5 Simple Ways to Live a Happier Life

You won’t even break a sweat or lift anything.

What is happiness? What is a happy life?

Great question. One for the philosophers, surely.

As for me, I kind of look at happiness the same way I might look at art. I’m not entirely sure how I’d define it, but I know it when I see it.

Personally, I think happiness is a sense of contentment. Joy takes energy. Misery is exhausting. Happiness is a state of being that requires little work to maintain, feeds and strengthens itself, and gives me a reason to keep moving forward.

My success isn’t 100%. I might be worried if it was. That said, general happiness is… generally achievable. Here are five simple ways to go about it.

Prioritize happiness

There is a narrative that we must live our lives in sacrifice to others if we want to be decent human beings. But at what cost to ourselves? How much sacrifice is too much?

There is nothing wrong with a bit of self-sacrifice when it comes to making others happy. I’m a parent and a husband. I like taking care of my family, even when at times I might prefer to do something else at the moment. But it’s not always about me, is it? And what makes them happy makes me happy.

But you do have to acknowledge that, at a certain point, it can be spiritually draining to continuously deny yourself what you want to do. Taken too far, that’s how resentment and ill will build.

Better to make sure you’re looking after yourself from time to time. Engage in your hobbies. Sleep in on occasion. Go for a walk by yourself.

Whatever it is that you need to feel some peace or joy, don’t forget that you deserve that as much as anyone else. It’s not a crime, and it’s certainly nothing to feel guilty about.

You may be doing this mainly for you, but you’re also doing it to keep your relationships with others healthy and robust.

Know that we are free to choose

How often do you feel like you have no control over events or situations? Given events of the past year, you’ve probably felt that way more than a few times.

It’s not a great feeling.

There are a couple of ways to get away from that feeling.

One is to remember that you do have the freedom to make your own decisions. If you are having debt issues and feeling helpless, you can decide to change habits to address those issues. You don’t need to just take it. The same could be said about controlling your weight, dealing with an addiction, or handling your own love life.

I’ve seen many people just accept things as they come with a shrug and all too willing to become a victim of circumstance. They’re rarely happy people.

Granted, change isn’t easy, but it is a choice.

Even how you respond to a worldwide pandemic is a choice. Do you work with everybody in doing what it takes to get through to the other side? Or do you dig in your feet in defiance?

(Here’s a hint, one of those choices will get us through these trying times more quickly and painlessly than the other.)

Break the habit of being unhappy

Related to the idea of making choices, we can exercise the option to be less happy. This is perhaps less about the individual choices we make as it is about the attitude we adopt.

I’m not preaching self-delusion. There are genuine reasons to be unhappy at times, and it would be unhealthy to deny or ignore those feelings.

That said, we… you and I… can sometimes fall into the trap of being unhappy out of habit. We end up becoming pessimistic or cynical all the time.

That sounds like another one of those exhausting ways to live.

But it’s also a little understandable. Pessimism and cynicism are defense mechanisms against a word that can, at times, seem cruel and unfair. Bad things happen to good people. Bastards seem to thrive and live forever. Where’s the justice?

But attitude can mean a lot. If you take a few moments now and then to try to see things in perspective, perhaps you can find a position where things don’t suck all the time. Maybe you can see a world in which you aren’t doing so badly after all and that things can and will get better.

It’s an exercise. And like any exercise, you get stronger the more you engage in it.

Mistakes happen, but we can learn from those

Mistakes happen. We’ve all experienced that. I’m 54 years old, and I still cringe and wince at things I said or did over 40 years ago,

But…

But I don’t let my mistakes rule my life. Or I try not to, at least. The trick is to learn from past mistakes so as not to repeat them. I’m not always successful. I won’t even claim to have been wildly successful.

But I think I’ve learned more from past mistakes than I’ve not. I’ve learned how my words can hurt others when I speak before I think. I’ve learned that other people have feelings and that it’s not all about me.

And I’ve learned that I have not always learned.

It’s a process. The secret is to try and move forward more than backward.

And I’ve also learned that other people make mistakes and that I can learn from those as well. We’re all walking cautionary tales, like it or not. No one is perfect, but we can all try to be better than we were the day before.

That’s living the best life.

Give yourself a mission

Sometimes all we need to be happier is a sense of purpose.

Your purpose could encompass any number of goals. It could be wanting to finish school, earn more money, or be a better parent, or be healthier. It could even be broadened to include becoming a better global citizen.

Whatever you choose, write it down. Maybe even write it down someplace every day so it sticks in your mind. Then live your life with that goal in mind.

You are no longer just existing. You are now on a mission.

And when you complete that mission, bask in your success, then choose another. If you have problems reaching a goal, reassess and calibrate your goals or approach, but don’t just abandon it altogether.

Having something to aim for makes each day more meaningful.

There are many roads to happiness

As surely as there is more than one way to find happiness, there are more than just the five methods listed above. There are likely hundreds and thousands of ways one can encourage and nurture happiness.

Go with what speaks to you.

And be content.

Cheers!

Thank you for reading. I’d love to share more with you via my Bi-Weekly Word Roundup newsletter sent to subscribers every other Sunday. It will feature news, productivity tips, life hacks, and links to top stories making the rounds on the Internet. You can unsubscribe at any time.