Be happy like her!

The Walk and Greet

My #1 Happiness Quick Fix. I will be doing a separate article on the massive amount of positive psychological and biological benefits of this quick fix. The concept is simple, go outside for a walk and say hi to everyone you encounter. Not everyone will return your greeting but that’s on them. When you find people that do return your greeting you will feel the positive. The positive will keep increasing as you say hi to more people. Bonus points if you can have a conversation exchange. I’ve made many friends simply by doing this activity. If you can add some nature to your walk that is a major plus.

Creating

Any kind of creating helps immensely. You don’t have to be an artist either, even simple stick figures will do. Drawing, coloring, painting, writing, building something out of blocks, etc all helps. You will be amazed how quickly you’ll be engrossed, and happy.

Journal Writing

My personal favorite. I use a password protected word document to vent. I also like to write down any happy events that have happened. It helps a lot to translate my thoughts into a tangible form and express emotions into reality. It also feels nice to know that I have happy memories saved so I don’t have to worry about forgetting them. Revisiting recorded happy memories is another great way to improve your day.

Exercise

Any kind of exercise you can get is great. Even simply going for a walk has a massive amount of physical and mood benefits. I personally recommend joining some kind of sport whether it be a pickup game or league. Sports are a great way to get a workout without even feeling like you are working out since you are having so much fun.

Connecting with a friend

Call, text, e-mail, hang out with a friend. Connecting with friends is a key component to a happy life that I will be exploring in greater detail in a future article.

Meditation

Almost every article and study I come across mentions the vast amount of benefits meditation provides. I will be covering it extensively in a future article.

Singing

Bust out in song! It doesn’t matter how good you are. A little song can go a long way in boosting your mood!

Dancing

I can’t dance to save my life but I find that trying certainly improves my mood!

Comedy

Laughter can instantly boost your mood. Find a funny movie, youtube clip, comedian, joke site, etc and once you start getting in some laughs you’ll notice a real change in your levels of happiness.

Listening To Music

Listening to music is a great way to ease your mind especially listening to classic. Heavier music might be a good way to vent energy and emotions though I haven’t looked into the psychology of it. There are many studies that demonstrate the mental and mood boosting powers of classical music.

Make Music

Making music is a fun and easy way to improve your mood. You don’t have to know how to play an instrument to make music. Singing as I mentioned before is one way, but also even using boxes as a drum set is an option. Learning an instrument is also a path you could take.

Gratitude

Gratitude is another concept that appears frequently in research and articles I come across. Most talk about making a gratitude list of 5 or so things you are grateful for. You can go beyond that and write or say what you are grateful for about yourself. Even thanking your body parts and your positive qualities helps. Also you can send a message to your friends telling them how grateful you are for their friendship and what is special about them. If you want to really improve someone else’s day, and your own, that is a great way to go.

Small Accomplishments

Focus on small accomplishments towards a larger goal, vs focusing simple on a larger goal. Take pride in the accomplishments you make towards that goal. This is a very important subject area that will have its own article.

Happy yet? I sure hope so! If you enjoyed this article sign up for the newsletter to receive updates on future articles.

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This how to be happy guide is not meant to cure depression. If you are seriously depressed please ask for help. You are worth it! You deserve to be happy!

“The difference between depression and joy is purpose. When you wake up in the morning, and your life means something to somebody other than you, then you have a purpose. If you don’t go do the thing you’re going to do then people’s lives will suffer. I think that kind of purpose, to live in service of humanity, to your family, your city, the world, I feel that is the purest form of joy.” – Will Smith Quotes

How To Be Happy According To The Professionals

RECOMMENDED BOOKS ON HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS – These books are excellent resources that helped inspire How To Be Happy – The Practical Guide

The Pillars Of Contentment – Building A Foundation For A Happy Life – Cheat Sheet

These areas are the core of learning how to be happy

1) Meaningful job, educational path, or personal interest
2) Realistic, meaningful plan for the future
3) Exercise
4) Relationships
5) Time in Nature
6) Health, Diet and Nutrition
7) Relaxation and Stress Management
8) Contribution and Service
9) Recreation and fun
10) Learn And Grow Mindset

Bonus: Activities Examples that Cover Multiple Pillars – Sports, Playing a Musical Instrument, Chess

The Pillars Of Contentment – Building A Foundation For A Happy Life Explained

The basic foundation to build a content and happy life. You don’t have to hit all of the sub areas, they are simply suggestions on ways to meet each criteria. Many activities include multiple, or even all of the pillars. Listed below on each top are resources that could help you. Each section is certainly not complete. My goal is to provide information to help you understand and build each pillar.

