In this article, you will learn 7 different tips to be truly happy in your life.
Before you read on though, please know that while it may be embarrassing to acknowledge that you’re not totally happy in your life, it’s completely normal and natural. However, with some attention to these 7 easy tips, you are well on your way to being truly happy.
Tip #1 to Be Happy in Life: Care for Your Body
I heard someone recently say that “no one wakes up happy and energized” and I was taken aback. First, I was sad they believe this. Second, my life is a testament that this is untrue. Most days, I wake up super energized and excited to start my day. But this is a dramatic shift from the years I spent struggling with depression so I understand how it feels to dread the alarm clock every day.
But a critical step to being truly happy in life is practice physical self-care.
Related: Self Care Guidelines: 4 Simple Ways to Commit to Self-Care
In reality, you cannot be happy if you are dehydrated, sore from a lack of movement, tired or your body is lacking nourishment.
Start Small in Caring for Your Body
Research consistently shows that people who aren’t physically active are more depressed and more anxious.
To be truly happy in life, you must care for your body. There are many ways you can do this. However, given all the research related to the importance of movement to reduce depression, anxiety, and even physical pain this is the best place to start for happiness.
Simple Ways to Have More Fun Moving Your Body
At the same time, the idea of exercise can feel overwhelming or even harsh depending on your life experiences. To be truly happy, you want to start in small ways to experience the joy of movement that you had as a child most likely.
The joy of movement can be reignited in just 5 minutes a day. To connect with the pleasure of moving your body which will make you happier here are some ideas:
- Dance to your current favorite song,
- Do a 5-minute yoga video to stretch out your body and reduce potential pain or tension,
- Play with your dog or cat, or
- Take a brief nature walk around your block i.e., looking for as many flowers as you can find
Tip #2 to Be Happy in Life: Tend to Your Thoughts
Learning how to let go of unhelpful thoughts is one of the best ways you can live a truly happy life.
All human beings experience thoughts that make us feel miserable, depressed, anxious, or isolated. This is a part of being human and not a failure. It is a waste of your precious time and energy to try to guard your mind from unpleasant thoughts.
Related: 3 Self Talk Techniques to Reduce Stress and Shame
However, at the same time, you are happier when you learn to let go of the thoughts that make you unhappy!
The Stories that Make Us Miserable
The human mind and ego loves telling stories that often make us feel bad. For instance, we might get caught up in the story one morning that our partner doesn’t love us because they forgot to kiss us goodbye before work. Or another day we may tell a story that we are a “failure” and haven’t achieved enough. Then the next day we may repeat a story about how much our parents “failed” us.
Related: Self Esteem Positive Affirmations: Why They Help & a List to Use Now
In these examples, you have the automatic thought i.e., “My partner doesn’t love me” but then you have a choice. You may choose to indulge that thought with story telling and keeping attached to it all day (or week or month or year or life!) or you may let it go.
Practicing Mindfulness in Your Thinking
The fault finding mind can make a problem out of anything to be honest. To overcome this tendency, we must practice mindfulness.
Mindfulness means focusing on the present moment without judgment. Your automatic unhelpful thoughts are not bad and yet, learning to let them go by in your mind like clouds floating by in the sky is tremendously helpful.
To be happy in life, you must make the choice that you’d rather feel peace than feed a story by repeating in your mind that makes you feel bad.
The Wolf You Feed
While it’s necessary to feel your emotions and not suppress them for mental wellbeing, it’s also important to not indulge in thoughts which contribute to uncomfortable emotions.
One of the secrets to a happy life is learning to focus your attention on what makes you feel good rather than what makes you feel bad.
This idea is perfectly demonstrated in this story:
One evening an old Cherokee Indian told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.’
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’
The old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’
Every moment you get to make a choice to feed the thoughts which contribute to a happy life.
Tip #3 to Be Happy in Life: Focus on an Intention
One of the best ways to be truly happy is live a life that feels meaningful and purposeful. You do this, in part, by living in alignment with your values and truest desires.
The Ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, believed that all human beings are striving to feel good in any given moment. However, despite our orientation for pleasure, he also believed that many of us are misguided in what will bring us true happiness. Therefore, we invest in things which don’t actually make us happy in the long-term.
For instance, you want a moment to relax so you open your phone to scroll but then after doing this you feel restless and disappointed that you spent so much time scrolling. To break this pattern, we must focus on long-term pleasures.
The Life of Your Dreams
Inherently, we strive for the life of our dreams to feel happy. Yet at the same time, it’s common to feel like we can’t “yet” have the life of our dreams for a number of reasons i.e., we don’t have the right partner, enough money, we aren’t a certain pant size, etc. While understandable, if you always delay your dream life for a future “one day” then you are always left waiting – and unhappy.
Instead, true happiness comes from living with intention to take steps towards your dream life every day. For instance, if you want to feel “peaceful” then daily you may choose to journal or set boundaries around situations which disrupt your peace.
Related: What are Healthy Relationship Boundaries? A Therapist Explains
Or if you want to be happy, then as mentioned before, each day you can commit to moving your body even for just 5 minutes.
Feeling Stuck or Behind without an Intention
Unfortunately, many people feel like life is just happening to them. I know, I used to feel like a plastic bag floating in the wind. This feeling, while understandable, naturally makes you feel depressed, anxious and generally unhappy.
