What DOES create happiness and an overall sense of satisfaction with life?

Here are my top three tips on how to find your happy.

#1. Start a Gratitude Journal

What we acknowledge grows bigger. When you start to focus on the things that you are grateful for, more of those things show up. A great way to be more aware of all of the amazing gifts in your life is to start a gratitude journal and actually write them down.

Each day, write down 3- 5 things that you are grateful for. Include what you are grateful for about you. The first few days it will be easy. You will write down the things you are obviously grateful for. After a few days, you will have to look beyond what you are currently aware of. As you do, you will begin to see that your life is filled with gifts all around. The air you breathe. The beauty of the nature around you and so much more. Focus on gratitude. Gratitude grows.

#2. Practice

A great place to start is to practice being happy, even if it’s just for 10 seconds at a time. You can choose it again as many times over as you like. Let’s say you have 10 seconds to live the rest of your life and in that final 10 seconds, you’d like to be truly happy. Choose it! Choose happy. That life time is over. You have another 10 seconds to live the rest of your life. What do you choose? Happy? You certainly can. Every 10 seconds, if you’d like, you can choose to be happy. If you stop being happy and you notice, choose again. “Wait! Somewhere my happy got lost. This is a new 10 seconds. In this 10 seconds… I choose happy!”  It really is that simple.

#3. Don’t Take on Other People’s Stuff

So much of what gets in the way of our happiness is other people’s stuff. Our co-workers are unhappy. Our family members are unhappy. Our friends are unhappy. The other drivers on the road are unhappy. And we decide, ‘Oh! I should be unhappy too.”

Are you willing to be as different as you truly are? Are you willing to be happy even if no one around you is?

Here’s a great tool you can use. It’s called, ‘Who does this belong too?’ The thing is, you are like a gigantic radio picking up on everyone and everything around you and guess what? That includes a lot of unhappiness. So, the next time you feel unhappy, ask, ‘Who does this belong to?’ If you feel lighter when you ask, you’re not the unhappy one. You are just picking up on others. Let that unhappiness go! Choose the happiness that is available.

Being happy is not like winning the lottery. It doesn’t happen to only a few while the rest of us dream about it. It is available to everyone. Practice gratitude, practice choosing happiness, don’t take on other people’s misery and you will find satisfaction in life.

Grateful for you,

Dain

P.S. For more tips and tools for choosing happiness and so much more, you can visit my page here and sign up for my free Tour of Consciousness Video Series.

And for the full article from Balance by Deborah Hutton, go here.