How To Be Happy?

So, you want to be happy, right? Well, so does everyone. Everyone on Earth wants to be happy but only a small percentage of them are happy. Why is it so? Why is it so hard to be happy? Because we were never taught about happiness, and we didn’t try to understand it either. No worries, here we are yourshappyplace to teach you How to be happy. We really hope that by the end of this blog you will have a much better understanding of happiness and how to be happy. Please feel free to write a comment or reach out to us in case of any questions. We will be happy to help you. 

Note: I specially enrolled in a course before writing this article. And I have applied the stuff to myself before writing it here. Everything discussed here is based upon research and my own experiences and experiments. I am not here to throw away some theory that you read and add to your knowledge as knowing something isn’t half the battle. Knowing how to be happy isn’t enough to be happpy.

Request: I strongly urge you to try the stuff I talk about here. Please don’t think that knowing is enough, you must apply the knowledge for it to benefit you. If you feel stuck here, yourshappyplace is here to help you to learn how to be happy. Let’s start.

Firstly, let’s talk about some misconceptions about happiness. Let’s discuss some things that we think makes us happy but don’t make us happy. I apologize in advance for hurting you here. We think that the list below will make us happy:

• A good Job
• Money
• Awesome stuff like the latest smartphone, a luxury car etc.
• True Love
• Perfect Body
• Good grades (especially for students) or good ratings from the manager.

Now all these things make us happy, but they don’t make us as happy as we think because we as humans are very bad at predicting our happiness. The reason why we are bad at predicting is because of some annoying features of our mind like:

• Our mind’s strongest intuitions are often totally wrong, what we think makes us happy doesn’t make us happy or it doesn’t make us as happy as we think or the happiness fades away quickly. Think about a trip, tour, good grades, did they really make you happy? Were you as happy as you thought you would be?
• Our minds don’t think in terms of absolutes, it judges everything related to some reference point which almost all the time is not a good one. This is the reason why a bronze medalist seems happier than a silver medalist because the silver medalist thinks that he lost the gold medal while the bronze medalist thinks that at least I didn’t come fourth.
• Our minds are built to get used to stuff. Think about when you bought some stuff like your latest smartphone, a bike or a car that you bought/ were gifted with. It made you happy at first, but that happiness faded away very quickly, didn’t it? 

If we can deal with these annoying features of our mind, our happiness level will increase. If you would like to deal with them, let’s start.

Now a question arises: How to be happy if our mind has these annoying features which we can’t eliminate. Don’t worry, we have the answer.

We know what doesn’t add to our happiness, we are good to talk about what makes us happier. These are not just my opinions or thoughts, it is based upon research, experiments and experiences of many people. 

Healthy Relationships:

Harvard study of adult development confirms the fact that the most important factor for happiness is good strong, healthy, meaningful relationships. Let’s conclude the three main learnings of that study first:

1. Here is a twist. I want to check your dedication towards learning, so you need to go to our Instagram page and find the videos there.
   Hint: You can find them by thumbnail, don’t forget to follow as well.

If I must pick one factor for happiness or the most important factor for happiness, it will be “Healthy Relationships”. If you ask me how to be happy without having healthy relationships, then my answer would be it is really hard. Healthy relationships help us navigate through different challenges easily and effectively. We become stressed when we keep stuff inside us and don’t share it with others. Studies have shown that those who have good relationships have lower levels of stress and are less likely to suffer from chronic diseases such as thyroid, sugar etc.

2. Forgiveness: I know some of you might hate me for saying this, but Forgiveness is also a key factor of happiness. I know they cheated on you; I know they didn’t apologize; I know you were punished without any mistakes but let me tell you one thing: Forgiveness is not for the other person; it is for you. It doesn’t justify their actions or make them or their behavior right, it just frees you from the frustration/anger/hatred or any kind of negative emotion. And it is when you free yourself from negative emotions that you can experience positive emotions like happiness.

2. Kindness: Kindness is highly underrated. When we are not our best (in terms of feelings), we don’t even think of kindness. We think about ourselves first, we kind of become selfish. But research shows that being kind to others like helping them in some way, wishing them, smiling at them, boosts our happiness. Here is a question: let’s suppose you spend 50$ on yourself and you spend 50$ on others by gifting them something or by paying the bill for lunch, what do you think will make you happier? This resonates with the idea that what you give comes back to you multiplied. Remember it doesn’t matter what you have, how much you have, you can always be kind to others. When you know that you are making some positive impact on others’ lives, you feel a sense of fulfillment and it makes you happy.

