How to Find Happiness Within Yourself

Happiness is the ultimate aim, and your happiest life is very much within your power. Here is a rather thorough guide, based on all I have learned, on how to find happiness within yourself!

It struck me recently that I don’t have a post that is solely about happiness. That is surprising to me because that is THE topic I am most passionate about and interested in helping others out with. So maybe it is time I wrote a guide on how to be happy.

Let’s bear in mind that happiness means different things to different people. There will be things that create happiness for you that others despise and the other way around as well. But, generally, there exists a framework that I have come across that seems to work wonders for myself and the others I explain it to.

So… What is Happiness?!

I encourage you to write down your own definition of happiness. Think about what it means to you. Simplify it. It doesn’t have to be a 37-word all-encompassing sentence. Capture the essence, use it, and see how it evolves. Here is my definition:

Happiness comes from pursuing fulfillment at the intersection of presence and gratitude.

Perhaps that is a bit prescriptive instead of definitional, but you can see that happiness for me is, in essence, a combination of fulfillment, presence, and gratitude.

The Mindsets

The first two concepts I want to go over relate solely to how you use your mind to process life and what you experience. We will get more into happiness as it relates to tangible efforts later on in the post, but feeling happy starts inside your brain!

Presence

Anxiety and stress are brought about by thinking about the future and dwelling on the past. Peace exists in the here and now. Presence is all about staying in the moment and experiencing what is going on around you. By doing this, you not only enjoy life and the moment more, but you open a gate to calmness.

Presence is a practice that you get better at. It doesn’t require perfection and complete control over your mind and thoughts. You get better with practice and reap more rewards from it over time. The reason presence is such a powerful tool is that it allows you to derive so much more enjoyment and satisfaction from the events in life. You pick up on the extra bits of experiences – be it talking to a friend or eating a meal or whatever. The more you focus in, the more reasons and ways you find to enjoy something.

Implementation

You can practice mindfulness through meditation and also by living in the moment throughout your day-to-day life. It starts with setting an intention… an intention to remain in the moment. You do this by directing your attention to your senses. Think about what you can hear, see, smell, taste, and feel right now. Additionally, you may want to feel the emotions of the moment too, which is a way to be present to your emotions.

The key is that you don’t dive deeper into what you can sense. For example, you may smell apple pie baking and then think about all the things that went into it and maybe the thought flows to Isaac Newton and the apple and then you remember physics class. STOP. Go back to the smell and just enjoy it. This takes practice. Every time you catch your mind slipping away, just bring it back to the moment and keep your intention on experiencing your senses.

Focus on the conversation when you are with others. Focus on the taste of the food as you eat it. Forget the distraction in any situation. Be present, and you will derive so much more enjoyment from all aspects of life. But remember, it’s a practiced and acquired skill. Don’t give up because you struggle at first!

I wrote a post specifically on presence which you can read here.

Gratitude

Ah, gratitude. What a lovely topic. 🙂

Appreciating what is good, and finding reasons to appreciate even the bad, allows you to see the good in any situation. Gratitude is the optimist’s most useful tool. If you can find a reason to be grateful in every situation, then you win. And if you know that you can find a way to happiness no matter what happens, then you begin to have firm confidence in your ability to be happy.

I want to note that the key to gratitude is to actually feel the emotion. When you think about reasons to be grateful, think about how they improve the quality of your life, how lucky you are to have/do certain things, or how they allow you to live a richer life. A simple thing to be grateful for is your morning coffee. If you think about how the taste and warmth of it brighten your mood in the morning and makes you excited for the day and how cool it is that you are able to drink a lovely liquid from beans that were probably grown thousands of miles away, you feel the amazement and true expression of gratitude.

Implementation

Gratitude can be used in various ways. I have a journal that I use each morning and night to bookend my days with things I am grateful for. I use it throughout the day to appreciate the good things- little and big, obvious and hidden. Perhaps the most powerful way I use gratitude is to reflect on things that didn’t go my way. I think about the lessons these taught me, the doors they opened, and how I grew from struggle or disappointment. You can find reasons to be grateful for anything. The more you do this, the more blessings you experience!

