Be Happier: These Ten Ways Are Sure To Make You Feel Better About Yourself
Being happy doesn’t have to just be a concept that seems far off in the distance. It can be a real, and beneficial element of your daily life.
We’re programmed to believe that being happy depends on getting more than we have now. “Once I have this I will be happy.”
When you look at life that way, you keep any feelings of satisfaction in the future, and keep them far away from you now.
We spend too much time worrying what other people think. We try to live up to exaggerated images of what sexy looks like, and base our self-image on what other people think is the right image to promote. This can be a very dangerous thing because it will limit our happiness and ultimately every aspect of our lives.
I believe that in order to change anything to enable us to be truly happy, we first need to change the way we feel about ourselves and the world around us. Whether you are working towards a career change, a new relationship or improving your health, it all starts with the way you feel inside.
Here are 10 ways to feel better about yourself, try them and see what happens.
1. Everyday, write down 25 things you are grateful for. Yes, you can find 25 things. What we focus on the most becomes our experience. Shift your focus to all the things that you are grateful for in life and you’ll instantly feel better.
2. Help someone else. It’s far too easy to get wrapped up in our own problems. We forget how lucky we truly are and how many people we can help. When you focus on helping someone else or promoting a cause that you believe in, it’s amazing how things seem to sort themselves out and your self esteem increases as you do this.
Do more of what makes you happy. Look for ways to fill your day with things that you love, it could be listening to an uplifting audio book on the commute to work, taking ten minutes during your lunch break to meditate or even signing up for an evening course in something you have always wanted to do. Whatever makes you smile, do more of it.
3. Stop scaring yourself. How often do we scare ourselves with things that either haven’t happened yet or probably never will? Worrying won’t help change anything and will just make you feel worse. If you are worried about something start to visualize your ideal outcome and see yourself handling the situation well. Our minds react amazingly to our expectations
4. Don’t buy into the hype. Never invest any of your energy into thinking that you have to live up to other people’s expectations in order to feel happy. Remember, nobody except you has to live in your life. So make decisions because they are truly what are best for you. Don’t invest any more energy in trying to gain approval from an outside source. Toss the airbrushed ideals of what you think you should look or act like and focus on being happy with yourself.
5. Choose influences carefully. The books we read, the music we listen to, magazines we flip through, and the people we surround ourselves with all have a massive impact on our self-image and our outlook on life. Ask yourself, “Do my influences support where I want to go with my life?”
6. Get some quiet time. Meditation is the practice of stilling the mind and looking deeper within. If done correctly, this ancient practice can have amazing effects on your mental and physical wellbeing. Give yourself some quiet time each day to look within and recognize the changes that unfold.
7. Do something! Have a dream that still hasn’t come true? Don’t stand there like a deer in headlights. Take action! Go after what you want! Yes it can be scary but nothing is going to change unless you start moving. Face your fears, be strategic and have a plan. Taking action and doing something reduces anxiety and gets you closer to what you want.
8. Let go of what other people think. Seriously, it really doesn’t matter. Most of what we think comes from our past experiences and isn’t actually about what others think at all. If you spend too much time worrying what other people think of you just stop. My personal manifesto is, “You can worry about what people think, or you can get things done, you can’t do both.” It’s time to take your power back
9. Leave your past in the past. Whatever happened in the past, you have to decide to move on. That does not mean that you begin to condone bad behavior or deny your past pain, it means that you choose to stop letting these things affect your NOW. Do whatever you need to do to move on and choose to start being happy.
10. Have fun. Live an exciting life filled with the things that you love. Bring passion into everything that you do and light up every room that you enter.
