5 Steps to Live a Happier Life Every Day!
By
Tatiana Franklin
Find Tatiana Franklin‘s classes https://www.learnitlive.com/tatianafranklin
and more on her website www.tatianafranklin.com
Happiness is not about having a permanent smile on your face – it is about learning to remain calm, whether things are going your way or not. Being happy is not a magical state that happens out of mere luck. To achieve happiness (or really anything) in life, you have to decide you are already there. Happiness is a healthy habit that can be cultivated and used to your advantage, so you can create a life you love and love the life you live. These five simple steps I’m sharing with you will get you started on living a happier life every single day. The key for these steps to work is to consciously choose to make them part of your daily rituals and to realize you are choosing to do them because you deserve happiness.
Step One: Start Your Day with Gratitude
The number one thing you can do to get you closer to living a happier life is to start your day with absolute gratitude. As soon as you wake up, even before getting out of bed - begin giving thanks for all the things you are grateful for that you already have in your life. If you have never done this before, a small yet powerful first step is to say quietly to yourself: thank you for anything and everything that supports my highest good. Once you get into the habit of waking up with a mindset of gratitude, start consciously choosing what you are thankful for that day – this could be the same thing every day (such as being thankful for being alive), or something that has brought you joy recently (e.g., last night’s dinner, meeting someone new, your child sleeping through the night – your possibilities are endless.) You can even turn a negative into a positive and still be thankful: “I am thankful that I spilled shampoo all over my gym bag because when cleaning it, I found the lost keys I had been looking for a while.” As you start integrating gratitude in your life, you will build a powerful mindset of always seeing the positive, even through challenging times.
Step Two: Reconnect with Your Passion
What is your favorite thing to do when time is not an issue? Swimming? Cooking? Walking outside? Happy people choose to devote time to the things they love, no matter how “big” or “small” those things may be. If you find yourself having a hard time deciding what your passion is, it only means you have been prioritizing the wrong things, and it is time for you to spend a few minutes brainstorming. The objective here is for you to remember what you already love to do on your own so that you will not find yourself making excuses not to cook or swim because others failed to show up. Remember to commit to reconnecting to your passion – pick a day at a time and put it on your calendar and respect that time as precious time you are investing in your own happiness. Every day brings you a new opportunity to live your purpose, and once you do this, you are actively choosing to be happier through those things you’re purposeful about.
Step Three: Centering
We’re exposed to so many sources of stress in this day and age: a presentation at work, a job interview, managing schedules for your kids, dealing with disease, or how about this current pandemic that has affected everything and everyone? When you’re stressed, it is completely normal to want to avoid the situation and feel overwhelmed. Experiencing this stress takes away from your ability to be in a state of happiness. Centering is a powerful technique that helps you manage stress, so your mind is more receptive to happiness. The key approach of centering is to help you bring your mental focus to the present moment by working on your breathing and releasing negative energy caused by stress and worry. There are a myriad of videos, audios, or podcasts on the Internet that can help you get started on finding the right centering technique for you. The more you practice centering, even when you don’t feel stressed, the more you will train your mind to choose to focus on what makes you happy.
Step Four: Live with Intention
Sometimes, we live our lives in autopilot mode: we don’t realize how we get to work because our minds are wandering through our to-do list, or we obsess about something that happened recently that we cannot seem to let go of. When we live in a personal world where we just go through the motions, without clarity around what we want from life or even from our week or day, then we are misusing precious time and energy that we could be investing in finding out what makes us truly happy. Stop being on autopilot as ask yourself: what is important for me to focus on today/this week/during my class/etc.? When you answer that question, you are empowering yourself to set an intention to focus on what is important to you. An intention sounds something like this: “Today I am learning to be a better leader by encouraging work-environment feedback from my immediate team.” Or, “Today, I am taking care of myself by disconnecting from everything for one hour.” Or, “This weekend, I am choosing compassionate and positive words that help me have more constructive communication with my significant other.” Setting intentions not only makes you more focused and productive, but it also speaks directly into your Spirit and helps you live in the present more. People who make it a habit to live in the present rather than in the past or future are happier and able to tap into that happiness at will.
Step Five: Letting Go
There are things in life that stay with us longer than we would like them to that car that cut you off for no reason, that co-worker who is always rude no matter how nice you are to them, that friend who wronged you in the past, and who you haven’t spoken to since. In all these scenarios, part of you gets hurt, offended, or challenged, and sometimes these events stay with you longer than you wished to. Day after day and sometimes even year after year, that event is still in the back of your mind, and when this happens, you are actively reducing the mental and emotional space that you could be attributed to your priorities and hence your own happiness. Ask yourself: what is more important to me – is it to be right or to be happy? Sometimes we cannot let go of events like these because we decide to fight and prove that we are right and that the other person is wrong, and it is simply not fair to let someone who is not right win. But what if you consciously chose to be happy instead of right? When you consciously decide to value your happiness more than who is right or wrong or what is fair or unfair, then you are actively choosing to shift your energy to honor yourself. It is not about “giving up” and letting others win; it is about choosing your own peace and happiness as your number one priority. The more you practice this throughout your everyday activities, the better prepared you will be to tackle the important life events –all leading you towards being happier every day. There are, of course, deeper traumatic events that require more help than letting go. If you feel the need for a deeper type of healing, reach out to me—I am happy to help!
Remember that happiness is a choice. How willing are you to decide to be happy right now? A happier life awaits you at the other end of that answer. Be the Light you seek.