1) Meaningful job, educational path, serious personal interest, or a combination.

Recommended Books:

• Think And Grow Rich – By Napoleon Hill
• What Color Is Your Parachute? 2017: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers – by Richard N. Bolles
• 80,000 Hours: Find a fulfilling career that does good – by Benjamin J Todd – 80,000 Hours Website and Resources
• Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition – By Kerry Patterson
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change – By Stephen Covey

Having a job gives you a purpose, helps you keep your sleep patterns in check, and helps you maintain the minimum or more economic resources.

Seek Experiences Over Money and Objects

Money only makes you happy to a point according to:
Everything you need to know about whether money makes you happy.

Buying objects provides brief happiness.

Experiences however can actually grow in value. Also, having experiences can work towards other Pillars Of Contentment such as socializing.

2) Realistic, meaningful plan for the future

Recommended Resources:
Self Authoring

It is not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs,
who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows great enthusiasms,
the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst,
if he fails,
at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
– Theodore Roosevelt

Long Term Plans

Imagine you were taking care of yourself like you were someone you were actually trying to care for. I’m caring for this person, I want their life to go as well as possible. What would their life have to be like for that to be the case? – Jordan Peterson

Create a meaningful plan for yourself of how you’d like your life to be. What would you want your story look like in three years?

Almost all the positive emotion that any of you are likely to experience in your life will not be a consequence of attaining things it, it will be a consequence of seeing that things are working as you proceed towards a goal you value. – Jordan Peterson

Short Term Plans

In addition to long term plans, create short term plans. This can include weekend plans and day to day plans. Try to plan in something fun so that you can look forward to it. You don’t necessarily need to follow through, but simply having the plan and having something to look forward to can make a world of difference.

Systems Vs Goals

Instead of focusing on daily goals, focus on a system that automatically helps take care of those goals. For example creating a schedule. Having a system can greatly help with your self discipline.
“Self discipline is twice the determinate of success compared to intelligence.”

3) Exercise

There is an incredible amount of research that reinforces the positive impact of exercise such as stress relief, self esteem boosting, improved blood pressure, lower risk of heart disease and stroke, cognitive improvement, weight loss, etc. There are so many benefits and the great news is that it doesn’t have to be spending hours at the gym. Even simply going for a 30 minute daily walk has massive benefits over not working out at all.

Sports are a great way to workout because you get exercise while having fun, and socializing.

4) Relationships

Recommended Books:

Self / Personal Relationship

How do you talk to yourself? How do you treat yourself? Do your best, weed out the bad stuff, be supportive of yourself, listen to yourself over others.
King of yourself – Vision, Speech, and willingness to explore the unknown
Have a positive mindset and relationship with yourself
Treat yourself like you’d want someone to treat you
Think Good, Be Good, Do Good
Be humble. Kill the ego.

Social Relationships

Try to find at least five friends, including at least one or two people that you can really talk. Be Proactive, not reactive. Move beyond small talk.

Romantic Relationships

Work towards a close, intimate, romantic relationship. This subject alone has countless books and websites so it will not be expanded on much here.

Meetup.com and dating sites are great ways to meet people.

The Four Agreements

From The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book) – Reading this book is highly recommended.

