The 7 Best Ways to Stay Happy
If you feel like you’ve hit a wall when trying to improve your happiness, this blog post is for you. Here I introduce to you the 7 best ways to stay happy that have worked wonders for me.
It’s normal to feel down sometimes, but we can all strive for longer and longer periods of happiness in between.
Finding lasting happiness may require you to form new beliefs about what it means to be happy. This will happen once you learn to think of happiness in a new way and change how you view your life and your role as the author of it.
If you’re in a hurry, you can find the top 2 ways to stay happy below or read on to dive deeper into lasting happiness.
My top picks
The best ways to stay happy
The negative beliefs you have are memories that have a negative impact on your life. They have often formed subconsciously, possibly in the very first years of your life. Once you identify a negative memory you can start to heal it.
Writing down just a couple of things to be grateful for each day will help you form a habit of noticing all the good things going on in your life.
The best ways to stay happy
The world happiness report, after conducting studies about happiness around the world for a decade, concludes that happiness is dependent on your ability to manage your thoughts, feelings and behavior.
To put it another way, staying happy is possible once you have learned to manage what you think and feel in any situation. Resilience to the circumstances around you is key to being happy and staying happy.
The 7 best ways to stay happy presented here have been selected based on their ability to spark a change in your thoughts, feelings and behavior. Implement these ideas in your daily life and you will develop resilience and learn to manage how you feel – despite the circumstances around you.
1. Start by taking care of yourself
If you’re having trouble staying happy, take care of yourself first. This means making sure your basic physical, emotional and spiritual needs are met.
Admittedly this is quite a large topic, but the fact is that you are a human being with wants, needs, hopes and dreams. If these are not met on the very basic level, it’s 100% guaranteed that you will not be happy.
So to address each one, I will give you the overview and link to content on this website where you can find more in-depth information.
1.1 Physical needs
These are the needs of your body.
One of the ways to stay happy is to make sure you are physically healthy. Our bodies and minds are connected so that one inevitably affects the other.
If you want to stay happy, make sure you are physically healthy.
The most important factors here are:
- A healthy diet
- Exercise
- Enough sleep
- Clothing and shelter
- Financial security
For an in-depth look, you can read
WHAT DOES A HUMAN NEED TO BE HAPPY: PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS
THE 4 INDIVIDUAL RISK FACTORS FOR DEPRESSION (HOW TO FIX THEM)
1.2 Emotional needs
These are needs of the mind and the basic things you must take care of are
- Family
- Friendship
- Intimacy
- Self-Esteem
Your emotional (psychological) needs must be met in order for you to live a happy life. If your emotional needs are not met, you may risk becoming sad, anxious or depressed.
Another thing to focus on is how to manage your emotions.
The fact of the matter is that we do not learn to control or address our feelings and emotions in a healthy way.
We (men in particular) learn to hide and repress our feelings which then pile up and take an unhealthy form later on in our lives. Uncontrolled anger becomes rage, unexpressed envy becomes jealousy and so on.
Any feeling that we repress and pile up inside of us instead of letting out, can lead to mental as well as physical illness.
For an in-depth look, check out
WHAT DOES A HUMAN NEED TO BE HAPPY: EMOTIONAL NEEDS
THE 4 INDIVIDUAL RISK FACTORS FOR DEPRESSION (HOW TO FIX THEM)
1.3 Spiritual Needs
We are three-part beings comprised of body, mind and spirit. Whatever spirit means to you, use that. It can be your subconscious mind, higher self, soul, the part of you that controls you without your conscious participation.
But spiritual in this context means your highest idea about yourself. Based on this idea, your spiritual needs are
- Fulfilling your highest thoughts about yourself
- Your relationship with God, the universe, or any higher power of your choosing
- Being about something bigger than you
spiritual needs can be met on multiple levels and often meeting one’s spiritual needs helps fulfill the needs on the other levels of the pyramid as well. What’s even more astonishing is, that fulfilling one’s spiritual needs may result in releasing the thought of “needing” altogether.