4. Time Affluence: It is the feeling of feeling like you have enough time to do the things you actually want to do. Everyone says hustle, grind hard, be busy but these are not practical solutions, or we can say they are not defined properly. Our mind and body are not machines, they need breaks at regular intervals. We must not overload them. Our to-do list should not make us feel so overwhelmed that we don’t even start it because of the thought of not completing it. Prioritizing time affluence over money affluence is associated with greater happiness. Prioritizing tasks and finding the right balance is the key here. If you struggle in finding the right balance, then let’s start.

5. Mind Control: Here is the toughest one. One of the primary reasons for our unhappiness is overthinking, which is the result of an uncontrolled mind. Research shows that our mind wanders 46.9% of the time. People’s mind wanders 30% of the time in almost all activities except one (which I can’t name here). Mind wandering has a negative impact on happiness, but it is also beneficial for us as all creative ideas come when our mind wanders, again balance is the key here. You might be thinking, I know mind wandering is not good but how to control your mind. The best possible way to stop mind wandering is to Meditate. Meditation is a practice of turning your attention away from distracting thoughts toward a single point of reference like breath, bodily sensations, compassion, specific thought or any activity you are doing. If you are new to meditation and struggle with it, you can start with guided meditation.

6. Hobbies: Hobbies are also a key factor in being happy. We all have different hobbies, some ways of passing time which give us pleasure, happiness, contentment and satisfaction. Some love to play cricket, some love to play guitar, some love to sing while some love to dance. Hobbies are a way of enjoying your me-time, when you have no one around you. It is like creating your own happiness. We must have one or two hobbies in our life to add to our happiness.

7. Purpose/Goal: Having a goal or a purpose to pursue in life is important to learn how to be happy. We must have short term goals as well as long term goals in our life. It is said that “Those who focus on nothing are distracted by everything.”  But most of the time, goals become the reason for our unhappiness when we fail to achieve them. Some of the reasons why we fail to achieve our goals are:

• We pick someone else’s goal, not what we want to achieve.
• We set unrealistic goals, goals that are beyond our reach.
• We want to achieve our goal too quickly, and lack of patience.
• We rely heavily on motivation, which is just a feeling which fades away quickly.

How to set realistic goals and effective strategies to achieve your goals is a very vast topic, so I will write a dedicated blog for this very shortly. Till then, explore, experiment and experience your own strategies.

8. Expectations: If I must pick the most important factor behind our unhappiness, then I would pick “expectations”. They are the biggest cause of our unhappiness/stress/anxiety. Kain Ramsay says, “We don’t become unhappy by what we found, we become unhappy when our expectations are not met.” Keeping expectations from something/someone means setting a benchmark for them without even telling them. Expectations are one of the biggest reasons why modern-day relationships are failing. I feel terribly sorry to say but we have set some unrealistic expectations on everything. Here are two very relatable examples:

• Romantic relationships: Couples nowadays post their photos or short videos where they seem to have a perfect partner or relationship, but have you ever wondered that apart from that photo or a 60 second video, do they enjoy that much for the rest of their day/life too? 

• Trips and Tours: Have you ever planned for a trip and watched some videos/vlogs of that place before your trip? Those videos or vlogs glorify that place and sometimes set our expectations so high that we are disappointed when we visit that place. Next time you set out on a trip, try not to see any videos/vlogs and notice how happy you feel.

Two free and ubiquitous pills for happiness with no side effects are:

Sleep and Exercise: 

Having a profound sleep is really important for happiness. We must have at least 6-8 hours of sleep according to your schedule. One of the regrets that I have from my student life is that I used to hate noon sleep. Having a nap in the middle of the day increases your happiness, boosts your mood and productivity as well.

Exercise benefits not only our body but our mind as well. We must move our body for at least 30 minutes 5 days a week. Exercise works better than antidepressants for depression. A study found out that 90% of depression patients recovered from depression in just 4 weeks when they were asked to exercise for just 30 minutes 4 days a week. Exercising doesn’t mean you need to go to gym, any activity that makes your body hot and makes you sweat is exercise. Exercise includes walking, jogging, running, dancing, aerobics, yoga, Zumba etc. Make sure to move your body for at least 30 minutes every day and see your happiness level rise.

We know the blog was a long one, but we wanted to make sure that we didn’t miss out on anything. This blog is the result of 45 days of learning and experiments. We really hope that you like this article, and if you do, please follow us on Instagram where we post such helpful content regularly. We hope that now you know How to be happy.

Important: Please we request that you follow what we have discussed in the article to see the results. Merely reading an article on how to be happy won’t make you happy, you need to follow the strategies to be happy.

Yourshappyplace…..Where Happiness Chases You.