avatarSven Vandenberghe

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These Powerful Habits Generate True Happiness

Step away guide from boredom and sadness

Photo by Lidya Nada on Unsplash

“The stuff that doesn’t cost money is the shit that makes me happy.”

-Dan Bilzerian-

There’s a big misconception about what happiness really is. The hunt and desire for “happiness” can and will in most cases lead to chronic unhappiness.

Here things go lethally wrong, Most people relate these three factors:

Success — Money — Happiness

Money and success are often presented as shiny objects owned by shiny people. It’s the visual aspect that induces the emotional connection which makes you crave the wrong things.

And let’s be honest, the majority gets easily attracted to visual glitter.

But happiness isn’t about money and intrinsic success can’t be presented.

Success is both a state and a process — It’s both struggling, learning, stepping back up, the incremental progression followed by another downturn that didn’t defeat you entirely.

You can’t screenshot success.

You can’t capture success in a 20-second Instagram video.

I don’t know about you, but if something that comes close to “visually appealed success” is presented, I always ask myself questions like:

How real is the thing I’m seeing now?

I mean how close to real happiness does this lean to?

Let me ask you this:

What are the things you do daily that make you happy?

How much of your day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of curiosity, interest, and pleasure?

We all battle with huge life questions,

Am I doing the right thing? Is this all that life has to offer… An evening of partying, followed by a lack of sleep and an obligated workday?

Does my work provide enough to make me happy? Will any job make me and my family more happy? Will I ever achieve a state of happiness that enables me to comprehend what’s life all about?

We all need a certain amount of money to unlock a relaxed lifestyle. Yet, money isn’t the answer. The hunt for money inhibits the greatest feeling we truly chase, and that’s feeling happy.

I’ve been in every mental corner of life, I think. Perhaps you’ve been down a similar road too. Today I’m confident enough to have found what happiness means for me, and I like to share it.

I’ve extracted some of the most important and powerful habits I’ve acquired that should set you on a journey of happiness, or at least evoke your awareness.

Lifelong Learning

Once you understand this, you’ll never be bored again.

Boredom might be the greatest evoker of states of unhappiness and depression. Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.

It’s impossible to be bored in the time we live. There are so many opportunities and possibilities to absorb the material and expand your horizons that boredom has been extinct.

By building knowledge, skill, and desire, you can break through to unique levels of personal and interpersonal effectiveness. Yet as you break with old paradigms, it can sometimes be a painful process.

On the other hand, motivated by a higher purpose, by the willingness to subordinate what you think you want now for what you want later. This whole process is a happiness producer.

Occupy your mind from the seed of curiosity.

Working on Yourself Daily

The behavior of growth.

Aim to wake up in the morning and be in a good mood effortlessly.

How you start your day matters a ton. Change and life gain derive from small actions and decision-making.

I’ve walked and chased several roads throughout my life, one of these roads is the endless struggle to acquire better sleep. To keep it brief, Make optimal recovery your number one priority.

But that’s just a little start.

Working on yourself daily isn’t just optimizing sleep, it’s not just performing your daily exercise like most emphasize over the internet. What’s presented on your devices daily are the easy things, true happiness requires real deep work. It’s hidden in all sorts of everyday habits?

Working on yourself really means more than one thing:

  • Be disciplined about getting to bed.
  • Make sure you set yourself open emotionally, exchange thoughts, and show true feelings to your partner (make sure you synchronize daily).
  • Reflect on your previous day, analyze it, take the lessons, and be grateful.
  • Train yourself to wake up early before your kids so you can spend at least one to two hours of “me” time per day. (If you can’t pull this simple thing off, you’re headed for a disastrous day, being alone with yourself occasionally is extremely important to calibrate your senses and think clearly)
  • Make sure you implement a workout early morning (Exercising has a huge positive effect on our state of happiness, make sure you hunt for it daily).
  • Make time daily to revise your current job, and see if it still motivates you enough. Perhaps you need to tweak something, arrange your work time differently, space up some time, or synchronize it better with the work of your partner.
  • Spend enough time in the open air daily, connect to nature, and pay attention to details, absorb the energy of the outside.
  • Practice being happy in the state of now, and for a change don’t think about the future or past, just breathe deeply and be satisfied with things as they flow.

Look I’ll stop here. I can list a dozen things more but the essence of working on yourself is that it’s a daily practice that needs to be sculpted to perfection incrementally and consistently.

You want to chase meaningful things. As a fundamental rule, you want to focus on reinforcing and improving your inner self to be able to influence and improve everything that’s required around you.

“Energy aimed in a direction you love attracts the energy you need to create a state of continuous happiness.”

Everything starts with thyself, and to control your outcome, you need to control yourself. Effort results in discipline, discipline results in mental and physical fitness, and that bundle will attract all ingredients to acquire a state of consistent happiness.

Judge Less

Most judging is impulsive and proven to be incorrect very soon after.

Most of us judge too fast, I had it too many times before. Yet, you want to chase the beauty of judging less. Wait until the prejudging voice in your head disappears, soon after you’ll discover that you were wrong.

Experiencing this sets you with your feet back on the ground, it’s very important for our state of awareness that sometimes you can be wrong.

Judging less can evoke happiness because our thoughts are things, and as we judge more, you’ll find that judging most often has a negative side attached to it. You don’t want to feed your mind with negative impulses all the time.

So I don’t need to explain that, when you judge less, you reduce the negative thoughts over the course of a day, which step by step, thought by thought increases the chances of happy thoughts.

Control the reaction to your thoughts

-Dan Koe-

Focus On Disconnectivity

Learn to fall in love by reflecting on your thoughts.

