Happiness is what each of us strives for. We strive for happiness and try to avoid suffering. To become happier, people want to suffer less, but achieving this goal is not so easy. I spent 5 years studying psychology at a Higher Educational Institution and another 8 years of conscious life trying to find the answer to this question. I am afraid that I still cannot give a definitive answer to this question, but I could formulate the main things that I was able to understand thanks to the thoughts, words and actions of wise teachers.
You are probably reading this post because you are experiencing suffering. You want to free yourself from this feeling, you want to develop a more stable state of happiness.
Is it possible to achieve a state of happiness?
Yes! All in our hands. Wherever you are now, you can become happier if you make an effort!
I noted that these things are the most important reasons for increasing happiness:
Eating healthy never hurt anyone
It will not be a revelation to anyone that centenarians try to eat healthy. But the hamburgers are so delicious! However, if you want to live happily ever after, you will have to part with them. Just associate each sandwich you eat with a certain period of your life. If you ate a sandwich, you took a week of your life, your beloved one. I agree, the comparison may seem stupid, but in fact this statement is not so far from the truth. Try to follow this rule: make sure that 80% of the food you eat is natural. This should include vegetables, fruits, lean meats, nuts, legumes, dairy and whole grains.
Work on your body
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Do exercises every day
The biggest mistake is to perceive this activity as something unpleasant and painful. You shouldn't beat yourself up and give yourself so much exercise that you can't get out of bed the next day. Perform the simplest exercises in moderation: squats, push-ups, stretching. The main thing is to do them every day. For example, on the first day go for a run, on the next day play tennis, on the third day do yoga. Think of classes as an interesting hobby, not an obligation. And in a couple of weeks, your attitude towards exercise will change for the better.
Instead of junk food, eat your favorite vegetables and fruits
Yes, you've heard this advice a thousand times already, and it's not at all original, but that doesn't make it any less important. Food can either benefit your body or harm it. And when you get used to eating fruits instead of chips, you will notice the difference.
Attend group classes
For example, fitness. A fit and energetic instructor plus a group of like-minded people is the best motivation to exercise. If you can convince a friend to take classes with you, even better. Together, you will shirk less from classes and, if something happens, you will be able to support each other.
Drink water
The more water you drink, the less fatigue affects you, your internal organs and digestion work better, your weight normalizes... There are many benefits. Water is healthier than soda or coffee and quenches thirst better.
Don't let go of your thirst for knowledge
People who lived long and happy lives followed one rule: they tried to learn and learn as much new things as possible. Your education does not end at school. Try to learn something new every day. Indeed, in our time, self-development has become such an easy and accessible process. We are surrounded by information everywhere. We can read a book, go online and find absolutely everything there. But just don’t forget about healthy communication. Your friends can also tell you a lot of new and interesting things.
Make friends with your fears
I am afraid of many things in life, but I had to learn to thank my fear: “I understand, you protect me, you are my “bodyguard.” We don't appreciate that it is fear that keeps us alive for so long.
We are still alive because at a certain point our fear tells us: “Don’t get in that guy’s car,” “Don’t walk on dark streets,” “Don’t go in the water, you’re not a very good swimmer.”
We are indebted to our fears for the life we saved. Start telling your fear how much you appreciate it. You need to be friends with your fears.
Remember your family and friends
Ask 100 passersby what is most important in life, and you will get the answer - family and friends. If not everyone will answer this way, then most certainly will. But we very often forget about our family. We have too much to do and not enough time. We don't have 24 hours to work. What a family this is! But this is irresponsible. Family is truly the most important thing in life. You can always find at least a couple of minutes a day to just call your family. Instead of your Twitter and Instagram feed, call your mom.
Fill your mind
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Stay Organized
If you can organize your day correctly, then you yourself will feel calmer and more confident. Good advice: start the most difficult and time-consuming tasks in the morning. If you leave them for later, you will feel this burden on yourself all day, and this will not make anyone happier.
