The 4 Things I Do Consistently to Stay Above the Happy Bar
And not spiral.
There are two things that lead us to act in one way or another:
It’s about selecting the obvious right one each time you’re faced with a choice.
It’s about taking the advice you would give to a friend.
We all deep down wish we could do that perfectly. Most of us have to physically train to consciously choose love.
We are so connected to the outside world it’s difficult to focus on our inner selves. There’s a reason why all this woo woo exists, and it’s not because there are hippies banging on about love while dancing around a fire, high on mushrooms.
I’ve talked many times about the importance of connecting with purely yourself, but the process is so difficult. It’s very easy to feel distracted by everything that surrounds you — your work, your friends and family, anyone you interact with throughout your day. We feel what others feel.
When You Realise Something Has to Change
How many times have you felt deflated by someone else’s bad mood?
And how does someone else’s great mood make you feel? I bet the answer is one of these:
- If you’re feeling good already, it’ll make your day.
- If you’re generally feeling good but you’re having an off day, it’ll make you feel better.
- If you’ve been down lately and don’t feel generally happy, you’ll feel jealous and bitter at your own misery.
Everything you feel is mirrored with the outside world.
Put out any kind of feeling, and it’ll come straight back to you like a boomerang.
“We become what we think about.” – Earl Nightingale.
Wake up complaining about how you didn’t sleep well and your day will just keep reminding you of this. You’ll accept that the universe is against you and you’ll feel offended every time something negative comes. And guess what? Bad things will keep coming.
In fact, you would probably unconsciously look for things to go wrong just to prove how your lack of sleep caused this. Meanwhile, the universe is working to give you exactly what you’re thinking. And the cycle will keep going.
I felt generally down for years. But I turned it around because I decided I did not want to be negative anymore.
It’s really as easy as saying “I’m tired of it, so I’m deciding I will change.”
This is literally the very first step. I promise you.
Just disconnect the cable to your negative socket and plug it in to the positive one. Imagine this right now.
Done.
Decision made.
Right?
Actively repelling from negativity doesn’t come automatically at first, but it will eventually.
If I see something in the news stirring negative feelings in me, I stop giving them any thought and change the subject in my mind.
If I’m exposed to anything slightly negative, whether it’s a comment from somebody or a circumstantial event, I do not entertain it. This can include people complaining about others, gossip, etc.
What I mean is, it goes into my head but it’s filtered into a “nothingness” pile. I want to keep my mind with pure positivity. So anything negative has to go.
It doesn’t mean I have become ignorant or that I’m suppressing my feelings. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about other people’s problems.
It means I see “bad things” as facts rather than bad and I do not let myself pay much attention to them.
Good and bad is relative, and because we have the capacity to decide if something is good or bad, we also have the capacity to decide for something to not be good nor bad.
Something just is until we add an ethical attachment to it. So I now go backwards — anything labeled as negative entering my own realm is stripped of its label and it becomes an entity standing on its own as a thing. This lets me accept the thing and it enables me move on.
Anything that I see as good is heightened and it becomes amazing and delightful and great. I focus my attention on all that I love and want and don’t give the other stuff a single emotion.
But how did I get here?
Your mind needs to be trained. No matter what you say, you have trained your mind all your life to think one way or another. You have developed patterns in your behaviour without knowing it. You have habits of your own.
After deciding that I was not going to be in a general down mood anymore, I had to become aware of every single thing about myself. My habits, my desires, my bad stuff.
I had to break down everything I was doing and re-evaluate my choices. I needed to see where I could focus improvement of myself.
This literally included:
- My morning routine.
- The activities I chose to enjoy.
- What I read before bed.
- How I dealt with my son.
- How I dealt with every single interaction each day.
- How I judged people or events in my mind.
E-ve-ry-thing.
These are the 4 things that helped me kickstart my new habits to get me in a more balanced and happy state:
#1 I Became My Own Best Friend
I had to start with breaking down a barrier of judgement with myself. I had to stop being so critical. I have never been as nasty to anyone as I have been to myself. Not only did I judge myself for the mistakes I made, but I also could not forgive myself. From now on, I was forgiven for everything I felt shame about and I was holding my own hand going forward.
I decided to talk to myself how I would’ve talked to my best friend. If she came to me feeling guilty for a mistake she’d made, the last thing I would’ve done was kick her when she’s down. Why did I do it to myself? I decided to give myself the silver linings and learn for them to be the only words I gave myself from now on. The world is too harsh already and there are plenty of people who will happily second guess and undermine you. I wasn’t going to do that to myself anymore.
This included physically speaking, too. I was not going to criticise my body anymore because this has a huge impact on my mental wellbeing too.
From then on I decided I am entirely beautiful.
#2 Happiness Comes First
I was my own worst enemy when I wanted anything. I didn’t allow myself to be happy until I had X or Y. I didn’t know that happiness was a state of mind dependent on my inner self. I depended on exterior experiences and circumstances to feel elevated and happy.
I didn’t know that to change the outcomes of my decisions I had to change the way I felt first. I depended on outcomes to feel good and didn’t enjoy the journey toward getting there.
But imagine running a marathon. Imagine all the months and years of training, all the pulled muscles, hours of stretching, aching and exhaustion. Think of the weight loss, muscle gain, fitness, and lifestyle. How would a runner only enjoy going through the finish line when 99% of the marathon is the actual running?! If you don’t like the journey and aim solely to be happy once you’re through the finish line, you will have missed so much in your life!
It makes sense, right?
It’s the same with everything else. You cannot base your happiness on results. You have to enjoy the challenges, the hardships, the little pleasures, everything, FIRST. And then results come.
You have to change the frequency you’re on and then the universe aligns. You love first, feel happy with yourself first.
You have to give to receive.
#3 The Cliche Morning Routine
Everyone who is successful and happy has a great morning routine because it’s actually beautiful and it truly helps you have a good day. If you have an awesome morning routine, you’ll go to bed the night before looking forward to it. I get up at 6AM most days knowing I have a few minutes before my son wakes up.
- I do one or two quick chores. Before the day has started I already get a sense of achievement just from this. Usually, I feed the cats and empty the dishwasher/fold washing/tidy up.
- While I do the chores I say thanks for all the great things in my life, including what I don’t yet have. Saying thank you in advance only aligns the universe to give it to you!
- Coffee. But you may prefer juice, tea, whatever. I have 5 minutes of quiet time and reflection. I don’t look at my phone, I just sit and think in my kitchen and I let my thoughts run wild. Usually, I’m daydreaming about a project or about what I plan to do that day.
- I write — every morning, I write even if it’s just one sentence. I write down a thought, or what I dreamt about. If I don’t know what to write about, I literally list my thank you’s and inspiration comes from that. You know what led me to write this article? I was thanking the universe for the rain because I knew it would water my rose plants. I was surprised that I was able to automatically be grateful for the rain and it got me thinking about the things I actively do to feel good.
By this point my son is usually awake and I get him up.
#4 Repetition
The saying “consistency is key” is another undervalued cliche.
I read about self-improvement all the time.
I put out good feelings to the universe all the time.
I stick to the routine every single morning. (I have a short version of it for when I’m not at home or my son is awake earlier than usual.)
Let that consistency slip more than 3 days in a row or in a very short space of time and you’ll feel the bubbles of negativity return.
People learn to commit to many things throughout life. You commit to brushing your teeth twice a day. You commit to a job, a person, school.
Commit to yourself and your happiness.
This is the thing I cannot let myself slack on. I can allow myself to be lazy in every other respect, but I must keep reading, thinking, and acting positively.
All of these combined help me. Try it out for yourself, for you cannot rely on anyone else to change your feelings.
