How To Be Happy In 3 Straightforward Steps
On the home page of this website, in the eBook and in the social media material, I mention that you can be happy in 3 straightforward steps.
Well, I don’t say “straightforward” but the steps are not that complicated. They just take some time and dedication.
In this post we’ll take a look at these steps and dive into a deeper understanding in each of them.
As a reminder:
How to be happy in 3 straightforward steps:
- Understand what’s making you unhappy
- Change your perspective on happiness
- Choose happiness consciously
The steps themselves are pretty self-explanatory and you can get insights on all of them in “The 3 Steps to Happiness” eBook or by reading the blog.
Still I thought that it would be a good idea to take a closer look at each of the 3 steps since they serve as a good “quick start” guide to happiness.
So let’s take a look at the three steps to happiness one by one.
1. Understand What's Making You Unhappy
The claim behind this first step is that happiness is your natural state of being. In other words, you are happy unless you make yourself unhappy.
Now what are the things that make you unhappy? There can be many things of course, but what I am referring to here are two things in particular:
1. Your misplaced desire in economic or materialistic reward. The means to be happy (the incentive to succeed in life) can not be materialistic in nature.
You are told that you need something in order to be successful (happy) and once you start chasing those goals you make yourself unhappy in the process, because happiness is not, and never will be, the end result.
On the other hand, happiness should be one of your goals, if not your ultimate goal in life. Being happy will allow you to live your life to the fullest of its potential.
Imagine the things you could do if you could just drop all doubt, fear, stress and anxiety (in other words: be happy).
As mentioned, happiness is your natural state of being, but It’s just hard to get in touch with this happiness inside of us because of what we learn and how we are brought up.
Happiness gets buried under layers and layers of stress, anxiety or even depression.
Which brings us neatly to the next point about what’s making you unhappy.
Mental Illness Causes Unhappiness
Point 2. in what’s making you unhappy is:
2. Poor mental health.
In every case where it has been studied, mental health is the single most important determinant of individual happiness.
Our current way of life is so stressful that it often leads to anxiety and depression. You try being happy with an anxiety disorder! Not going to happen.
It should come as no surprise that mental health problems cause unhappiness (you don’t say). Statistics from all over the world show that anxiety and depression affect about 10% of the world’s population at any one time.
10% of the world suffers from anxiety or depression! That’s some 790 million people!
Think of it what you will, but I’d like to argue that this does not indicate that we are living healthy and happy lives.
What we are doing now is not working
What’s even worse is that even in rich countries, less than 33 % of people who suffer from mental illness receive treatment or care. In lower-resource settings, the situation is considerably worse.
Worldwide, depression and anxiety disorders account for up to 20 % of all disability. Even here in the happiest country in the world, Finland, 50 % of early retirement causes are mental illness based.
And it is especially the young people who suffer from mental health problems, since those who are forced to early retirement due to mental health issues tend to be less than 30-years old.
Globally 75% of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 24.
Something is very flawed in our current understanding of the world and the way we live.
We are living in a society that puts enormous pressure on the young, up to a point where they develop mental health problems and cannot function as a part of that society.
We can change it
We got sidetracked a bit, but it’s so imperative to understand that we are not dealing with some minor issues here.
The very fundamentals of our society may be in need of total re-structuring.
But before we can organise our societies in a way that allow us to live according to our basic human needs, this website was created as first-aid and early intervention to anxiety and depression.
Studies show that Early identification and intervention is the best strategy to prevent anxiety and depression.
Anxiety disorders are highly treatable (yet only 1/3 of those suffering receive treatment)
There are complementary and integrative health practices that help treat anxiety and depressive disorders, along with conventional medicine.
If you suffer from anxiety or depression, please seek professional help.
But in this website you will find inspiration, new perspective, complementary and integrative health practices that can help you with your process of healing anxiety and depressive disorders.
The Underlying Cause
Ok, now back to the point. What’s making you unhappy?