Instead you must work towards what really matters to you. This focused energy and intention directs you towards your goal. Otherwise, you are naturally going to lose precious energy and move towards unwanted goals. For instance, if you don’t make the choice to return to school and get a degree if you want, then you naturally feel more behind on this goal as time goes on making you feel more hopeless. (The cheesy image below highlights this.)
You must start walking even in baby steps towards the direction of your dream life to ensure happiness.
Tip #4 to Be Happy in Life: Live According to Your Values
When you live according to your values, you live with integrity or wholeness. Feeling whole enables you to feel self-respect, empowered, and generally happy.
Related: 4 Effective Self Respect Exercises
If you don’t exactly know what your values are that’s completely ok. For assistance, explore this list to see what resonates with you (this is typically a physical sensation of something feeling “right”).
Living a Life You’re Proud of
When you live with integrity and according to your values, you feel proud of the life you’re living. This naturally reduces the unhappiness that often stems from FOMO or comparison (a true thief of joy!).
When you love your own life because it’s moving towards the direction of your intentions and aligned with your values, it’s easier to feel happy. At the same time, you don’t need to overwhelm yourself. Take small steps towards living more aligned with your values if you’re not yet.
For instance, if you value your creativity but currently don’t express it, maybe you let yourself draw for 10 minutes on Sundays for now and build up on this. Or if you value independence but feel currently suffocated in your life, maybe you could just something for 5 minutes a night that’s just for you i.e., doing your skin care routine without apologies.
Tip #5 to Be Happy in Life: Delete that App
Whatever app immediately came to mind when you read this tip is the one you’d benefit from deleting. Or at least reducing your time on.
When you consider the life of your dreams, you’re likely doing work that fulfills you and connecting with loved ones rather than hunched over a device looking at what other people are doing or saying. And yet, as stated before, as human beings we tend to pursue short-term pleasures to the detriment of what truly makes us happy in the long run.
Related: Deleting YouTube: 3 Things I’ve Learned Since I Deleted the App
One strategy I’ve implemented in my own life is to only let myself check my Instagram on Mondays. Of course, I had to let go of the story I was telling myself that I needed to stay connected for work. In reality, this is not how I attract clients or writing contracts. It was just a story I was telling. And since this change, I am even happier because social media, for me, always tends to trigger a sense of being behind (I know I’m not alone).
But for you, consider which app you thought of first and how you can eliminate (or reduce) using it for your true happiness (not short-term fading pleasure).
Related: How to Break My Phone Addiction: Strategies to Reclaim Your Life
Tip #6 to Be Happy in Life: Focus on the Moment
A therapy cliché is to say that: Depression comes from living in the past and anxiety comes from living in the future.
And while it may be cliché, it’s also true in practice. In any given moment, your life is truly beautiful. The fact you are alive with enough resources (food, water, shelter, clothing) to even contemplate how to be happier means you already have so much.
Connecting with Gratitude for What You Have
When you connect in the present moment with how much you already have to be grateful for there is a shift. With practice, you learn how to truly feel happier and grateful in your life even when things don’t work out the way you wanted. For instance, now that I’m genuinely happy, I can see how things not working out still benefited me in the lessons gained.
I used to be someone who was always unhappy and could find fault with any situation i.e., not “enough” people texted me for my birthday but when I learned to shift this default way of thinking my life changed. For instance, focusing on the fact that a few people remembered my birthday and took the time to send love is truly joyful.
You can practice this by keeping a gratitude journal where every day you write down 3 genuine gifts in your life right now i.e., a good cup of coffee, a smooth commute to work or a comfortable sweater.
Sometimes, decluttering also helps you feel grateful for what you already have by eliminating whatever feels “heavy” or distracting to you too.
Related: 3 Game-Changing Questions to Ask when Decluttering
Tip #7 to Be Happy in Life: Connect with Others
This can be complicated though by a history of trauma. Relationships can become a source of anxiety rather than comfort if you have relationship wounding in your childhood and/or adulthood. Seeking therapy to help you heal from trauma can help you dramatically in feeling more comfortable around others.
Related: Can You Heal Trauma on Your Own? 4 Clear Steps to Heal
Practical Steps to More Connection
We can all cultivate social skills that enable us to meet and connect with more people. In The Charisma Myth, Olivia Fox Cabane uses research to highlight that charisma or the quality of being likable to others can be developed without compromising our authenticity.
One way to be more charismatic she explains is to simply be more present with other people. After all, we all like the feeling of truly being listened to by someone else. Here’s another way that practicing mindfulness helps you feel happier!
Small Steps Towards Friendships
While it takes time to build a friendship (50 or more hours), you can begin to connect with other people right away.
It may feel awkward talking to strangers, but it’s such a wonderful way to build more connection. In The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World, Joe Keohane explains that even passing interactions with other people makes us happier and less lonely! (Honestly since learning about this, I work on this skill myself.)
Next, consider your authentic passions. A great way to connect with people is around shared joys such as joining a book club to connect with other readers. (I found my book club that’s been meeting for over 3 years now on Meetup.)
Or you may volunteer with others around a shared passion i.e., at an animal shelter or recovery community. Bonus points for volunteering: It’s proven to ease loneliness which makes us unhappy.
You Can Be Happy
When we aren’t yet happy in our lives, it can feel like happiness is “out there” – a goal we are chasing yet is always just out of reach. But this, like other thoughts, is just a story. With practice towards these steps, you will be happier soon enough.
Also, just a final note, if you have a complex trauma history, panic attacks, and/or serious thoughts of depression such a not wanting to be here, please seek support from a therapist while you practice these steps.
