quality of life in the future.
For instance, setting priorities for someone else can result in wasting your life because you have lost the opportunity to focus on what is good for you. When you have lost sight of more important things, you are also letting happiness slip by. Your choices become limited and you do not know how you should live your life.
Making mistakes and being too hard on yourself because of past failures can also drive away happiness. You find it difficult to forgive yourself because you think your failures define you as a person. What you have failed to realize is that these failures are only a tiny fraction of what you are as a person.
They don’t define nor shape you. If you let these failures dictate how you should live your life, you will end up living a miserable life trying to run away from the ghost of the past.
There are no general rules to achieving happiness, but re-evaluating your priorities when it is not aligned to what you really want in life can make a huge difference.
Happiness does not demand you to sacrifice or change something because you just need to embrace what you already have and cultivate them so you will learn to appreciate life no matter what it throws at you. Making a choice to be happy is a simple decision, but we often complicate our ability of making a choice.
Spend as much time as you can doing something you love to do.
Often, we push away our own needs in favor of the needs of our loved ones, such as aging parents, our spouse or children. While this is a noble practice, we cannot neglect our own bliss in the process. Make it a practice to do something that fuels you as much as you can.
A single mom who works all day and then takes care of her children at night might start to feel depleted. However, if she loves to crochet, this is something she could do for 15 minutes after the kids are in bed. By spending just a little time on herself, she’ll feel a little “fuller” in terms of her own happiness.
Surround yourself with people who want to be happy.
This might sound like a strange request, but it’s important: if you want to be happy, the fastest way is to hang around with people who are happy. In other words, it’s time to distance yourself from emotional vampires.
Certainly, you can’t do that 100% of the time, especially if the toxic individuals are your coworkers or relatives, but you can minimize the impact they have on you by minimizing your contact with them. Replace them with people who genuinely care about you and want you to lead a fulfilled life.
For example, a man may have an office colleague who enjoys bringing everyone down with his negativity. The man cannot completely cut himself off from this colleague, but he can help bolster himself by starting to form relationships with colleagues who are more positive. Maybe he can even try to use the positive energy he develops to make his negative coworker more positive.
