Top three simple, concrete, and applicable tips on how to increase your happiness

The internet is full of numerous abstract and generalized self-help tips on how to increase our happiness. Today, I want to present you with three quick practices that have really helped me relax, make positive changes, and enjoy life.

First one is forgiveness. If we hold (or even worse, feed) negative feelings inside us, we will hardly have a positive attitude towards life. We tend to believe that some things are unforgivable. How does this help us? If we hate someone, who takes the damage from it? Since hate usually remains inside the one who hates (today, you cannot simply take a club and smash someone’s head like you could a couple of millennia ago) and the hated person often doesn’t even know about it or doesn’t care about it, the one hates is actually the one that gets hurt from his/her hate towards someone else. Thus, forgive and move on - not for someone else’s sake, but for your own sake! Try thinking about someone you hate (or are angry with) for a long time and forgive him/her. It is important to note that you can also forgive yourself for some past mistakes that you’ve made, or for some of your imperfections that you have a hard time accepting.

Now that you’ve (hopefully) emptied some of the negativity inside you, let’s do a simple thing to fill you with some positivity. Try thinking about and listing the things that you are grateful for – it can be your romantic partner, your good friend, your good health, your pretty eyes, the fulfilling hobby that you’ve discovered, the cozy home you’re living in, a good book that you’ve read. We all have a lot of things that we can be grateful for, we just need to remind ourselves about them from time to time. This is a great practice since it moves our focus from the negative to the positive stuff around us.

Finally, don’t be afraid to make changes in your life. You are scared of talking to that boy/girl that you like? You are scared of leaving that annoying job of yours and finding a better one or becoming a freelancer? You are afraid of joining a new interesting group activity and making new friends? Identify one thing that you would like to do but you choose not to because of fear and ask yourself: what is the worst thing that can happen if you do it? And how will you feel for the rest of your life if you don’t change things that you don’t like and/or don’t try things that you do like? Just do it, and if you fail miserably, remember that: “FAIL” means “First Attempt In Learning” and “NO” means “Next Opportunity”

I would like to conclude this article by quoting two interesting Steemians:

What are we? Kindness, compassion, love, empathy, strength, friendship.

@denmarkguy

It is in the ordinary where true beauty lays, it is the one leaf clinging to the branch while all others have fallen to the ground, it is the swirl of paint on the palette where two colours work in harmony on their way to become one, it is the drop of coffee that filters slowly into the milk.

@tarazkp

If you liked this post, then you would probably also like my recent article: U.S. scientists have discovered a formula for the elixir of life!

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4.