6 Ways to Find Happiness Without Looking For It

Get Rid of “Should”

Many of us have this idea that we have to perfectly curate our lives, stuffing our days to the brim with what we should be doing.

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We look at each thing we do as another jigsaw piece in the puzzle of our dream life. The life that’s always waiting just out of reach, only accessible once we’ve fulfilled all of our shoulds.

We spend so much of our time relentlessly busy, that we rarely pause to notice if the life we’re living actually makes us feel good.

It doesn’t matter if you think you should be doing yoga, or should be working at a trendy tech company, or should be doing anything — if you don’t find any joy or satisfaction in your shoulds, give yourself permission to drop them. When you stop “shoulding” all over yourself, you make room for whatever makes you actually happy to bubble up and become a priority.

Honor Your Commitments

When you break a commitment that you’ve made, what you’re really telling yourself is that you don’t value your own word. This goes for your commitments to other people and your commitments to yourself. When you repeatedly break commitments, even small ones, you’re creating tiny fissures in your relationship to yourself and others.

Of course it’s impossible to keep every commitment you make in life, but that’s where healthy discernment and getting rid of “should” come in (see above). Make commitments that you want to make, not that you feel you should make, and follow through on those commitments with integrity. When you repeatedly honor your commitments, you naturally build your self-esteem and trust in yourself — two things that are integral on the path to happiness.

Eat By the 80/20 Rule

“You are what you eat” is a well known proverb, but have you ever stopped to think about what this really means? Yes, literally you are what you eat because food is broken down into the energy that runs your cells. But food impacts your brain too, meaning it has a direct effect on the organ that makes you, you!

Numerous studies have shown that diets full of fried and sugary foods are associated with higher rates of depression. Conversely, people with diets full of vegetables, lean meats, fish, and whole grains are less likely to have clinical depressive or anxiety disorders.

When you look at how sugar affects your brain, this makes sense. Eating sugar leads to a temporary boost in both dopamine and serotonin production (a.k.a. happiness hormones) — so you feel good in the short term. But eventually, more sugar is needed for the same hormone boost. This is known as signal attenuation and can lead to addiction, which then causes anxiety and withdrawal when the addictive substance is removed.

So if you want to maximize happiness, make sure your diet is mostly healthy. 80% healthy, 20% indulgence is a good ratio to aim for.

Talk to Strangers

Talk to strangers? To make myself happier? Surprisingly, yes! Studies done with people in waiting rooms and on commuter trains showed that people who connected with strangers reported the most pleasant experiences (as opposed to those who remained disconnected). What is most interesting though, is that prior to the studies, these people all predicted that they’d prefer solitude. Yet when put into a real-world situation, study participants unanimously agreed that they had actually preferred connecting to strangers.

Connecting with others is proven to increase happiness, even if we don’t initially believe it will. So next time you’re feeling a little blue, try engaging with someone around you. Even a smile exchanged with a stranger can do wonders for your mood.

Eliminate (Some) Choices

Being presented with a lot of choices can seem advantageous, but in practice too many choices causes us decision fatigue and demotivation. There’s a famous experiment where people were asked to choose either out of 6 jams or 24 jams. Those in the “6 jam” group were both more likely to actually buy jam (make a choice) and they felt more satisfied with their choice afterwards.

Too many choices can cause you to:

Question your decision — did I choose the right jam!?
Have unrealistic expectations — jam 5 is great but maybe jam 21 is better, so I’ll keep going.
Blame yourself — oh no, I messed up by choosing that jam.
Have anxiety — ?! jam?
Experience decision fatigue — I’m over this, I’m just not going to buy jam.

The bottom line is, don’t inundate yourself with choices in your life. If you can poise yourself to choose from a smaller number of choices, do that. Researching 45 mattresses on Amazon before you buy one is only going to stress you out. You’ll be happier eliminating some choices.

Fail

Yes, fail. It sounds counterintuitive, but failing means that you’re actively operating outside of your comfort zone. Comfort zones are good for just that, comfort. But we humans are innovators. We’re creative by nature. When we ignore our innate need to exercise our creativity muscles and try new things, we start to feel stagnant. Stagnancy breeds boredom, agitation, and ultimately, unhappiness.

The more we take risks and let ourselves fail, the more likely we are to reach that sweet, delicious moment when we find success atop our stairway of failures. And what could make you happier than that?