How to stay Happy? Will I ever be happy? How many times did you ask this question to yourself? Believe me, I ask many times in my life. I am pretty sure, most people like you and me ask this question because we all experience bad moments in life. Life is not a bed of roses and it’s not the same for everyone. We all experience difficult times, unwanted events and sudden changes in our life. It’s very common among us when we are not happy and our life is stuck in hardships. Unintentionally we ask ourselves, will I ever be happy?
What is happiness? Happiness is an emotional state of feeling pleasure, joy, satisfaction and excitement. It’s a feeling of positivity and contentment. Happiness is directly connected to our daily life routine. Our actions, work, the events and issues we face daily decide the level of our happiness. Our emotional state of mind, our ability to perceive different things and our social values also play a vital role in spending a happy life.
How to stay happy? True Happiness lies inside you. Happiness is actually living a peaceful life, having peace of mind and having a peaceful soul. It’s a state of being in love with yourself.
Dalai Lama Said; “The very purpose of life is to seek happiness”
Did you know what science says about happiness? How do we feel happy? What causes happiness in our bodies? This is a very interesting topic and I can’t discuss it here in detail. But let me explain in a few lines. Actually, happiness is caused and controlled by four brain chemicals or hormones. These are dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. These hormones regulate our mood, pleasure, satisfaction, love and promote a sense of wellbeing.
When we perform our daily routine tasks, feel our surroundings, and observe everything our mind and body release these chemicals. So, these chemicals are also called happy hormones. These chemicals make us feel pleasure, satisfaction and joy. The level of these hormones in our body rises and fall depending on our daily routine and lifestyle. If our mind and body are releasing enough happy hormones then we will stay happy. Happy hormone means a happy life. So, we can boost and control these hormones in our bodies by changing our routines and lifestyle.
Most people say, having a life you love makes you happy. But I didn’t buy this. I would like to say, happiness is a component that helps to create a life we love.
Let’s come to the main discussion, how to stay happy in life? We can’t buy happiness from others. As I already said, happiness lies inside us and we can control it. You can not be happy just having the materialistic things you want. Having some materialistic things is also a factor of happiness but when you will not have, then what. Happiness is a state of feeling. Happiness is not constant, sometimes we feel happy and sometimes sad depending on our routine, events and our perceptions.
As we know, staying happy is depends on our daily routine, events, surroundings and lifestyle. So, by improving our routine and lifestyle we can stay happy all the time in our life. The state of being happy is an art and we easily have this art just changing our behaviour and improving our daily routine.
There are many ways to improve your lifestyle and stay happy in life all the time. I can’t discuss it all here and I don’t want to put your life in trouble.
Here I am sharing 12 proven ways to stay happy all the time. These are scientifically proven, easy to follow, easy to manage and very effective. I am quite sure these will help you to stay happy in your life most of the time.
Spend Some Quality Time with Your Family and Go for Outing:
Spending quality time with family members is an important factor to get relaxed. You should invest enough time in your spouses, kids and other family members because they give you happiness in return. They are always with you in your bad and good times. After a hectic routine, when you will sit with them, share your feeling and life, you will feel satisfied and relaxed. Further, going outside is a pretty good factor for staying happy in life. Spending one hour in the park with family or having a family dinner in a restaurant helps in releasing a lot of happy hormones.
Surround yourself with nice friends:
Good friends always play a pivotal role in staying happy. Positive and strong relationships with people bring real meaning and purpose to life. So, Surround yourself with nice friends. Friends will make you laugh, improve your mood and bring happiness to your life. Positive, supportive and mutually respectful friends can make our life easier and help us relieve stress. Your social circle and social time are highly valuable in achieving happiness. Research has shown, people who live alone have a higher mortality risk and tend to die early. So, quality time with friends will make a big difference and have a positive impact on your life
Express Gratitude to God and People:
Gratitude is the feeling of thankfulness for what we have. The research found that practicing gratitude has a significant impact on feelings, mood and happiness. So, being grateful to God and people will boost your morale and generates happy hormones in your body. Showing gratitude helps in building strong relationships and social emotions leading to a happy life. Make a list of your important achievements and people who helped you in life and show gratitude to God and people. Make a habit of being thankful at the time of sleep and when you get up.
Set Some Realistic Goals and Be Focused:
What is the purpose of your life? What do you want to achieve in your life? You must ask these questions to yourself. A life without goals is meaningless. Goals provide motivation and a sense of purpose. People who try to achieve their goals are happier than those who don’t have aspirations. Setting a realistic goal and putting efforts to achieve those goals always boost self-esteem and people connection.