If you are looking for a deeper understanding of your spiritual needs, jump to
2. Keep a gratitude journal
This may be the best of the best when it comes to ways to stay happy. It is so easy to get complacent and forget how grateful we should be for everything in our lives.
The very fact that we are alive is a miracle of unimaginable proportions. Yet, we take things for granted and forget to appreciate things, big and small, that our lives have been blessed with.
If you want to be happier and bring about positive change in your life, you must first learn to appreciate the things you already have. ALL the things. Even the bad ones.
2.1 Be grateful for everything in your life
The “bad things” (good and bad are ultimately a matter of perspective) are there for reason. You experience something you would label as bad because your subconscious mind is repeating negative patterns you have picked up during your life.
Subconsciously you are putting yourself in these situations and gratitude can help break the cycle.
It’s a “good” thing to experience “bad” things. This way, you can identify patterns you have developed subconsciously and get rid of them so you don’t have to experience this particular thing ever again.
The “bad” things are caused by a subconscious thought pattern you will want to break.
2.2 Gratitude boosts your happiness
Gratitude is a good quick boost for your happiness too. You will notice that gratitude will bring an overall feeling of happiness with it. When you feel gratitude for something, you can use it as a reminder that there are many good things in your life and you shouldn’t worry all the time about the small things that you think are not good.
Once you learn how to make gratitude a part of your life every day, you will start feeling happier as well.
Feeling gratitude will also give you control. Once you learn to feel grateful, you’ll notice that you can, at will, conjure up other feelings too.
2.2 Write things down in your journal
Once you have identified some things that make you feel grateful, it could be beneficial to keep a journal of these things.
Writing down just a couple of things to be grateful for each day will help you form a habit of noticing all the good things going on in your life.
Pretty soon you will also have a journal full of things that make you feel grateful and going back to this journal might make it even easier for you to realize that things are going well in your life.
From my own experience, I can tell, that although I practice gratefulness every morning as part of my meditation routine, even coming up and journaling one thing once or twice a week is enough to keep you in a state of gratitude.
Or you can implement gratitude in your meditation practice.
3. Fix any negative beliefs you may have
One of the ways to stay happy is to eliminate the things that make you unhappy.
As mentioned in the previous point, bad things that happen in your life may be caused by your subconscious thought patterns.
These negative beliefs that you hold will subconsciously cause you to encounter the same frustrating situations over and over again.
Have you ever had thoughts like:
“Ugh, why does this keep happening to me?”
“Why do I always end up with the same type of partner?”
“I can’t be happy because the good times never last”
That is the way these negative beliefs make themselves manifest in your life and that is the first step in fixing them.
The “issues” you have, are memories, thought patterns or beliefs, that have a negative impact on your life. They have often formed subconsciously, possibly in the very first years of your life.
The key to working on those limiting beliefs is to get to know what situation, conversation or event, caused you to form that particular memory that turned into belief.
3.1. How to identify negative beliefs
The situations where your negative belief was formed might not have been at the moment apparently negative. But you may have subconsciously formed a negative belief based on the situation anyway.
For example, my parents divorced when I was five. As a result, I saw how much misery it caused my parents and thus I formed a belief that relationships bring only heartache. For tens of years, I could not have a loving, lasting relationship, because I believed relationships would only end in pain and grief.
Once I understood this, I was able to let go of that belief.
To find out what your limiting beliefs are, try one or more of these 5 methods:
- Consciously or subconsciously you are already aware of your issues
- Use meditation to connect to your subconscious mind to reveal your limiting beliefs
- Start healing one issue and more will surface
- Your dreams may reveal your deepest issues / limiting beliefs
- Take a test, a course, or read a book designed to find and fix your issues
3.2. How to change your negative beliefs
Once you have identified a limiting belief, you can start to heal the memory that caused it in the first place.