Work on your skills and acquire new ones
There is no better place and time for this than here and now. Don't wait for a special, perfect day to learn to play the guitar or speak Spanish. Take the first step: buy a guitar or sign up for a foreign language course. This will give you more motivation to do what you’ve been dreaming about for years.
Make deals with friends
If right now you don’t have money for a musical instrument or registration for courses starts only in a month, don’t use this as an excuse for doing nothing. Surely one of your friends has a guitar lying around at home, idle. Or someone you know knows a foreign language very well. Reach out to them for help and offer to do something for them in return.
Read, read and read again
Read books, no matter what genre. Read as much as you can. Books help broaden your horizons, make you think, and give you experiences that you are unlikely to have in real life. If you don't know where to start, try books by Nobel or Booker Prize winners.
Be grateful for what you have
Some of us think too much about what we want to achieve and get. In this race we do not notice many pleasant and good things around us. Be grateful for what you have. It will make you happier - scientifically proven. One study confirmed that people who are happy with what they have are more optimistic, happier, and even sleep better than those who are irritable and grumpy.
These simple and obvious tips will help you fill your life with meaning and make it long and happy. Perhaps all of the above is banal for you and should not even be said about it. But in the bustle of days, we sometimes forget the simplest things. Perhaps these tips will help you. Then everything was not in vain.
What advice can you give for a long and happy life?
Learn to be happy
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Praise people
By making those around you happier, you yourself begin to feel better. Especially if you say nice things to people you care about and care about. Happiness is contagious. Show your appreciation and express gratitude. If you see that someone is doing well in something, pay attention to it and say about it - the mood will improve both for him and for you.
Smile
Smile more and more often. When you laugh, your body begins to produce endorphins, hormones of happiness, and your attitude towards life becomes better. Negative emotions will not help you cope with problems; rather, on the contrary, they will only hinder you. Smiling will make you feel better, and people will smile back.
Take care of your loved ones
How much time do you spend with your spouse and children? Whatever your answer, it still won't be enough. Especially in today's world, when both parents work and see their children for a couple of hours a day before bed. Spend more time together, support each other, take care of each other. Take a more active role in your children's lives. Really live together, don't just have dinner together.
Surround yourself with people you feel comfortable with
Think about what emotions communication with people around you evokes in you. Do some of them bring negativity into your life? Don't they interfere with your work and drag you down? No one can be happy if surrounded by pessimistic, negative people. Try to spend time with those who encourage and encourage you. You deserve it.
Cherish your moment
We live only a short moment. Look at your hand - do you see the bacteria and microorganisms that live on it? No – but they are there. Their life passes in a matter of moments. Do not be surprised. If someone big looks at you from Space, then you will look like an inconspicuous, invisible microorganism. This is exactly how short your life is for the Universe - just one moment. Appreciate this moment, love every second. Everything that doesn’t happen is all fine, because it only happens once. Fall in love with your life and live it with this feeling of undying love.
Important rules of life
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The world around us is neither hostile nor kind
The world around us is the way we perceive it. All our failures and problems lie within ourselves. We very often just exaggerate and inflate little things. The world does not have the task of destroying a person as an individual or harming him.
Everything that surrounds us directly depends on our worldview. If you see only the bad and negative in everything, it’s stupid to expect that someone will come and make the world shine with bright colors.
What surrounds a person directly depends on himself and his actions.
Take responsibility for your life
In this world, no one owes you anything. Don't rely on someone else's uncle. Only you can take care of yourself. Any action or inaction you take will affect your life.
Lying on the couch, scrolling through endless posts on social networks, it’s foolish to hope that this will miraculously change your monotonous and boring life.
Get out of the cage
The cage is not outside of us, we cannot get out of it, because it is inside our head. Take off the blinders, come out of the cage, look at the world with open eyes.