First I want to bring up again what I believe is one of the main causes of anxiety and depression. I’ve written about this a lot, but let’s recap the basic things that are not working.
I believe the underlying causes lie in the constructs of our society.
We are told by everybody (our parents, friends, teachers, the mainstream media) what success in life is and what we should do to get it, but many of the things contradict the way we feel inside.
We have created a world, where we have forgotten what’s really important and concentrate on things that we think will bring us happiness, but instead often cause sadness, anxiety, frustration and depression.
We have lost touch with our inner selves, our “true” selves. The true nature of a human being is that of love, joy and compassion.
We do not learn how to control or express our emotions in a healthy way, rather we are told to hide them and repress them.
Feeling Conflicted Breeds Anxiety
Take happiness for example: True happiness comes from deciding and expressing who you want to be. Finding meaning and purpose in life is shown to help in treating depression. Yet you are told that there are certain things you must do in order to be happy, e.g. get a college degree, get a high paying job, start a family etc.
When these two things contradict – the one you know intuitively and the one society imprints on you – you get frustrated, sad, anxious or even depressed.
I’ll present another example from one of my previous blogposts:
We are inclined towards playing games and having fun, but we have learned to ignore all the fun and exciting things we used to enjoy as a child. We are told not to be childish and act responsibly, which usually means act in a “serious” manner. Fun and games are not considered professional.
This, again, goes against what we know intuitively. All too often we are told not to express what is naturally found inside of us. As you can guess, all sorts of negative emotions follow, like feelings of anxiety and depression.
2. Change your perspective on happiness
Now that you understand what’s making you unhappy, you’ve already shifted your perspective of happiness.
It was (possibly?) The Buddha who said: “There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.” In other words, happiness is a state of being, not something you can get by accumulating material wealth.
But by understanding how to be happy despite outside circumstances, you can create a happy life full of joy, good health, wealth, loving relationships etc. quite effortlessly.
So I recommend changing your perspective. Make happiness the starting point, not the end result. You can’t get something and then be happy, instead you can be happy and then get anything you desire.
Shift your perspective. It’ not get something – be something, but be something – get something.
N.B! Being happy on the inside does not require you to lose all material wealth. We all need money and certain possessions to survive. So strive for money and wealth! Just understand that happiness comes first, money or other things things will not make you happy.
True Happiness Is Found On The Inside
So true happiness is found on the inside, not on the outside. This is something that we all know intuitively, yet we lack the means to change our behaviour. What does it even mean that happiness is found on the inside? How do we look for it in there?
Understanding how your mind works is key here. Your mind is made of two parts: conscious and subconscious. There are levels to the mind besides these two, like logic and intuition, but this is the rough cut. There are things you are aware of and things that happen without your conscious participation.
To understand how happiness comes from the inside, consider the fact that anywhere from 80 % to 100 % of your choices are made in your subconscious mind. That’s right. It may very well be, that even the choices that you think you make consciously have already been pre-decided in the subconscious mind.
Therefore you operate mostly based on your subconscious thought patterns. Habits, beliefs, etc. If you are not happy and tend to stress and worry, that’s a habitual pattern that you have learned.
You do what you have learned to do
Think about how people react in vastly different ways to circumstances around them.
Take a car crash for example. Some people who witness it just freak out and are unable to do anything but panic. Other people can remain calm and rush to the scene of accident to help others. Some may just run away.
They all witness the same event, a car crash. Yet, they react in a variety of different ways. Why?
Because of what they have learned to do habitually.
Some people can control their emotions and act in spite of how they feel inside. Others may even be filled with courage that they did not know they had.
The police officers and paramedics that arrive are able to sort things out almost without thinking about what they are doing. That’s because they have been conditioned to work under stressful conditions. They have formed beliefs and habits that allow them to perform according to their highest potential.
It’s not any different with you and your life. You react to any and all situations based on what you have learned and come to believe.