I want to be clear that I never suggest using gratitude as a form of toxic positivity to ignore or reject negative emotions. Gratitude exists not as an escape route away from negativity but rather as a route back to happiness whenever you want to use it. When you feel something negative, it is important to feel that and experience the emotion.

Once you have processed the situation and calmed down, then you can employ gratitude to change your emotions and perspective on the event. This is why I want til the end of the day, or even the end of the week, to reflect on the not-so-great things. I wait until my feelings are clear and understood, and then I use gratitude.

Here is a post where I go more in-depth on the topic of gratitude.

Fulfillment

Fulfillment is the result of doing things in line with your interests that enrich your life and the lives of others. It can result from many things, but let’s explore the most common.

Goals

A simple way to find fulfillment is to set goals for yourself that allow you to move toward your ideal life. Decide what you want in various facets of life and then make a plan to get there. Make sure to set subgoals along the way that are easily achievable. It may be appealing to accomplish your goal in one big jump, but it’s so much harder and more frustrating. Set small goals that act like a ladder to your ultimate goal in that area of your life. Make sure the steps advance in a way that you can continue to make progress, which will give you continued motivation as you see results.

Goals are great because the sense of achievement you feel puts you in a better place and gives you something to take pride in. As you see yourself making progress, working toward your goals becomes addictive (in a good way). Try using the SMART goal system to set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-oriented.

Work

You are going to spend a lot of your time working in some capacity. It is therefore in your best interest to find work that brings you meaning. Meaningful work is found by transforming your passions and interests into a way to improve others’ lives. Sometimes this is an easy connection, like for doctors. Sometimes it’s harder if your passions relate to more niche things, but you can always use your interests to add value.

You don’t always have to be working jobs that are perfect for you. Sometimes you need to take a lackluster job to create space to open up an opportunity to do something better. But you should always be working toward finding some sort of role that excites you!

One last point that relates to work, amongst other things. People feel at their best when they are serving others. Some jobs make this easy. But as long as you see or serve people in the work you do, you have a chance to brighten people’s days in every interaction. This doesn’t have to relate just to work. You come across so many people in your day-to-day life. There are so many opportunities to use kind words to inspire or take a moment to help out. Your work is to make others’ lives better. Work, in this sense, doesn’t apply to just your job!

Relationships

Relationships are probably the most important lever you can pull in the external part of your life to increase your happiness. Studies cite that having a few quality relationships that make up a support network of people that you can enjoy spending time with is the key determinant of a person’s overall happiness. Watch an excellent TED Talk on relationships and happiness here.

Moral of the story: invest time in developing great connections with others, being vulnerable, and having fun with family and friends. Prioritize quality over quantity. And know that spending time in conversation and doing even ordinary things with others is one of the best uses of your time.

Hobbies

Having a few things that you can do as forms of “play” makes life more fun. These should, ideally, be separate from your work. Maybe it’s marathon running. Maybe it’s working on your cooking skills. Perhaps, it’s just watching some show on Netflix that makes you laugh. Emphasize the things you like to do and add more of them to your life!

Remember, there is value in the things that bring you enjoyment. Some hobbies may not seem “productive,” but if they bring you joy, then they have value. Finding balance between these activities, your work, and your relationships is key. As long as you attend to the other aspects of your life with intention, you can spend guilt-free time on your hobbies.

You probably have a few great hobbies, but there is value in trying new things, too. Go to new places, eat new food, and do things you have never done. In the process, you will find so many great new things that you can do and add to your list of ways to have fun. The benefit of this is twofold. First, you get to do these fun things. But more than that, you have an increased sense of excitement because you know that there are so many ways you can create happiness and joy in your life. That is quite an empowered way to feel and go about life!

Bonus Tips

What is mentioned above are what I believe to be the main levers to pull if you want to increase your happiness. Of course, that is not an exhaustive list. Below are a few more areas you may want to look into to further optimize your mind for happiness.

Flow

An all too often traveled path by people is resisting things they do not want or forcing their way to things they do want. In either case, you are working against the current. The natural forces of the world are pushing one way and you’re trying to go another. Nature always wins in the long term. Hence, it is in your best interest to go with the flow.