You would be surprised by how few people can be alone with their thoughts. The thing is:

“Mental freedom evokes happiness.”

We are all hyperconnected by modern-day technology. In a way, it’s convenient because it enables us to do what we do now, like writing this thing here online for you.

But to a degree, it’s quite harmful to our health when we expose ourselves to too much screen time, see lies that are presented until we start to believe them, and observe dreamy sketches of people who present themselves not as their true selves and senseless doom-scrolling kind are things that come with it.

In the book “Brainchains,” Theo Compernolle makes us aware of the harmful side effects of being hyperconnected. It leads to unproductivity and unhappiness, it makes you think differently,… In short, being overconnected chains your brain.

We are who we are because of our magnificent adaptability and creative minds. To achieve optimal personal performance, we benefit best from disconnecting ourselves daily.

Flexibility and independent thinking create a state of personal achievements, call it mental winnings, and let that be just the thing that can produce happiness for you.

When you spend more time offline, or at least control the blocks you spend, you’ll find that it becomes easier to tap into a happier state.

Prioritize Family Time

Family time is the best way to channel you in the present moment.

Almost all high-performing business people have to admit that by their 50s, they should’ve spent more time with their families. If there is one non-negotiable regret, it’s this one. Make sure you don’t do the same.

Hold no secrets, don’t hold in.

Be honest and show appreciation.

Dare to set yourself up vulnerably human.

As Electro-social beings, creating a nice family, and structuring your life in a way that makes it possible to enjoy enough of it is one of the greatest things there is. Make sure you spend at least a couple of hours per day with your family with a “now moment.”

It’s not about the money,

It’s not about the job,

It’s not about the house,

We are set on Earth to absorb the energy from our environment, to create or make use of what we fundamentally are. The energy of our soul and our psychophysiological state enables us to reproduce, it’s something often overlooked, or taken for granted, but let that be just a very important thing life has to offer.

Life is about growing in all ways imaginable. Reproduction is one if not the most important things there is in life.

After becoming a father for the fourth time, I know there is nothing greater than to see a woman giving birth to a child. It’s not even about yourself. These moments deliver true joy, pleasure, and happiness, those states that you’re both amazed and happy for someone else.

What I’ve found is that happiness often tends to eliminate the state of self.

When I’m happy for my kids, happy for my wife, or happy for someone else, I notice that it’s difficult to find experience in my own state, It’s like I transcended into the happy state of the person I feel happy for at that moment. Call it an energetic shift, a personal time stop.

Lift Someone Else

True mentors hold this precious habit.

If you are a real mentors you’ll teach to make your students better than you. When was the last time you did something for someone without expecting anything in return?

Think back, and recall the experience!

Got it?

The reaction of that person should be felt deep within whenever you think back to that moment. There is something, something about receiving the energy of grateful people, it’s a feeling you can’t compare with anything.

That’s why lifting someone by any means is a simple, cheap, and powerful way to chase happiness instantly. Don’t neglect it.

“Learn to become happy from making others happy”

Induce Happiness Through a Healthy Lifestyle

It’s both the sensation, the discipline, and the aftermath. Chase elevated endorphin levels.

Focus on small things daily that actually matter. I’ll give you one short example: Sunlight, exercise, positive thinking, and tryptophan, all increase serotonin in the brain naturally.

All of these elements should lead to a healthy bodyweight which in terms will induce an indirect psychological effect that brings happiness.

Eliminate sad people from your life (but not instantly).

Remember, healthy means both physically and mentally the mind doesn’t go without the body. Shifting your environment can mean shifting yourself first.

Here’s a possible approach called: “space out time.”

Lifestyle is more important than routine

— Dan Koe-

The Power Habit of Gratitude

We all need reminders.

Gratitude can be perceived as a personal reminder, something to calibrate our senses from many negative impulses we’ve gathered throughout the day. By expressing gratitude daily, your state of happiness increases almost instantly, because that’s just how easy it is to be happy, it’s just a mental switch you need to press.

Gratitude is something that doesn’t always come naturally for everyone (I know this very well) but once you start to care more about the practice, it offers magnificent benefits.

By this, thanks for reading so far and I hope this post has provided you with a bit of motivational insight on how to easily evoke your states of happiness.

By the way, sleep can make you happier too.

Look, happiness isn’t something that will get thrown at your feet. A Meaningful life will generate happiness.

Throughout life, I’ve noticed that happiness is earned. It’s a life quest. You can be happy now as you are, I mean not everyone in this world is unhappy or depressed. But throughout life, the state of happiness can alter and be reinforced.

Matter of fact, make this your quest from now on, if you’re already super happy with your life, try to seek moments and focus deep within to elevate your happiness even more.

Some things that do this remarkably well are:

  • Observe your kids through a learning lens
  • Focus on the qualities of your partner
  • Ask yourself deep questions

Do you presently live where you want to live? “Yes.” Okay. Great!

Do you have the things you want to have? “Yes.” Fantastic!

Are you able to do the things you want to do often enough?

If not? You might want to change direction to do so. The path you choose to do so should be enough to evoke states of happiness.

Remember, happiness is a simple choice and you can enjoy that choice endlessly, as long as you focus on the positive elements.

“The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”

— Samuel Johnson-

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Absorb, Read, Write, Sleep, Exercise, Thrive!

Thanks for reading this post!

It’s not always that easy to stay in a state of happiness people like to refer to, but in fact, it really is. Happiness is thinking positively and filtering out the negative influences surrounding us. Become blind to negativity.

P.S.:

I’m a firm believer in building a prosilient mind. I like to inspire and energize my readers by writing.

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Happiness
Mindfulness
Mindset Coaching
Life Lessons
Psychology
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