Happiness—the universal desire, yet the path to it remains a mystery.
Is there even a fixed route to finding happiness? Or are we being elusive, failing to realize that we’ve been chasing something that’s already within us?
Let’s explore these questions and discuss some concrete strategies that can lead us to our own pools of happiness.
What is Happiness?
Happiness is a state of feeling fulfilled and contented within ourselves. It’s a subjective term, and its definition may vary from person to person depending on what they want or desire in life. For some, it might mean finding the perfect partner, while for others, it might be hidden in climbing the ladder of their career. So, how do we define it? How do we find our happiness? And what are the steps that bring us closer to this concept of being happy and fulfilled?
Stick to the article while we reveal the steps that will help you find your joy and higher purpose.
Survey Question
On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your current level of happiness?
Ways to Find Your Happiness
While you feel tempted to find ways to become happy, it is almost peeking at you from the inside. To reach the realization that happiness isn’t something that we seek outside, it takes a whole long journey to be traversed and then reach where we already are.
To simplify things, here’s what you can do to feel happy and fulfilled in life.
#1: Go Deep Within
One thing is certain: happiness is not something that you would find outside of yourself. No matter what you desire—you, anyway, have to go deep within and make the self-inquiry as to what you want from life to feel happy and content. If you think remaining on the surface and chasing material goals would make you happy, you are living in an illusion.
Happiness is something that we feel from within when we connect to our spiritual side. Knowing our true wants and desires only comes from going deep within.
🎭 Try This Activity:
Find yourself a quiet corner in the house or outside in the garden, where you feel relaxed. Take a pen and a copy. Play soothing music to calm your senses and bring yourself to total calm and ease. Now, allow your thoughts to float freely and ask yourself some deep questions about life. Don’t force yourself into finding the answers. See if they appear naturally. Observe yourself with patience and gratitude, and try to journal the main points as the answers appear in front of you.
Sample Questions:
What are my deepest fears?
What is it that I am grateful for?
What is my life purpose?
What do I want to do in life?
#2: Practice Self-Love
When we say practice self-love, it means loving yourself in totality, whether it’s your mind, body, or soul. Taking care of your physical health, accepting your flaws and limitations, and allowing yourself the time and space to grow as you desire in life is what all encompasses being self-loving. When we do all this, we are creating a conducive environment for you to bloom as you overcome the challenges of life.
It might appear simple at first, but it requires deep courage and commitment to accept where you are and work towards where you desire to be. Other than being completely honest with yourself, it seeks a strong determination to raise your standards and then striking by them throughout.
🎭 Activity
Prepare a list of activities that you must do to uplift your body and spirit. It could be having a 30-minute walk in nature, listening to your favourite playlist, practicing meditation, or spending time on a hobby that you love to do.
#3: Practice Gratitude
When we say practice gratitude, it doesn’t mean you are asked to limit your thoughts and force yourself to feel happy in whatever you currently have. Instead, it means shifting your alignment and feeling happy so that you can attract abundance. Practicing gratitude is all about keeping yourself in a grateful mind frame so that the universe can interpret it as your permanent frequency and give you all the more reasons to be grateful for.
To go deeper into this practice, you can start by recording the events in writing for which you feel grateful. Or else, keep a gratitude journal with you so that you can engrave the grateful moments in your mind and maintain a grateful pose and attitude toward life.
SHOP ON AMAZON🎭 Activity
Consider being grateful to everyone around you. You can do it by writing the points (for which you are grateful) against the name of the person. Do this, and see how your mood and perspective shift with this one simple exercise.
#4: Be Mindful
Mindfulness is when you give conscious thought to everything you do. Instead of remaining in autopilot mode and going about your actions without thinking or being fully present in it, it’s important to pause and reflect. When we perform every act with mindfulness, we are giving ourselves the opportunity to respond as opposed to reacting to every situation.
Here’s an interactive quiz to find out how mindful you are:
- When you experience strong emotion (could be positive or negative), you:
a) Observe it without judgment
b) Disregard or Reject it
c) Bring your reaction to it
- Do you feel grateful for the smaller things in life?
a) Always
b) Sometimes
c) Never
- In most of your relationships, you
a) listen to people carefully
b) feel distracted and find it hard to pay attention to them
c) often remain absent-minded
Mostly A’s: You are following a decent mindful practice and should continue to remain on the same path.
Mostly B’s: There is a scope for improvement when it comes to practicing mindfulness. Deepen your practice by integrating the smaller steps into your routine.
Mostly C’s: You lack the ability to remain mindful in your life situations. Start to practice mindfulness by taking smaller steps, and soon, you’ll notice the difference in the quality of your life.
#5: Maintain a Positive Focus
In the pursuit of happiness, it is important that we maintain a positive focus. Positive focus means directing our attention to what we have rather than what we lack. It may seem simple as we read through this, but it requires a great deal of virtue to practice it in reality. Most people mistake positive focus for pretending that everything is good and rosy even when it isn’t. The idea behind this is to keep a mind frame where we feel content while working towards our wishes and desires.
A study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology found that the individuals who maintained a positive focus experienced less stress and enjoyed greater life satisfaction.
🎭 Activity
Consciously try to divert your attention from what you are cribbing about to something that you are grateful for and see how it instantly lifts your mood and emotion.
#6: Be Consistent
If you are in pursuit of happiness, know that you need to stay consistent on your path. Just like a butterfly flits from place to place as you try to catch it, happiness doesn’t stop by when you are actively chasing it. You can remain consistent in your ways and see happiness making a permanent room in your life.