You can reach anything you want. To achieve anything, all you need is your desire. No matter how many attempts it takes, you don't have to give up after the first failure.
Remember, it wasn’t even the first time that we learned to walk.
Sine law
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In life there will always be more successful periods and less successful periods. Plus and minus depend only on your perception of a particular event.
After a recession there will always be a recovery. Any negative can be turned into a positive, and you can always find a way out of any difficult and hopeless situation.
Remember Rule 5: If what's bothering you won't matter in 5 years, then don't worry about it for more than 5 minutes.
A lot and quickly
Getting everything and a lot at once is extremely difficult. There are objective reasons for this.
Rich relatives who died suddenly and leave their fortune to you. Is this possible or is it an illusion?!
The rules of life are just that: you should rely only on yourself. If you want to become rich, focus on gradually increasing your income. For example, a good goal might be to double your current income or save money you already have.
Law of Cause and Effect
Your current state is the result of your previous actions. No one has yet canceled the cause-and-effect pattern. Before you do something, you need to think carefully about what it will bring you in the future.
You can also think about what needs to be done now so that this result would be different tomorrow?
Purpose in life
Photo: Social networks
You need to have goals in life. Without a goal, you will get nowhere.
Every day, analyze how far you have come towards your goal today.
Constantly monitor your progress, take into account even tiny steps towards your goal. Believe me, even a small victory is inspiring.
Do more than just the work you enjoy
Who are successful people? These are ordinary people, but they do even work that they don’t really like.
People who like to live at other people's expense prefer to choose only the best and skim the cream. However, they are not prepared to do nothing. There is a point in the rules of life: take on any job that will lead to success.
Gotta dream
Dream more, don't limit yourself. The more you think about a good future, the greater the chance that it will come. Psychologists strongly recommend visualizing your dreams and desires. To do this, you can start a special “diary of desires” and write them down.
Remember that by dreaming on the couch and doing nothing, not a single desire or dream will come true.
Psychologist Gail Matthews conducted the research. They showed that people who clearly articulated their desires and goals were 33% more successful than those whose dreams and desires were abstract.
Make a decision and take action
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This may seem strange, but the most difficult thing at the beginning of any business is making a decision. To go or not to go, to buy or not to buy, to study or not, to start a conversation or to put it off, to make repairs or not...
There can be many options and it depends only on the person whether the job will be done or not. But once you have made a decision, take action immediately. Don't put it off for a few hours.
We are designed in such a way that the impulse for action can appear quickly. But the charge of motivation may not last long. If the state of euphoria is not supported by action, a period of apathy and disappointment will inevitably follow.
Psychologists agree that without setting a specific goal, moving forward is impossible.
Most likely, you are the same as everyone else. Deal with it
In our culture, it is accepted that we are all called to do something truly extraordinary. Celebrities say so. That's what the oligarchs say. That's what politicians say. Even Oprah says so (which means it is true). Absolutely anyone can be extraordinary. We all deserve greatness.
What most people miss, however, is that there is an inherent contradiction in this thesis: if everyone is brilliant, then by definition no one will be brilliant. Instead of thinking about what we really deserve or don’t deserve, we obediently eat these lies and ask for more.
“Average” is the classic definition of a loser. There is nothing worse than being in the middle, in the middle part of the curve. When success is measured by “unusuality,” it is better to be at the very bottom than in the middle: in any case, you are unusual and worthy of attention. Many people do this: they prove to everyone that they are the most unfortunate, or the most oppressed, or the most victimized.
People who achieve great success do not owe their success to belief in their exceptionalism
This mentality is dangerous. Once you accept that only a truly great and outstanding life can be called worthwhile, you will declare the lives of most people on Earth (including yours) to be mediocre and useless. And this does not bode well for either those around you or yourself.
