22 Apr 13 things happy people do differently…and you can do them too!
Do what happy people do and enjoy what happy people enjoy…happiness!
I've recently started following a blog titled "Dumb Little Man" and already, after just a week or two, I've learned at least one thing…he's not dumb!
This great blog, often funny and almost always useful, posts all manner of good articles some of which, including this one, focus on how to create more happiness…
People aren’t simply happy or sad, we’re both.
Sometimes at the same time.
Happy and sad are momentary experiences, just as hunger, melancholy, joy, grief or clarity are things you experience in a specific moment.
These things define a moment, not a person, so while happiness isn’t something you possess as you do with a shoe size or eye colour, it is something that you can cultivate more of.
Happiness can surely get you into trouble if you go about it in the wrong ways (by padding life out with the accumulation of stuff rather than filling it with moments of value, for example), but at its core, happiness can remind you of all that’s good in the world, rather than focusing on all the bad things.
This is why it’s worth bothering about, because happiness adds to your perception and lends you perspective, always lending you a better, simpler way of looking at things.
We’re not setting out to be part of an inane, smiling, delusional cult of happiness here. I can’t think of anything worse or more irritating.
But if happiness feels like something you’d like to experience more of, here are 12 things happy people do differently that you can start with.
1. Practice gratitude
Being grateful and thankful doesn’t turn you into the kind of simpleton who would say “Thank you, I love ducks” right after being pushed into the boating lake. It does however, create thinking that tunes you in to the good things you have in your life rather than becoming more and more blasé about them.
Practicing gratitude focuses you on what life brings rather than what it doesn’t, and that’s where happiness comes from.
2. Prioritise nourishment
Nourishment is more than eating your vegetables and getting a decent night’s sleep. It’s about making sure your head, heart and body are kept topped up with the stuff they need not only to function, but to flourish.
If you’re not taking good care of yourself little else will matter.
3. Don’t pursue status
Your brain is wired not only to figure out where you sit in the professional and social pecking order against others, but to reinforce your position in that pecking order.
Yeah, we’re hardwired to be assholes sometimes.
When you get wrapped up in establishing or maintaining status, the moment your place in the hierarchy drops you’re going to feel pretty horrible, like you’ve screwed up, that you’re no good or that others are better than you.
Don’t get into the status game – there are no winners.
4. Separate success and specific outcomes
Your level of happiness is not dependent on reaching a goal or objective.
Your success and happiness have nothing to do with what happens, and everything to do with how you perceive your achievements, your value and how you’re engaging with your life.
Every time you make your success and happiness conditional on something happening, you’re missing point entirely.
5. Don’t reject or bury the bad
If you’re in the habit of brushing the bad stuff under the carpet, sooner or later you’re gonna trip up over that small hill that’s grown in the middle of the room and end up smashing your ego all over the place.
You can only ignore or shut out the bad stuff in life (and there will always be bad stuff in life) for so long.
Respect it. Integrate it. Welcome it. Learn from it. Accept it.
6. Stay out of the drama
Happy people don’t spend their time whining about how hard they’re having it, how everything’s going wrong, how everyone just needs to stop screwing everything up for you and how life would be so much easier if it wasn’t for everyone and everything they do.
Getting into all of the “he said she said” of the world will keep you down in the detail and drama and you’ll be excluding all the beautiful and extraordinary stuff that’s right there in front of you.
7. Strip away expectations
Inside that noggin of yours, your brain is doing its best to figure out what will happen next so that it can make sure you’ll be safe and sound.
So it starts creating expectations for how things will go, what you’ll do next and how you’ll do it. It creates expectations about what others will do and what that means for your world. It even creates expectations about what other people might expect of you, just so you can fit in, not draw attention and keep on staying safe, secure and certain in your environment.
Only, those same expectations will drastically limit your quality of life and resultant levels of confidence and happiness. So get rid of ‘em…
…keep reading the full and original article HERE