1. Be Impeccable with your Word:

• Speak with integrity.
• Say only what you mean.
• Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others.
• Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally:

• Nothing others do is because of you.
• What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.
• When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions:

• Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want.
• Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama.
• With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best:

• Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick.
• Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

5) Time in Nature

We increasingly spend our lives in artificial environments— walled inside and divorced from nature. Within these nature-free settings, noise is often annoying, and lighting is often artificial, of low intensity (often less than 10% of the light intensity on sunny days), and composed of nonnatural spectra and rhythms. As the burgeoning field of environmental psychology demonstrates, the psychological costs of such settings can be wide-ranging.
These costs include disruptions of mood, sleep, and diurnal rhythms. Cognitive costs include short-term impairment of attention and cognition as well as long-term reduced academic performance in the young and greater cognitive decline in the elderly. Further psychological difficulties occur in special populations such as those with Alzheimer’s disease and postsurgical patients.
– Roger Walsh

6) Health, Diet and Nutrition

Recommended Books:

Eating properly and taking care of your health can make a world of difference. Eating properly can significantly boost your energy and quality of life. Also it helps to improve your health and help you live longer. Making sure you take care of your health in general is a major factor to being happy.

Lots to expand on this area.

Bulletproof Diet, list of 31 core
Importance of diet as said by Roger

7) Relaxation and Stress Management

Recommended Books:
Good books on meditation, writing, etc (Stephen King on writing?)

Activity Ideas:
Meditation – HUGE
Yoga
Playing and listening to music (especially classical) – HUGE
Reading – HUGE
Writing (Especially journal for stress) – HUGE
Stressball
Do fun stuff (Recreation) (Plan for this daily)
Gratitude List (study from Perma) – HUGE

8) Contribution and Service

Helping people can make you feel happy. You could volunteer or simply help an old lady cross the road or hold a door. A little bit can go a long way and you can completely change someone’s day and their life by showing a small amount of care. And the best part is it makes you happy as well.

This story is a great example of someone deemed a failure finding purpose through helping:
How Teaching A Fellow Inmate To Read Changed “No. 1 draft bust in NFL history” Ryan Leaf’s Life To The Positive

9) Recreation and fun

Having time dedicated to having fun is a very important way to de-stress and bring extra happiness to your life. It is very important to schedule time for fun to balance out the rigors of the work life. Recreation can be a great chance to get more socializing in as well.

Activity Ideas – Go for experiences over objects – Money does not buy happiness

Creating / Art
Sports
Meetups
Events – Local and
The importance of creating a weekend (daily too?) plan even if you don’t end up doing it

10) Learn and Growth Mindset

Recommended Books:

Fixed vs Growth Mindset According To Positive Psychology

The Fixed-Mindset aim is to achieve validation. The person constantly tries to prove himself, and is highly sensitive to being wrong or making a mistake. Failure brings doubt, demeans character, and destroys confidence. As a result, a person with a fixed-mindset, always feels anxious and is vulnerable to setbacks or criticisms.

The Growth-Mindset is about achieving mastery and competence. The person believes that superb personal qualities can be learned, developed or cultivated. Failure is only feedback about performance, not a judgement of personality, potential or value. A person with growth-mindset is eager to learn to boost performance and enjoys exploring, experimenting and stretching limits. Criticism and setbacks have little negative impact.

Disclaimer

I am not a medical professional and none of what I have written should be regarded as professional medical advice. This guide is not meant to instantly bring you happiness and be an all inclusive solution.

The intent is to help you build a foundation for a successful and happy future and to provide you the resources to further explore the subject. I highly recommend exploring the subject matter using the links to the professional resources provided.

The Pillars Of Contentment – Building A Foundation For A Happy Life article is based on the research of Psychologists Dr. Jordan Peterson, Dr. Roger Walsh, Brené Brown,Dr. Russ Harris with slight hints of the PERMA model.

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Important takeaways from his talk on how to deal with depression include:

* When you are dealing with a person who is really depressed have them try antidepressants. If they die you can’t help them. Some people are against them but don’t toss out any possible solutions because you might not have the luxury. My opinion is that I know it is a touchy subject but if you or someone you know is depressed it is worth talking to a professional about all your options. I have resources provided in the “Need Help?” tab of the website.

* Live in reality, grow up, and take responsibility. Just like how Peter Pan didn’t want to grow up some people don’t want to grow up. But what is Peter Pan King of? An imaginary world, so, nothing.