Remember, beliefs are formed as we make assumptions about events that unfold around us. You have a memory of an event that caused you to form a limiting belief. The key is to work on this memory.
After identifying the limiting belief and the memory that caused it, start healing the memory. Don’t worry if you are not sure what is the earliest (root cause) memory behind your belief. Just start working on one memory and others will surface, as discussed before.
Here I’ve written a complete guide to finding and fixing your limiting beliefs
4. Spend more time with friends and family
Humans are social beings and meaningful connection with others is fundamental for our well-being.
Touch, handshakes, and hugs release oxytocin, one of the feel-good hormones of your body.
We should value all of our social connections, not just the romantic ones (s). Furthermore, we should appreciate our relationships every day, not just on one day of the year.
Most of all, we should value the one relationship that we often neglect, but it is the most important relationship of our life: The relationship we have with ourselves.
Celebrate who you are. You are perfect and you most definitely are enough.
Valuing the relationship with yourself will help you build relationships with others.
Social connection improves physical health and mental and emotional well-being.
There’s quite a bit of research behind this statement. Some studies even show that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. Wow. Who knew?
4.1. TIPS FOR BENEFICIAL SOCIAL CONNECTIONS
- If you are happy from within, you are also more likely to feel connected. The most important relationship you have is the one you have with yourself. Take care of yourself first, be happy, and then all the other pieces will fall in place.
- Be happy first, then you will find it easier to make new friends and acquaintances.
- The benefits come from a subjective sense of connection, not the number of friends you have. If you feel like you are an introvert, find it hard to make friends, or have no friends, you can still have the benefits of social connection. Compassion, volunteering, giving and sharing all create a sense of connection and purpose.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you are lonely or sad, try reaching out to people. Research shows that people are willing to help if we ask for their help.
Related:
WHY FRIENDS ARE SO IMPORTANT: SOCIAL CONNECTIONS AND HAPPINESS
5. Drop your expectations
One of the causes of stress and anxiety is that we expect a certain outcome. It’s natural to want things to go well and nobody likes to see their long-awaited vacation plans get cancelled.
Still, the less you attach to outcomes the happier you will be.
Think about it this way:
If you feel like you need a certain thing or a certain outcome, you may begin to fear. You fear that there is something you won’t have or that there is something you already have but might lose
Worst of all, you may begin to fear that without a certain thing or an outcome, you won’t be happy.
If you think of things and outcomes that you want as preferences instead of needs, you have nothing to fear and nothing to worry about.
You don’t become unhappy when you don’t get what you want, because wanting it was simply a preference, not a necessity.
5.1 Change your wanting to preferring
To free yourself from your expectations, think of wanting or needing something simply as a preference. Then adjust the things you think and say accordingly.
So instead of the words want and need, use the words choose and prefer. Don’t say “I need money”. Say “I prefer money” or “I choose money” or whatever it is you might ‘want’.
Your mind does not distinguish between ‘good and bad’ instructions and outcomes, it is only there to provide you with the conditions to experience what you say you want to experience.
Using the word ‘need’ creates that reality for you. You effectively tell your mind that you don’t have that thing because if you already had it, you wouldn’t so desperately keep telling that you need it.
Your subconscious mind then guides you to the experiences that show you the lack, or the need, of the thing you say you need.
Release your expectations and you will find it easier to stay happy.
You can change your thoughts from needing to preferring by using techniques such as visualization meditation. Visualizing is especially useful in instructing your subconscious mind.
Related:
6. Learn to manage stress
Stress is one of the major blockers of your happiness. Stress itself is a normal reaction designed to get you out of sticky situations, but ongoing, chronic stress can cause or worsen many serious health problems.
Constant stress put you at risk of mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety. It can also cause physical issues, for example, high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, and strokes.
The world happiness report has found that mental health is the single most important determinant of individual happiness. Managing your stress will contribute to your mental well-being and in that way increase your happiness.
