Happiness by Design – Turn your life around
In previous post I introduced this topic and gave you relatively easy choices to increase your happiness and overall well-being. Now let’s dive into a few more choices you can make. At the end of the article, we’ll also explore which identity you can cultivate to more easily design a happy life.
The happiness choices I gave in the previous article:
Do more of the things you love. What makes you feel alive? Schedule time for this.
Grow as a person. Progress = Happiness.
Move. Generate energy.
Develop your gratitude muscle. Stress, fear, sadness, anger, etc cannot co-exist with gratitude.
Here are a few more tips that can help you turn your life around.
1/ Scratch the negativity label
We can choose to not perceive negatively what we generally classify as negative. Think about what a heavy layer we add on top of unpleasant moments and unpleasant emotions by labeling them as negative. No wonder we don’t want to experience them.
Realize there is no life without some form of pain or struggle, small or big. You will suffer at times, and you will go through difficult moments. Therefore, it’s a smart choice to learn to deal with this in a way that brings you less tension and less stress.
How? By changing your approach to these moments. Not labeling them as negative is a great first step.
The end-goal of this choice is that you deliberately try to allow everything that you experience. You’re not fighting the difficult moments, you’re not trying to run away from it.
But this does not mean you become passive. As Eckhart Tolle nicely put it: when you end up standing in the mud, don’t get angry or frustrated about standing in the mud (your agitation will pull you in even deeper). Be aware you are in the mud, accept that you are in the mud, don’t label it as a negative experience, and with this calmness of mind, decide how to get out of the mud. With this state of mind, there is nothing horrible about standing in the mud. You might prefer another situation, but you are not thrown off balance by standing in the mud.
You create a choice of how you want to think about, approach, and act upon the difficult or miserable situation.
In other words, you can make the experience a lot less awful when you think differently about it. This choice is one of the happiness superpowers.
In theory, this is relatively easy. In practice, it’s not. The most difficult part is to increase your awareness in the difficult situations, which is extra hard when we experience strong emotions. To increase this awareness, journaling really helps (see challenge). What also helps me personally a lot is meditation. If you are interested to know more about what meditation can do for you, you could check this post (in Dutch).
Challenge
Journal 5x per week for 30 days on unpleasant moments. Take a moment to reflect upon it and see if you are maximizing or minimizing the feeling, and how you can think differently about that moment. When you are maximizing the feeling, you are making it worse, like adding some oil to the fire (a small frustration becomes a big frustration just by your thought-process). When you are minimizing the feeling, you are deliberately choosing to approach the moment differently, meaning you are quickly realizing that your natural tendency of getting more frustrated, angry, sad, … , will not help you and you start overruling this natural tendency, a wonderful happiness-power!
You can use this journal as an example (and the related article with some guidelines (in Dutch) ).
2/ Counter the negativity bias
Besides the acceptance of those difficult moments or emotions, you can also become more aware of the joyful moments in your life, boosting your happiness simply by increasing your self-awareness and focus on joyful moments.
Most of us have a tendency to focus more on “negative” elements (this stems from our survival instinct developed a long time ago when being alert for potential danger was crucial for our survival). Because of this negativity bias, it’s important to enforce and strengthen the experience of your “positive” moments (this can be a very small thing as seeing or smelling a flower, or a big thing like a promotion).
Do you, like me, enjoy a delicious cup of coffee in the morning? When that coffee-smell enters my nostrils, I feel a boost of happiness. Since I’m very aware of this, I tend to enjoy it even more, putting more emphasis on how much I like it. Taking it in fully. Taking a moment to enjoy it and being present before continuing the rush of my daily life.
Now, awareness is step 1.
Imprinting it in your brain is step 2.
By increasing this awareness and using it to appreciate the moment even more, you are strengthening this joyous path-way in your brain. The more you do it, the stronger it gets.
Sitting down and writing these moments down supports this process and also helps to increase your awareness. I take a couple of minutes 4-5 times a week to write down my pleasant moments, increasing my awareness and strengthening the joy 😊.
Challenge
Write down your pleasant moments 5x per week for 30 days and reflect upon it: have you been taking them in fully?
See this article and corresponding journal to help you with this.
