3 Steps to Happiness

Happiness is elusive.  Maybe you see other people around you smiling, laughing, and enjoying life and you wonder just how they can be so “naturally happy.”  The truth is there’s no secret to happiness.  It lies within yourself, and you can make the choice to be happy.

Happiness is completely within your own mind and your own perspective on your life.  You think thousands of thoughts every day, and each and every one of those thoughts has a big impact on your happiness.  Here are three steps to help you find your own happiness:

Step 1) Be aware of your thoughts.  As you saw in the above paragraph, your own mind has a huge impact on your happiness.  In fact, if you’re unhappy you’re practicing it every day. You have thousands of thoughts moving through your head every day – and most of those thoughts are negative!

You may be mentally complaining about the bad weather.  In winter, it’s too cold.  In spring, it’s too rainy.  In summer, it’s too hot.  And in autumn, it’s too windy.  You may be mentally complaining about your family.  Your spouse never takes out the trash, or doesn’t keep the bathroom clean.  Your kids can never do anything right – there are toys everywhere, they do a bad job on their chores, and they’re so loud.  At work there’s no end of complaint – your boss is a moron, you’re being forced to do menial work, you don’t have the supplies you need, nobody likes you, appreciates your genius, etc.

That’s a pretty negative line of thought, isn’t it?  Unfortunately, it’s what most people have going through their head all day, every day.  No wonder you’re not happy!  

You need to bring these thoughts under control before you can feel happy.  Nobody could feel happy with such a powerfully negative line of though.  Unfortunately, every thought like this is practice – and if you’re always practicing negative thoughts, that becomes who you are.

Step 2) Now that you’re aware of your thoughts, you need to replace them.  That’s right.  You can’t just stop having negative thoughts.  There are too many of them, and the reality is you’ve been practicing them for decades.

So what can you do?  You need to replace them.  It starts with being aware of them.  Every time you catch yourself having a negative thought, or spiraling through everything that’s going wrong in your life, you need to stop and reign yourself in.  

What’s a good way to replace your thoughts?  Just trying to “look at the positive” usually doesn’t work, but there are some instances where re-framing can be good.

If you’re angry or frustrated about something, don’t dwell on that.  Instead use it to fuel yourself on to something else.  Think about a goal that you have that you’d really like to work on.  Any time you feel annoyed or negative, start thinking about that goal.  Think about how you’ll work through your goal, and how you’ll feel once it’s completed.  Think about how working on your goal will help change your situation.

By replacing your negative thoughts with targeted focus on a goal, you help shift your mindset.  You move away from the thoughts of a victim to thoughts that are constructive and help you change your situations.

Step 3) Be thankful.  Re-framing your thoughts will work well in many situations, but sometimes it’s not enough.  You may still think the weather is bad.

In these cases, you need to count your blessings.  Don’t dwell on what’s wrong.  Instead think about what’s right.  It doesn’t even have to be related.  If you find yourself grumbling about the rain, think about how nice it is to have your toddler wobble up to you and give you a big hug.   Think about how nice it is that you’re able to buy soft toilet paper.

I’m serious!  Even trivial thoughts of thankfulness are better than negative thoughts.  I’m not talking about making a big show of thankfulness or fitting into anybody else’s idea of what “thankfulness” is.  You just need to be thankful for what’s right for you.

If you’re thankful that the trash company comes every week to take your trash away, that’s a start.  If you’re thankful to have a big glass of water available to you when you want it, that’s a start.

Of course, you can be thankful for bigger things, too, like your spouse, your home, your freedom, etc.  

The point is whenever you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts, you should either re-frame those thoughts and start taking positive action, or you should think of what you’re thankful for.  As you do this you’ll find that your thoughts become more and more trained to be productive, thankful thoughts – and you’ll become a much happier person.  You are what you think.

Kristen loves finding out new tips and tricks for organizing. She’s especially keen on writing about how to organize your life so you have time for the things you want to do.

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