6.1 Breathing exercise for lowering stress
Breathing is a gateway between your sympathetic (the fight or flight, stress response) and parasympathetic (rest and digest, calm, at peace activities) nervous systems.
Since breathing is controlled by both nervous systems and you can control your breathing if you wish, you can use breathing to signal your sympathetic nervous system to release control over to parasympathetic nervous system i.e. release your stress and calm down.
Here’s a quick exercise you can do if you feel stressed:
- Take a deep breath in while counting slowly to 4
- Hold your breath while counting slowly to 7
- Exhale through your mouth and count slowly to 8
- Repeat
For even more stress relief, while breathing out visualize stress leaving your body. Use your imagination, use whatever images feel right to you.
Here’s an in-depth article about mediation and how to use it to relieve stress or anxiety
7. Go out and have fun!
You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand that fun and games help in many ways with your physical and emotional well-being. We all know this intuitively.
But our society has a way of preoccupying us with things that make us stress and worry, and make us forget the things that we once used to know and take for granted.
Whenever you see children playing, it becomes obvious that fun and games are a natural part of us. Children express with great joy the fun aspects of life, such as dance (movement in general), the joy of art and music, mysteries (especially fairy tales) and the wonder that life holds.
We should give more thought and make more effort towards bringing this out more in children, rather than trying to restrain what is natural.
When we grow up, the same inclination is still there, but we have learned to ignore it. We are told not to be childish and act responsibly, which usually means acting in a “serious” manner. Fun and games are not considered professional.
But when we repress our natural instincts, all sorts of mental problems occur. When we learn to do what feels right, rather than do what we are told is right, we learn to bring out the happiness naturally found within us.
7.1 things you can do to bring fun and games back into your life
4 ways to stay happy by having more fun and games in your life:
- Put time into your hobby or start one. The point is to do something that makes you happy and do it just for you. Whether it’s reading a book, going out dancing, or playing sports, do something that brings joy into your life.
- Gamify your life. This can be done with the help of mobile apps (or even better, without the help of one) which for example motivate you to move more. Go for a walk in the woods and see if you can find treasure. While walking in the city, try not to step on the cracks on the pavement. Think back to when you were a child. What things did you do that you don’t do anymore?
- Visit a park or playground. Enjoying nature is a healthy activity in and of itself, but you can always go out and play for no particular reason at all. Go sit on a swing in a playground just for the fun of it. Forget what other people might think of you.
- Practice awareness. Playful people notice and appreciate the beauty in the world. Be present at the moment (taking deep breaths will help you focus). Take note of the colours and smells around you. Feel the leaves and grass, and jump in a puddle if it’s wet outside.
Related:
The secret to staying happy
Becoming happy and staying happy may require a shift in the way you view happiness, life, and your role in them.
It took me 20 years of doing things I thought would bring me happiness to realise that I was not becoming any happier. In fact, my pursuit of happiness made me miserable.
From that realisation started a journey of total transformation, turning what I thought I knew about happiness upside down.
I came to understand that happiness is our natural state of being and something we can choose regardless of circumstances.
I explain it all in my book “The 3 Steps To Happiness” which you can download for free by filling out the form below.
Conclusion
The best ways to stay happy address your ability to manage your thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.
Staying happy becomes possible once you have learned to manage how you think and feel in any situation. Resilience to the circumstances around you is key to being happy and staying happy.
The 7 best ways to stay happy are:
- Start by taking care of yourself
- Keep a gratitude journal
- Fix any negative beliefs you may have
- Spend more time with friends and family.
- Drop your expectations
- Learn to manage stress
- Go out and have fun!
Disclaimer
The entire contents of this blog are based upon the opinions of the author. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. The information in this blog is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health care professional before trying any of the products or methods based on this content. I cannot guarantee that you will be free of stress, anxiety or depression, or that you will be happy. I simply want to share with you what I have discovered during my twenty years of seeking happiness and what has worked for me may not work for you.