Think you could never be a paramedic? I bet you could! It’s just a matter of training.
Train yourself to be happy
Just as you can train to become a paramedic, you can train to become happy. You can form beliefs and habits that allow you to react to any situation with joy and peace of mind. You will know that everything will work out for you and that there’s nothing to worry or be sad about.
Change your beliefs, change your life.
And how do you change your beliefs?
By changing the way you think.
And what we think is dictated by our perception i.e. the way we look at things.
That’s why changing your perspective (perception, point of view) may be very helpful in living a happier life. Your perception of your life can be changed by increasing your awareness, as explained in the next blogpost.
3. Choose Happiness Consciously
“At its core, mental health or psychological well-being rests on the capacity of individuals to manage their thoughts, feelings and behaviour, as well as their interactions with others.”
– The World Happiness Report
It should be obvious, and as you can see from the quote it has been studied, that the ability to manage thoughts, feelings and behaviour determines whether you’re feeling happy or slipping into depression.
Therefore, after you’ve understood:
- What are the things that make you unhappy, and
- Why happiness is found on the inside rather than outside
The only logical question is: What do you choose to do with that information?
Do you continue to do the same old things and think the same old thoughts, that will keep giving you the same old results, or do you choose to act and think in a new way, producing new positive beliefs in the process?
The choice is yours and your alone.
Choose To Be Happy
That’s the only thing that ultimately differentiates happiness from depression: what do you choose to think, say and do?
Your thoughts and feelings are something you can control, but our parents, schools, societies etc. do not teach us how to do that. Well, at least here in the western countries.
In the east, practices for identifying and dealing with your emotions are more common, as well as practices like meditation, that help control your thoughts.
Thoughts and feelings are something you can choose. You already know you can choose your thoughts, it’s just a matter of making a habit out of thinking only positive thoughts.
Choosing feelings might be something new and a bit harder than choosing your thoughts.
We are so accustomed to reacting to things around us and letting those external events dictate our emotions, that we do not notice that we can actually choose how we react (feel) to different situations.
Remember the part from topic #2 about your subconscious mind? Anywhere from 80 % to 100 % of your choices are decided in your subconscious mind.
Instructing your subconscious mind to pick up happy patterns is where the “choosing feelings” comes into play.
Choose consciously your feelings (and thoughts), they will make up your beliefs. Your beliefs then guide you subconsciously towards a happier life.
Strong Feelings = Powerful Results
Feelings are the language of the subconscious mind. It understands and reacts to depth of emotion.
That’s what is often referred to as “raising your vibration” (or this can refer to measuring different types of brainwaves that have different frequencies or vibrations). In short: Strong positive thought or feeling = high vibration.
If you can learn to choose your feelings, choose the strongest, most positive ones, you can talk to your subconscious mind.
Your subconscious mind then makes choices for you based on these positive feelings, leading you to experience more and more positive things in your life.
What you think is based on your beliefs and your beliefs are influenced by the way that you think. It’s often a cycle as you can see. If you have a habit of focusing on the negative, you will think negative thoughts that form into negative beliefs – that in turn will cause more negative thoughts.
But if you form a habit of thinking only positive thoughts – Your whole life will change in ways you never dreamed possible.
Exercises
I can recommend three new habits for you that will help you with thinking positive thoughts.
If you want to be happy in 3 straightforward steps, try these 3 exercises.
1. What am I thinking?
You can condition yourself to think positively. Here are some ideas you can try. They may seem silly, but they are just methods for building a new habit – a habit of thinking happy thoughts.
- Make a new event in your calendar. Today 13.00-14.00: What am I thinking?
- Write it on your to-do list: What am I thinking?
- Make a notification to your phone and set an alarm for a time when you can be disturbed: What am I thinking?
- Put post-it notes around your house or office, or use a water-soluble marker to write this on your mirrors: What am I thinking?
