What do you want?
A great job?
A fulfilling relationship?
Go sailing around the Pacific for a few years in your very own luxurious boat?
Or just to get along better with yourself?
Perhaps you want one of more of those things. But beneath those and many common wishes, if you take it a step further, often lies a wish to find happiness.
One good way to find a few useful, life-improving and time-tested tips is to look back. To look way back through history. To find ideas that have arisen in minds over and over the last few thousand years.
Here are seven such ideas about how you can find happiness. Maybe you’ll find them helpful.
And if you want to learn much more about inner happiness then have a look at my 12-week Self-Esteem Course.
1. You choose.
“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
How your view yourself and your world are conscious choices and habits. The lens you choose to view everything through determines how you will interpret what is happening. And from your interpretation you act. And all of this becomes your life.
You can choose to find happiness in small, everyday things. You can choose to interpret what happens in a positive way. Or in a negative way.
And your choices controls much of how much happiness your will find and create in your life.
2. Focus on the present, not yesterday or tomorrow.
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”
Helen Keller
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.”
James Oppenheim
You only have now. And now. And now.
Yesterday is a memory and you cannot change it. Tomorrow is just a fantasy in your mind right now.
So live more in the now, focus on the present moment and today. Think and worry less about yesterday and tomorrow.
Otherwise you might miss a great deal of happiness that is available to you right now.
3. Don’t forget to be grateful.
“Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”
Frederick Keonig
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Marcel Proust
One of the simplest and quickest ways to turn a negative and sour mood into a more positive one is to be grateful.
A few things you can feel gratitude for are for instance: The sunshine and the weather. Your roof. Your health. A good TV-show, a movie or a song. Your friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone walking down the street.
Just try if for a minute and see how it changes how you feel. And it’s a win/win solution.
You feel great because you are grateful about your world and the people you are grateful for feel great too because they feel appreciated. So don’t forget about gratitude or you may forget about the happiness that is already in your life.
4. Help someone else find happiness.
“Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
Buddha
“If you want happiness for an hour – take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day – go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year – inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime – help someone else.”
Chinese Proverb
“Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it.”
Bernard Meltzer
This is certainly one of the most popular ideas I’ve found about happiness. And it might sound cliched and empty. But it works very well.
When you make someone else happy – by, for example, helping them with something – you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you. And then, if you’d like, you can boost you own ego by thinking something like: “Wow, I really made him/her happy!”
And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. Or they might feel like helping/sharing it with someone else.
And so the two – or more – of you keep spreading the happiness.
5. Get rid of a couple of your less valuable desires.
“If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.”
Epicurus
“You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.”
Eric Hoffer
“That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.”
Henry David Thoreau
If you want less instead of more, more, more then your desires are more likely to be fulfilled. And if you throw away a few of those desires that you may not really want or need that much anyway you’ll probably start to feel less stressed and worried.
This is a calmer and better place to be to enjoy your day (tip #2) and to take the time discover the happiness that is already in your life (tip #3).
6. Do what you like to do.
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
Albert Schweitzer
“Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
A pretty obvious one.
But it’s still easy to trap yourself into doing what you don’t want to for many, many hours. And seldom do what you really love to do.
And I guess this one ties into tip #1. You may not be able to choose to do what you want to do right now. Or for many hours each day or week.
But you almost always have a choice to do more of what you really want to do. There is always time. Or time you can free up.
You have a choice.
7. Or at least do something.
“Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.”
Benjamin Disraeli
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain
One of the best ways to not find happiness is just to hold yourself back and do nothing.
Seldom show up.
Paralyze yourself through over analysis.
It’s not always easy to take action, it can be scary and hard and difficult. But if you don’t take action you’ll be missing out on a lot. Including many moments, people and experiences that can bring you a lot of happiness.
Henrik Edberg is the creator of the Positivity Blog and has written weekly articles here since 2006. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Gothenburg and has been featured on Lifehacker, HuffPost and Paulo Coelho’s blog.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Happiness is something we are all capable of obtaining. At times it may seem out of reach but it helps to know that this has been mankind’s struggle since time immemorium. There are countless people that feel unhappy everyday for various reasons, but it is all part of the ebb and flow of life. Focus on the good that you have and all the things that are even allowing you to read this blog online right now. Beauty and happiness are all around us, and if we take more time to stop and enjoy what life has to offer instead of concentrating on what it lacks for each of us personally, we will be profoundly more content.
happiness is within us all. We have a set point. So no matter what happens to increase this point — win the lottery or whatever, after a while we revert back to this set point that is within us all.
I truely enjoyed and your great work
God Bless
For all who are unhappy and unsatisfied, just take a look around the world to see all kind of misery, stop nagging, dont’t wait for something to make you happy, live to enhance your lives, use your brains so you’ll make something from youselves as i am doing.
Am a happy man cause i want to be.
This was an awesome article!!!! Just what I needed tonight! Would you mind if I post a link in my blogs? This is too wonderful not to share! Thank you!
Great blog –
Visit us on http://whyarewehere.org/forum
and help some others
Wow..thats awesome..make my life more higher..now i know the meaning how to be HAPPY
I have a hard time to stay happy and positive for a long period of time… its like I’m on a roller coaster and my emotions change from time to time. From happy to sad to not wanting to do anything…its like im going through different phases… Any way, i find this really weird
This was a good blog of course. But i just wish that being happy could be easier than it is…..
I would love to find happiness but it just seems like it’s not meant to be for me. I have a nice car,a good job and lots of possesions but that’s not what’s important to me. What’s important is love and friendship. That’s something that’s been really hard for me to find. Im a shy person and it’s hard for me to talk to people. Not only that but i dont even know what to say. So a typical day for me is to get up, go to work come home to an empty house and sit there alone till i go to bed and repeat. So it’s hard for me to be happy when i hate my life.
The only way into an aspiration such as hope; is with our loving desire for the most aesthetically, and positively higher thoughts, and feelings that we not only have in the nature ourselves but of our unniverse.
good read i belive that the quotes will be useful day to day
Thank you! thats alll i needed. im truley working on becoming happy again! i like the part about living in the NOW!
May there always be work for your hands to do;
May your purse always hold a coin or two;
May the sun always shine on your window pane;
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain;
May the hand of a friend always be near you;
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.
i was realy need to read all that about happiness couse i was very sad but now i feel better
thank you,
Heather and Adam, its good that you have nothing to get up to in the morning, that means that you can only go up from there.
You know have way more choices of how to change your life as opposed to someone who is already living the happy life of their dreams! At least, thats the bright side of the experience*.
*notice i didn’t put problem, becausse, how can you move up without haveing a ground at the bottom of the ladder?