Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Three Things You Can Do Today To Increase Your Happiness

Do you understand what gives you happiness? How do you describe happiness? It is not the giggling, jump up and down feeling. The definition agreed upon today involves feeling satisfied, content, and fulfilled.

What do you think would make you happy today? Most likely your answer is something like money, house, car or something that bring a momentary feeling of happiness.The happiness would fade as the novelty of the desired thing wore off. You are adaptable and the money, house, new car or accomplishments will decline to give you happiness. You will feel something is missing and want something else.

So what can you do? Living a meaningful life, utilizing your gifts and your time, and living with thought and purpose will help.

Here are three things to start today.

1. Gratitude: Tell someone every day that you are grateful to them, or write it in a letter or email. At the end of the day make a list of gratitude’s in that day. If something challenging has happened see if you can turn it around and find something to be grateful for in the situation.

2. Find ways to be kind to others, especially if you can do it anonymously.

3. Savor your life. Learn how to be mindful using all your senses fully in each moment. Mindfulness is a relaxed state of awareness of the present moment. You feel a curiosity and openness to life and others. You let go of judgments. This allows you appreciate what is present in your life now. It helps you become less adapted to what you have in your life now.

Are you ready to begin today? Try an experiment and do these three things for the next week. Check in with yourself and see if your happiness isn’t increasing, do you feel more content and satisfied? If your answer is yes then continue to remember these three steps and practice them daily.