Those rare people who achieve great success in anything do not owe their success to the belief in their exclusivity. The roots of their victories lie elsewhere: they had a thing for improvement. But let's think about it: why did they want to do better? Yes, because they were aware that they weren’t doing very well yet. This attitude is diametrically opposed to belief in one's own greatness. Success can come only when a person understands: he is far from greatness, the results are modest and mediocre. And there is room to grow.
And the chatter about how “everyone can become exceptional and achieve greatness” only teases the ego. It sounds good, but in reality it’s just empty calories, the proverbial Big Mac for the soul and brain: it only makes you fat and fat.
Don't avoid pain
There is an interesting feature in the law of reverse force. It is not by chance that it is named so: everything turns out topsy-turvy. The desire for positivity leads to negativity, and vice versa.
Pain in the rocking chair brings health and an influx of strength. The bumps in business allow you to better understand how to achieve success. Openly admitting your insecurities makes you more confident and charismatic in communication. The bitterness of open confrontation promotes greater trust and respect in relationships. Facing your fears and worries allows you to become courageous and resilient.
Jokes aside. The list could go on for a long time, but you get my point. Everything in life that is worth striving for is obtained through negative experience. Any attempts to remove, bypass, strangle and drown out the negative will only have the opposite effect. Trying to avoid suffering is a form of suffering. An attempt to avoid struggle is struggle. Refusal to admit failure is failure. Hiding something shameful is itself shameful.
Pain is the thread that binds the fabric of life. Pulling it out is not only impossible, but also destructive: you will tear everything apart. Trying to avoid pain means giving it too much importance. On the contrary, if you don’t give a damn about her, you will not be stopped.
Be creators of your life, not observers
In the book “Big Magic. Creativity without fear” (“Ripol Classic”, 2018) I advised readers to find an outlet in some form of creativity. Journalists later asked if I was afraid that after this book the world would be filled with bad pictures? I didn't expect such arrogance.
Art should not only be elite; talent can be shown in any field. Even if you don't know how to draw, don't be afraid to create! This is much better than just watching life go by on the sidelines.
Find what inspires you, what interests you. Don't be afraid of criticism, create, take risks, and then life will begin to bring more joy.
Keep living
It's a shame when something doesn't work out. But the worst thing is when we give up and we say: “I will never tell anyone about my dreams again,” “I will never love again,” “I will never do this again.” So what then do we have to do for the rest of our lives? Waiting to die and paying bills until that day comes?
If there can be happy moments in our life, we should not give up. We must continue to live. There is nothing more meaningful in life than simply being a curious and interested person.
Choose the right values
Good values: 1) are based in reality; 2) socially constructive; 3) direct and controllable.
Bad values: 1) divorced from reality; 2) socially destructive; 3) not direct and not controllable.
Honesty is a good value because it is something you have complete control over, it reflects reality, and it is useful to others (though not always pleasant). On the other hand, popularity is a bad value. If you put it first and your criterion is “to steal the show at the dance party,” many subsequent events will be beyond your control: you don’t know who other guests will come and how bright and attractive they will be. In addition, it is far from certain that you will correctly assess the situation: perhaps you will feel popular or unpopular, whereas in reality the opposite is true.
“Give up” and “surrender” are not the same thing
Giving up something means admitting that what you were doing was not interesting, or difficult, or boring. Surrender means admitting: “My strength is running out, there is nothing more I can do and nothing more I can give.”
I was often ashamed of the actions that happened to me as a result of my refusal to do something. Conversely, the best things in my life happened at the moment when I gave up.
At these moments, I realized that I was not the strongest person in the universe, and I simply went with the flow.
Learn to take responsibility
Let's say you woke up one morning and found a newborn baby on the threshold of your apartment. It’s not your fault: it wasn’t you who dropped the baby off. But there is responsibility. We urgently need to decide what to do. And no matter what you choose - keep the baby, get rid of it, leave it on the doorstep or feed it to a pit bull - your choice will bring problems, and you will be responsible for these problems.
We are often responsible for situations that were not our fault. That is life.
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