* Create order in your life. Wake up at the same time every day. Get a job. It gives you a reason to wake up at the same time every day. Not waking up at the same time every day throws your circadian rhythms alone is enough to make you depressed. A job gives you structure.

* Create a basic foundation to build up from. Get a job, even if it isn’t one you like. Make friends. Work towards an intimate relationship. Stay away from drugs and alcohol. Take care of your health. Get up every morning at the same time. Have a purpose. Don’t sacrifice your stability. These are foundational pillars to use to build your life on.

* Positive emotion is a consequence of seeing things working as you proceed towards a goal you value. This is in contrast to thinking that achieving a major goal will make you happy, when in fact it leaves you with “what do I do now?”. For example the people that think they will be happy for months after finally handing in their PHD Thesis. They end up feeling depressed because they don’t know what to do with themselves anymore.

“Almost all the positive emotion that any of you are likely to experience in your life will not be a consequence of attaining things, it will be a consequence of seeing that things are working as you proceed towards a goal you value.”

* Most of our positive emotion is goal pursuit emotion. The reason people enjoy drugs like cocaine or amphetamine is because they turn on the systems that help you pursue goals.

* You can’t force structure on yourself. Negotiate with yourself. Figure out your aims. Even if you are so depressed you feel like you don’t have any aims, pick the least objectionable aim. Act it out for a while if you have to and after enough time you will start to believe it.

Small accruing gains that repeat unbelievably powerful.

Ask yourself what you’re willing to do in order to have a good day. What would you need to do to have an interesting day and one where you didn’t feel guilty for not getting done things you said you were going to do? If you practice this for three or four days your brain will tell you.

For example it will tell you “Well you know there’s that piece of homework that haven’t done for like three weeks you should knock that sucker off because it would only take you ten minutes and you’ve been avoiding it and torturing yourself to death for like 72 hours straight.” And then once you have that done you can focus on other interesting things and not have the weight of the obligation hanging over you.

* Look at your life and you can see what isn’t right about it. Notice what you can fix and what you can’t. Focus on what you can in fact fix. People often try to fix what they can’t fix.

* The power of story of your environment.

“Here’s a classic experiment. You take two groups undergraduates, you bring them into your lab and you give one group a multiple-choice test that has a bunch of words in it that are associated with being old and you give the other group the same multiple-choice test except the words are associated with being young. This is independent of the content of the test. It’s just descriptions and then you time the undergraduates as they walk back to the elevators.

The ones who completed the multiple-choice test that had more words associated with aging walk slower back to the elevators and they don’t know that they are doing it. That study has been replicated in various forms many many times. You’re unbelievably sensitive to the story that your environment is telling you because your environment is not made out of objects, that’s just wrong.”

*

Life can be meaningful enough to justify its suffering. Some people will tell you what you can be happy, those people are idiots. There’s gonna be things that come along that flatten you so hard you won’t believe it, and you’re not happy then and so if life is to be happy well in those situations what are you doing. Why even live. But life isn’t to be happy. If you’re happy you’re fortunate and you should enjoy it you should because it’s the grace of God so to speak.

* You’re not meant to be happy all the time.

* Focus on meaningful things! You know when you are doing something meaningful, so why not do meaningful things all the time? The struggle is because people want you to do other things but everything is a struggle.

* YOU HAVE A CHOICE WHEN IT COMES TO MEANING

People have a choice. Choice number one, nothing you do means anything. Well that’s kind of a drag right. Meaninglessness of life and all that existential angst you know that’s kind of a pain but the upside of nothing that you do is meaningful so you don’t have to do anything. You’ve got no responsibility now. You have to suffer because things are meaningless but that’s a small price to pay for being able to be completely useless.

The alternative is everything you do matters. If you make a mistake, it’s a real mistake. If you betray someone you tilt the world a little more sharply towards evil rather than good. It matters what you do well. If you buy that then you can have a meaningful life but there’s no mucking around. It means responsibility, it means that the decisions you make are important, it means that when you do something wrong it’s wrong. Well do you want that?

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