You can include ways in which you are reinforcing positive thinking, enhancing self-discipline, and even building positive habits (exercising, spending time in nature, practicing gratitude, and so on) to remain committed to your happiness journey.
#7: Be Altruistic
Altruism is where we become selfless and keep a mindset of giving to others.
A study published in the Journal of Economic Psychology found that people who spend on others are more likely to experience life satisfaction and contentment than those who spend on themselves.
When we make it a habit for reserving our acts of giving, believe it or not, it gives us true joy and excitement. This is when we reach the true realization that happiness doesn’t lie in maximizing possessions but in living a life with true purpose and a sharing mindset.
🎭 Activity
Perform an act of random kindness (donate to the needy, pay for someone’s grocery items, say kind words to lift someone’s mood, or pass a smile to generate positive emotions) and observe how it made you feel from within.
#8: Avoid Comparison
One of the most important ways to stay happy is to remain content from within, no matter what. This can only be achieved when we stop comparing ourselves to others. It’s easy to fall into the trap of comparison, especially when following social media of friends and family. This often generates feelings of envy and dissatisfaction. Learning to be comfortable in our own skin is a great skill to master if we are serious about achieving happiness.
Case Study:
Consider the life of Samantha, who is a successful IT professional and is married to a wealthy merchant. She has achieved a lot of milestones in her life but ends up feeling inadequate and jealous due to her friend staying ahead of her in terms of money, power, and position. It won’t be an overstatement to say that comparison is the thief of joy, as no matter what she does, she always keeps herself in the loop of feeling dissatisfied and envious even when she has a lot to be proud of.
Survey Question
Keep track of 24 hours and see how often you fall into the trap of comparative thinking. Be honest with yourself and catch yourself doing your comparison with others.
#9: Keep a Journal:
Maintaining a journal is a great way to reach the realization of what makes us happy and how often, we stand in our ways of becoming truly happy and content. You can start by penning down your daily occurrences, any prominent event, or any specific matter that requires your attention or contemplation. When you get into the habit of writing down your emotions and feelings, you are putting yourself in a greater charge and authority to deal with them in an effective and humble manner.
Case Study:
A study conducted by Dr. James W. Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, explored that expressive writing helps put individuals in a positive and strong mindset.
Participants were asked to pen-down their deep feelings and emotions for a week. They were required to write almost everything that impacted their mood and emotions from time to time.
Findings:
Individuals who maintained this habit and participated in expressive writing reapped several emotional and psychological benefits. They managed to process their emotions more effectively and experienced a higher sense of psychological well-being.
Conclusion:
Journaling provides a safe way to sail through tough emotions. It makes it easier for us to throw our complaints, disappointments, and concerns on a piece of paper and then reflect back on those with a calm mind. This brings clarity to our minds and helps relieve emotional turmoil.
🎭 Activity
Maintain a journal for a week—write down your daily happenings and occurrences and observe how you allow your emotions to vent without being judgmental.
Quick Tips to Find Happiness
- Exercise is the Key to Happiness As we all know, a healthy mind resides in a healthy body. Therefore, it isn’t difficult to understand that if we are chasing a healthy frame of mind and want to experience the peak of joy and ecstasy, maintaining a healthy body is a prerequisite. And what’s better than indulging in regular exercise and keeping ourselves physically fit—ready to take every challenge that comes our way?
👉 Pro-Tip:
When it comes to investing time and effort in physical activity, there’s nothing better than making yoga a part of your life. It promotes mind-body sync and brings balance to life.
- Find Happiness in Small Things
We often make the mistake of seeking happiness in our bigger possessions and accomplishments, whereas it actually works the other way around. Finding joy in small things is what aligns us with the right attitude. It allows us to maintain a positive focus and appreciate the things we have in life. By adopting a microscopic view of how blessed we are, we attract more people and experiences that make us feel the same way.
- Surround Yourself with ‘Happy People’
Make it a point to surround yourself with happy and positive people. Your company can have a great impact on how you feel and the kind of attitude you adopt to sail through life. When you keep the company of people who are strong-minded and humble in their approach, it will help you instill a strong mindset and keep you well-assigned with the frequency of happiness and vitality.
- Find Your Own Joys
Find time to spend on hobbies or activities that give you happiness. As discussed above, happiness is a subjective matter. What gives happiness to one person might not work for the other. This is when it becomes crucial to find your own joys and invest time in doing things that make you happy. It could be painting, gardening, spending time with friends, playing an instrument, riding a bicycle, or trying your hand at pottery.
🎭 Activity
Try a new hobby and see how you feel about it. This way, you’ll surf the uncharted territory and explore new truths and facts about yourself.
Takeaway
After a careful and contemplative read, it is easy to deduce that happiness is like a butterfly. The more you try to catch it, the more it flies. Also, it often comes and sits on you when you are peacefully sitting at one place.
So, there’s a lot that we can learn from this analogy, and we should try to shift our perspective so that we do not make our achievements or material possessions a base on which to become happy in life.
Sources
- Duke Centre for Healthcare Safety and Quality: Happiness Strategies
- City of Madison: What Are the Secret Ingredients for Happiness?
- Black Dog Institute: The Science of Happiness
- Action for Happiness: Ten Keys for Happier Living
What defines happiness according to the article 'Your Guide to a Happier, More Fulfilling Life'?