Resistance is when something happens and you try to hold on and reject what has happened as you try to get what you want. Forcing is when you try to create what you want in a situation where things are just going in the other direction. In either case, you are going against the natural direction of life. Resistance leads to overwhelm. Forcing leads to frustration.

Trying to resist the uncomfortable events feels so much worse than the event itself. And forcing gives way to frustration in your futile efforts. You should go after what you want, but when things don’t seem to be working out, you have to let go. Only you can decide where the level is at which you will detach and surrender to the flow.

Going with the flow means following what seems to be working. It’s the path of least resistance. It doesn’t mean that you’ll never need to work hard, but it should mean that the work you do is more enjoyable. Any time you find yourself frustrated and overwhelmed, question whether there is a better route.

Requirements

In every activity, especially the big and important ones, you have a threshold for happiness. If the situation and its result exceed this threshold, you are happy. If not, then you are disappointed. The best part is that you control the threshold.

Too often, this threshold is placed too high and people expect too much. This means that happiness requires a certain level of results. The solution is not to shift your expectations but rather to shift the time period over which you apply them.

You don’t have to get better in every successive opportunity. You will have setbacks and valleys to go along with the peaks. If you learn from the minor failures along the way and continue to persist forward and work, you will eventually improve and succeed.

Expect greatness on average. Expect to improve over time. Do NOT expect to be great in each instance. Attach your expectations and identity to controllable, qualitative values in the short term. By upholding these continually, you will indeed reach your long-term quantifiable expectations.

Anchoring

Have an ideal visual image of what it looks like to live your best life. How does it feel? What are you doing? Play it in your head in the first-person point-of-view. Focus on this in your visualizations. Make it more and more real. Importantly, feel the emotions of joy and elation and freedom as you do this.

Once this is clear and specific in your mind, then you can use this as your anchor point for default thought patterns. Once again, I introduce an intention. Make the intention be for this to be your default thought pattern, mindset, and emotional state. Whenever your mind naturally slips away or negative thoughts enter, simply go back to your intention. The reason this positive intention is important (in addition to making you clear and focused on your desires) is that it gives you a positive anchor point.

If you just try to reject negative thoughts with nothing to anchor to, then the peace is fleeting because you will just revert back to the unwanted thoughts. Instead, anchor to the positive depiction and emotions of yourself in your best life, and then live from that perspective which naturally changes your mental habits toward harmonious and positive thoughts and feelings.

Healthy Habits

All the previous information and tactics I shared were ways to create sustainable happiness almost solely by mental optimization. But there are also a number of physical habits that are happiness-promoting. Your physical and mental health go hand-in-hand, so you are more likely to be happy when you are taking care of your body.

Here are five key habits to incorporate:

Prioritize Sleep: you feel the best when you sleep early and long enough; this also optimizes your hormones
Drink Plenty of Water: hydration is vital for peak performance of the body and mind and will keep you feeling splendid
Get Outside: viewing sunlight, grounding, taking in the fresh air, and exercising outdoors connect you with nature’s source of wellbeing
Eat Well: make sure to eat a variety of healthful foods to supply your body and brain with the nutrients needed to thrive
Control Your Breath: slow down your breath to feel more relaxed and decrease bodily stress responses; do this when you feel anxious or stressed

More healthy lifestyle tips in this post.

Keep it Simple

All the ideas I threw at you here may be overwhelming to try to take on all at once. Start small and focus on building one habit or incorporating one new idea at a time.

Habits and ingrained patterns are your default. Doing all the things above and anything else is only hard in the beginning because you are rewriting what your default mental patterns and habits are. Once you do these things enough, they will become natural and you will be in an optimized state without having to put any extra effort into it! You don’t have to add anything to your day; you are just replacing what you currently do with better options.

Though it may look like a lot, the suggestions I presented (and any others you find on your own) can align and fit into a lifestyle that becomes incredibly simple over time! Once your new habits become natural to you, you will be smooth sailing in a way that is happiness-promoting.