3/ Take responsibility for your actions and results
And the last point I find game changing in happiness, and it combines somewhat the above points, is taking full responsibility for your life. Taking responsibility for your thoughts, emotions, behavior and outcomes in your life increases your self-awareness and your self-knowledge, giving you (more) control over all of the above. Being more in control of your life will also contribute to your happiness. (You may check out this article if you’d like to know more about taking responsibility (in Dutch) )
Challenge
An easy way to find out if you are taking responsibility for your life or not is to be aware when you are complaining, blaming, or finding excuses. When you’re doing this, you’re putting the reason for the outcome of your situation outside of yourself. So for 30 days, check in if you are doing this. If so, reflect on how you have contributed to the situation and if you can approach the situation or moment differently, or what you could do differently next time. Best to inform your colleagues, friends and family of this challenge because we do this all the time, we’re just not aware of it 😊.
The required identity
Choosing deliberately for happiness requires a certain mindset and a certain identity. I’m talking about the core belief that with effort, you can change. All the items above and those from the previous post become easier when you believe it’s possible to influence your happiness, when you believe that you can be a different person: more joyous, healthier, more successful, fitter, kinder, calmer, more authentic, stronger, or any other quality you want to cultivate in your life. For some people, optimism and happiness come more easily than for others and it might cost them less effort, but the point remains: everybody can change with effort.
If you really grasp this concept, it allows you to dream and think big(ger), it can boost your confidence and make you take the leaps that you, deep down inside, want to take. Realizing that a more exciting, fulfilling life outside the borders of your comfort zone and your limiting beliefs is possible, might push you through the fears and uncertainties and will make it easier for you to go for the things you really want, elevating your happiness. (See also this article on how to overcome fears.)
You can give yourself this new identity by choosing and believing you can be the type of person you want to be. It takes time and effort, but that goes for everything. (See also this article on Belief (in Dutch).)
And with any kind of change, patience, persistence and small, incremental steps are key.
The art of living
So the choices for your happiness in the end are about the art of living. Training yourself to enjoy life more. To find peace more easily. To get into the flow of life, and not constantly have to walk or fight against it. Letting go of the tensions, getting more easily in a flow state, getting slowly rid of overwhelm and stress.
I know this sounds unrealistic for many, and maybe it is for some. But for many of us, growing personally to become happier, more successful, and better performing is possible. And in my opinion, if you follow the small incremental changes idea (meaning you believe, start small, and be persistent), it’s easier than it seems.
Small incremental changes in your thoughts, actions, and habits will ultimately determine your character or identity.
So, who do you want to be and how do you want to feel? Reverse engineer this and become healthily obsessed with the thoughts, actions and habits you need day in day out to get there. (Check out this article that can get you started with this.)
It’s what I’ve been doing myself for the last couple of years and there is definitely a change for the better 🙂. And obviously, it’s with ups and downs. But I’m not perceiving the downs so negatively anymore as I used to. I’m kinder to myself. I more quickly choose to focus on what I have already achieved instead of worrying about what I have NOT yet achieved. I do more small things that make me happy. I constantly invest in myself to grow and learn new things. I started doing some sort of physical exercise almost daily. I include gratitude exercises in my meditation and practice to express it more often. I’m doing exercises to increase my self-awareness. I train myself to approach difficult moments with less negative energy. And I practice to be more present in joyful, happy or proud moments. So I try to take responsibility for the experiences and results I have in my life and the thoughts and emotions I’m generating.
This is the core of what I try to achieve with my work.
This can also help organizations to increase happiness and performance in the workplace. By not only working on skills (communication, leadership, feedback, productivity, listening, etc) but also on the identity of people, they grow at their core and tap into more of their potential, which can create an amazing ripple effect in the organization.
As a result: happier, more self-aware people, better communicators, better listeners, more drive, more engagement, more focus, higher efficiency and effectiveness, and more proactive behavior, resulting in a positive company culture where respect, collaboration, ownership, good leadership, feedback and happiness thrive.
Feel free to contact me if you are looking to build happy high-performing teams in your organization, or if you want to invest in yourself as a person, or have any questions on this matter.
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Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
Jan Aquarius – Live. Grow. Matter.