30 Habits To Pick Up To Reach Actual Happiness
Happiness. We all want it, but sometimes it can be a struggle to achieve and maintain. Of course being happy 24 hours a day 7 days a week is simply unrealistic, as life is all about experiencing ups and downs, and that’s perfectly normal. However, there are a few habits that you can implement in your everyday life that will improve your overall happiness and hopefully bring a smile to your face at least once every day.
1. Be Kind
Being kind to someone will not only make someone else feel good, but you’ll also reap the benefits of making someone else smile. You never know what someone may be going through, so just be kind because you never know, you might make that person’s day.
2. Eat Well
Eating junk food will affect your body in many negative ways such as bad skin, weight gain and reduced health, which might ultimately lead to an increase in unhappiness. Eating healthy food will result in a happy, healthy and confident individual.
3. Exercise
Exercise releases the happy hormone, endorphins. Regular exercise will not only improve your health and fitness, but simply getting out of the house every day to get your blood pumping will improve your mood. Whether its a hardcore HIIT session or just a 10-minute walk to the shop, get that body moving!
4. Meditate
A daily 10-minute meditation will allow you to gain some mental clarity, refocus your thoughts, practice breathing and will give you an opportunity to contemplate the things you’re grateful for and either create or repeat some affirmations. Meditation can hugely help to reduce anxiety and stress and is a vital daily ritual that everyone should be doing.
5. Be Honest
Being honest with other people and most importantly yourself is so important. Honesty with other people is relatively self-explanatory: being untruthful will cause guilt and it’s always easier to just tell the truth. But being honest with yourself can sometimes be a little harder. Recognising when you’re not happy and doing something about it is a must for anyone seeking to be happy.
6. Dream Big
Having hopes, dreams and ambitions will fill you with happiness and school-like giddiness. Having dreams of travelling, your dream house, a family, skydiving or even learning to play an instrument will keep you always and constantly excited for the future and ultimately happiness.
7. Be Patient
Impatience is a virtue that unfortunately a lot of people have, and all it does is cause stress for the people feeling impatient. Adopting a laid-back, easy-going approach to life will only ever end in a win-win situation. If something is going to happen, it will. If not, then who cares? Patience is the key to reducing stress and therefore increasing happiness.
8. Judge Less
Having an open heart and judging people less will rid you of any hateful or negative thoughts and all that will be left is positivity and happiness. If you ever think or even say something judgey about someone, simply think before you say it and instead why not swap it for a compliment about that person. Not only will you be lifting that person up, but your thoughts will be positive ones and this will eventually lead to a cup half full attitude.
9. Smile Often
As soon as you wake up in the morning, just smile. Smiling to yourself to start your day will really help with your attitude for the remainder of the day, trust us on this! After all, a smile is everyone’s best accessory.
10. Love Yourself
Self-love is one of the biggest and most important ways to achieve happiness. Loving yourself, complimenting yourself and praising yourself will ultimately turn you into your own biggest fan. What could be more inspiring or uplifting than knowing that you are the only person who you can rely on for your happiness?
11. Forgive Easily
Holding hate and resentment in your head and your heart will only ever damage you, not the person you are having these feelings towards. Forgiving people is not a sign of weakness or being a pushover, but simply proving that you’re an understanding and loving person that has more important things to be worrying about. Forgiving easily and often takes more strength than holding hate, so try and let go of these negative feelings.
12. Show Gratitude
Expressing your gratitude towards people or life will really open your eyes to how lucky you are. Recognising the things you’re grateful for and reminding yourself of these things regularly will make you feel like the luckiest, most appreciative person on earth. What could make you happier than that?!
13. Think Positively
If you constantly fill your mind with positive thoughts and adopt a cup half full attitude, you will start to see your happiness improve more and more.
14. Drink Lots Of Water
Drinking lots of water will improve the quality of your health and body, and your body will thank you. Maintaining your health is one of the most important things you can do and well, if you have your health, what’s not to be happy about?
15. Believe In Yourself
Supporting your own dreams and believing that you can achieve anything you want will open doors you never thought would open. Always believe in yourself because if you do, you will really go far in life and achieve things you never thought possible.
16. Keep An Open Mind
Always keep an open mind to people, possibilities and your potential. Doing so will make you become a super open and accepting person and you’ll attract the same sort of people.
17. Put Your Needs First
Of course its a super loving and helpful trait to want to put everyone else before yourself, but not always the most beneficial for you. Small scale stuff like making everyone else dinner before your own is normal and fine if you naturally cater for other people first. However, sacrificing your dream job or travelling the world for other people is simply unacceptable. Go after that dream job and travel the world and everything else will fall into place and work out the way it’s supposed to.
18. Don’t Make Excuses
Stop making excuses for yourself and other people. If your boyfriend is a cheat, do not make excuses for him. Get rid and find your own happiness! If you’re constantly delaying applying for your dream job due to this reason and that reason, don’t make excuses, just do it! Trust us, quit making excuses and you’ll soon find happiness.
19. Speak Well Of Others
Complimenting other people, to their face or to other people, will not only spread positivity to other people and within yourself, but you’ll also be known as a kind-hearted person to others, and in turn, they’ll speak well of you. A constant circle of happy thoughts and complimentary conversations.
20. Listen To Understand
The worst thing you can do is listen to reply. You will appear unkind, disinterested, rude and vacant to the person talking to you. Truly listen and attempt to understand what people are saying to you because believe me, it shows.
21. Choose Faith Over Fear
Instead of always expecting the worst to happen, fearing the future or the outcome of decisions you need to make, have faith that everything will turn out okay and always expect the best possible outcome.
22. Make The Most Of Now
If you’re always fretting over the past and always worrying about the future, you will never be happy. Enjoy and appreciate what’s happening right now, because if you don’t, time will pass quicker than you know and before you know it you haven’t actually enjoyed the moments you’ve had, but missed them.
23. Exercise Self-Discipline
Self-discipline will give you the power to make plans and stick to them, which will ultimately lead you to achieve your goals.
24. Look On The Bright Side
Always look on the bright side of any situation and chose to see the positives, this will avoid negative thoughts or feelings and will increase your general mood and happiness.
25. Avoid Social Comparison
Comparing yourself to others, may that be in real life or on social media, will never do you any good. People always share the best parts of their life and tend to keep the nitty-gritty real life troubles behind closed doors, which is not even comparable to your life. No-one has a perfect life, despite what it may seem. The only person you should ever compare yourself to is yesterdays version of yourself. Always aim to achieve more, be happier and reach your goals and you’ll be just fine.
26. See Failure As Opportunity
Failure should never be an indication of quitting, but simply a lesson that you can learn from and then improve on in the future. Failure is always an opportunity to try again but do better than last time and you should actually express gratitude for the ability to do so.
27. Don’t Take Opinions To Heart
Everyone has opinions, but at the end of the day the only person’s opinion that truly matters is your own.
28. Have Friends That Lift You Up
Surrounding yourself with positive friends that build you up and encourage you to be happy is exactly what you should be doing. This creates a motivating and inspiring environment that you will thrive in personally and socially.
29. Let Go Of What Cant Be Changed
Never worry over something you can change, because you can change it; never worry over something you can change, because you can’t change it. Stressing and increasing your anxiety over something out of your control is pointless, so let it go, and what will be will be.
30. Have A Healthy Sleeping Pattern
Allowing your mind and body to rejuvenate and rest every night is vital to recharging yourself and being ready for a new day every day. Waking up feeling rested and refreshed will start your day the right way, and will leave you feeling good and in a super happy mood.