- Make it your desktop background: What am I thinking?
The more you see these reminders, the more you remember to monitor your thoughts.
If you find yourself thinking negative thoughts, replace the thought with a positive version.
For example:
Your calendar app alerts you of an upcoming event: What am I thinking? Notice what you are thinking at the moment, like “I’ll never get this report done”. Replace the negative with a positive: “I can do this report in no time!”
It takes somewhere around 21 days for your brain establish new neural pathways and form a new habit.
Try this out, it can really help you rewire your brain.
Bonus: How Do I Feel?
After you’ve accustomed yourself to monitoring and choosing your thoughts, you can do the same with feelings.
Do the same exercise as above, but instead of “what am I thinking”
Write down: “How am I feeling?”
If you don’t like how you are feeling at the moment, choose a new feeling! Try it. Once you get the hang of it, it works like a charm.
Here are two tools to help you with changing how you feel (no connection with the Tapping Solution and the other link is to the resources on this site).
2. Journal Your Positive Thoughts Vs. Negative Thoughts
Example in the picture above. This will help you notice patterns in your thoughts and figure out if you spend your days focusing on the negative or the positive.
Take a notebook or open your laptop.
Divide a page into two columns.
- In the first column, write down everything that’s on your mind
- In the second column, give your thoughts a + or a – (positive or negative, does it make you feel good)
- Count the + and –
- If the total result is positive, go for more of those thoughts
- If negative, write down the positive version of your negative thoughts
Journaling will help you catch and break your negative thought patterns. Use exercise #1 to learn to catch and correct your negative thoughts as soon as they occur.
After you’ve accustomed yourself to monitoring and choosing your thoughts, you can do the same with feelings. Again, take the exercises above, and substitute thoughts with feelings.
Ask yourself: what am I feeling? And journal your feelings for a few days or weeks.
3. Meditation
As always, meditation is a useful practice for getting to know and choose your thoughts and feelings.
I’ve written about choosing your thoughts and feelings as well as instructing your subconscious mind on the page named “Beliefs” on this website. On the page you will find a short meditation practice that will help you monitor your thoughts.
It’s also a good read for getting to know your beliefs and workings of your subconscious mind.
Be Happy In 3 Straightforward steps
It will take some time and dedication to change your habitual patterns. Follow the 3 steps in this post and it will happen.
Just reading this post may have changed the way you think, thus creating new thoughts that will eventually turn into new beliefs.
As straightforward as the 3 steps are, there may in fact be just one small step you need to take:
Start with the end result. Be happy first.
Do not worry about the details of how you will achieve happiness. Think in a way, speak in a way, and do things in a way as if you already were happy.
That is one of the best ways to give instructions to your subconscious mind.
If you visualise yourself on a journey to happiness, your mind will provide you with plenty of opportunities to experience the journey – but the happiness will always remain at the end of the journey, just out of your reach.
On the other hand, if you visualise yourself being happy already, your mind will guide you to situations where you can experience the happiness.
Conclusion
To sum things up, you can be happy in 3 straightforward steps:
- Understand what’s making you unhappy
- Change your perspective on happiness
- Choose happiness consciously
Unhappiness is caused by two things in general:
- Misplaced desire in economic or materialistic reward
- Problems with mental well-being
Change your perspective on happiness from the outside to the inside. You have the means to be happy despite outside circumstances.
We spend most of our time reacting subconsciously to things that are happening to us. The key to being happy lies in your ability to create subconscious habits and thought patterns that allow you to react in a positive way.
Once you understand how much you operate on your subconscious programming, the question becomes: What do you choose to do about it? Do you choose to change your behaviour or continue doing the same thing, producing the same results.
Learn to monitor and choose your thoughts and feelings to create positive behavioural patterns. There are three exercises that help with this:
- Ask yourself constantly: “What am I thinking?”
- Journal your daily thoughts
- Meditate
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.
