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Happiness

how to get happier

Everyone wants to feel happy but sometimes we don’t know how to achieve it. In this section I share how I cultivate more joy in my everyday life.

Introduction:

Have you ever gone to bed thinking about all the things that went wrong that day, and all the items that you did not get done? It makes you feel overwhelmed, disappointed, and anxious. Not a good way to end the day.

Do you sometimes wake up and feel that you have nothing to look forward to? You see the day ahead filled with busy-ness and chores. You can’t imagine yourself having the energy to do anything fun, and you can’t think of anything that you would find fun anyway.

Although on paper I had a good life, with many positive aspects, I noticed that I was experiencing these negative thought patterns more often than I would like. Over time I have been able to change this. Starting with some simple gratitude practices, I developed an easy-to-use tracking method, which has helped me cultivate more joy in my everyday life.

What I did - in brief:

1. Start with simple gratitude: remembering three good moments each day

I read a number of books and listened to podcasts on the subject of self-development. A recurring suggestion was to practice gratitude. I began doing this by consciously noticing three good things that had happened that day before I went to bed. It did not take long for me to feel that this was helpful. My state of mind before falling asleep was improved. After a few days it became easier to think of the ‘good things’, and I found that sometimes my brain was giving me ideas during the day without deliberate thought. When this happened it would immediately give me a small, but noticeable boost of happiness.

2. Listing and categorising

At the time I wanted to be slimmer and I came to understand that I was attaching too much emphasis on eating as source of pleasure or happiness, which made it hard to be the size I wanted. Much of the guidance about how to stop overeating suggested replacing eating with other things that you enjoy. When I tried to put this into practice I felt stuck. I realised that I did not know what I enjoyed or how I could incorporate more of this into my life. I decided to give more attention to my “three good things”, so I started recording them in a simple digital journal which I began on google sheets. Each morning I write down the three best moments of the previous day. Then I give them a category. For example, nature, other people, places, animals. Over time this helped me to see that there were many different ways that I experience happiness. Lots of them were free or easy.

3. Learning and generating more happy moments

As I learnt (or remembered) more ways to be happy, I found that I was naturally beginning to include them more in my life. For example, since noticing that I enjoy seeing trees, flowers and animals I often choose to cycle through the park as part of my commute to work, instead of sticking to the busy roads with traffic. I am also able to be more intentional about including happy moments in when I plan my time.

I share this information to encourage you that it is possible to become happier, and experience more moments of joy on a daily basis. In the rest of the article, I will explain why cultivating joy is not only possible but also a tangible, achievable outcome supported by the very design of our minds. I will present some reasons why this method works by using our brain's natural ability to create new, healthier neural pathways.

If you would like to feel happier, I invite you to try this method, and see if it works for you.

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