Say Goodbye to Scowl and Smile:
Smiling makes us feel better and helps in increasing our mood flexibility and think positively. A real smile plays a positive role in bringing happiness. Don’t try a fake smile on your face, it would worsen your mood instead of making you happy. A smile generated from positive thoughts and backed with feel-good factors helps in improving work performance and reduce stress levels. Practice a real smile, find out the ways how you can smile, surround yourself in a healthy environment where you can smile because a real smile regulates the blood flow to the face, eyes and brain. So, say goodbye to scowl and start smiling, this will generate enough happy hormones in your mind and body and makes you happy.
Get a Plenty of Sleep Daily:
Lack of sleep trigger depression and anxiety. Sleep problem causes mental illness, psychiatric disorders and mood swings. So, there is no secret that sleep plays a good role in personal health. When we sleep our body recover from daily fatigue and stress. Sleep helps our body to repair our cells and generates new ones. So, sleeping well is very important for happiness and improving our productivity level. When we are sleeping our brain and body produces some hormones which trigger the positive emotion and reduce the negative emotion. We all know when we wake up in the morning, we feel relaxed, fresh and happy. So sleep well on time and get up early morning to bring happiness to your life.
Exercise well or Practice Yoga:
Researchers say exercise helps our body to release hormones like endorphins which improve our mood and makes us happy. Exercise or yoga boost our blood circulation in our whole body, relax body muscles and improve our heart health. Practicing yoga or having exercise or morning walk or jogging bring positive changes to our body and mood. This activity helps in overcoming negative thoughts and improve our brain capacity. The best time to practice yoga or walk is morning time because in the morning the level of oxygen in the air is very high and the air pollution is very less. So, a 30 to 60 minutes morning exercise session is well enough to keep yourself healthy and happy.
Start Giving Compliments:
Giving compliments means an expression of praise or to express admiration for someone. Praising someone for his good actions or saying thank you to someone is a great source of motivation and happiness. Research has shown giving or getting compliments to boost our positive thinking and self-esteem is an important source of happiness. Giving compliments is also an act of kindness and help to feel satisfied and brighten our day. Giving a compliment is also a sense of responsibility, leadership and helps in building strong relations. For most people, the compliment is just like receiving cash. So, you can make someone day just saying thank you or praising.
Bring Yourself Close to Nature:
Getting closer to the animals, green fields, birds, plants and other natural elements can be a great source of good health and happiness. Everything around us impact our mood, mind and body. Spending some time in green spaces, playing with birds or animals boost our productivity level, makes us relaxed and create feel-good factors. Researchers say spending some on beaches, mountains, forests and eating natural food boost our health, improve our lifestyle and causes happiness all the time in our life.
Reduce your Phone Time and Start Reading Books:
Excessive use of cell phones can affect your family relationships, your health and your mental capacity. Cell phones radiations shrink the blood vessels causing mental laziness and memory problems. Excessive use of electronic devices also affect our sleep, increase stress and harm our productivity level. So, use cell phones or other electronic devices as per requirements and spend your free time reading books. Reading books is a great practice to stay happy, active and also a great source of increasing our knowledge. So, save your brain, health, eyes and increase your knowledge to stay satisfied and happy.
Be Positive and Trash your negative thoughts:
Positive thinking helps in bringing creativity, productivity and increases the energy level. Sometimes people are overwhelmed with negative thoughts due to the problems. Negative thoughts put toxic effects on the brain, mood and health. Negative thinking creates a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness and affects our brain to think and memory level. It also creates hormones imbalance in the body which causes stress and reduces the happy chemicals require for happiness. So, be positive and say goodbye to negative thoughts. Being negative can’t solve the problem but being positive can motivate you to achieve the required satisfaction.
Dedicate some time to helping others:
One of the most important pieces of advice I wanted to give you is to help others. This is a great way to bring happiness to life. Look at the people having a bigger problem than you. Please spare some time to help them. This will create a sense of humanity, dedication and commitment towards our society and make you happier and stronger. As per researchers, spending money or time helping others bring more happiness and satisfaction than spending money on ourselves. Your one act of kindness can make someone life and make you feel happy. So, try to contribute to the well-being of mankind and starts living for others.
Conclusion:
In a nutshell, we can say true happiness lies inside us. We drive happiness from our daily routine, events and lifestyle. We can control our emotions, surroundings and lifestyle which means we can control and bring happiness as well. Actual success is to be happy and satisfied in life. If you have achieved a lot in your life, you have touched the sky but you are not satisfied with it, it means you are not successful. Just getting materialistic success is not true success. True success is bringing happiness to yourself and your community.