“Happiness or joy is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.” – Dalai Lama.

Without a doubt, we have snapshots of delight and times of happiness and ecstasy. Nevertheless, huge numbers of us are tormented with frequent negative feelings – with all that is going on in the world currently, many of us are outright stuck in the “funk.”

It should be much more of a priority to choose joy above so much of our everyday life activities and routine. Joy is incredibly important for enhancing our ability to navigate the uncertainty of the current life situation many of us face, for our ongoing mental health and for our overall wellbeing.

There is so much going on in our lives right now that we can’t control. Allowing that to consume the bulk of your energy is not only exhausting but also depleting of your happiness. Instead, challenge yourself to consider prioritising joy on a daily basis. The practice of small intentional acts regularly will boost your energy, your motivation, your mindset and best of all put a smile on your face. 

How would you discover more bliss in your life? Like virtually anything else, it takes practice to develop more joy. You might need to reset your benchmark. It won’t occur without any forethought, yet here are some things you can do each day to discover more joy and ways of being more joyful.

Start your day on a positive note:

“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” – Christopher McCandless.

To discover long-term joy, you may have to reframe your mind from a negative attitude to an uplifting outlook. Attempt these things: Spend a couple of minutes in the morning and/or evening searching for encouraging points in your life. Do this each day for 45 days, and you will begin doing it naturally. Here is a great technique to help you do this more purposefully: Being Positive: Creating A Happiness Filter Using Self-Hypnosis. https://www.adam-eason.com/being-positive-creating-a-happiness-filter-using-self-hypnosis/ 

Also, pick a good mantra – something you will rehash to yourself, for example, “Today is going to be delightful” or “I feel appreciative of all I have.” And if things go south, pause for a minute to attempt to see it in an appreciative light if possible – what can be learned from it and how can you get better as a result? Keep in mind the significance of perceiving the positive aspects throughout everyday life.

Maybe also consider having a morning mental ritual that gets you feeling good at the start of your day, one such process I recommend can be read about here: Wake Up and Be Awesome.  https://www.adam-eason.com/wake-up-and-be-awesome/ 

Develop a mindset of appreciation:

“Joy, feeling one’s own value, being appreciated and loved by others, feeling useful and capable of production are all factors of enormous value for the human soul.” – Maria Montessori

Discover approaches to develop appreciation consistently. Expressing appreciation and being thankful for all you have will make you more joyful and more substance. Appreciation is a grateful thankfulness for what you have gotten throughout everyday life. Those blessings might be unmistakable or elusive. At the point when you invest energy every day recognising all that is acceptable throughout everyday life, you’ll see there is more acceptable than you understand, and you’ll see that bitterness, tension, and discouragement are decreased.

Read more about this topic in this detailed article: The Science of Gratitude. https://www.adam-eason.com/the-science-of-gratitude-its-benefits-and-ways-to-express-it/ 

Practice saying No:

Many of us suffer from people pleaser syndrome where we find ourselves saying Yes to almost everything. Have you ever considered that every yes you give away without due consideration could potentially be a no to you and the things that truly light you up? Joyful people value their No and they use it often because they know it creates the space for more of what matters. So, practice delivering an intentional No. Something that you don’t want to do and if you don’t do it the world won’t end but the time it would take to do could be redirected to your practice of happiness.

Connect with your intuition:

Connecting with how you feel is helpful. It can even be extremely healthy for some. Awareness is the first step to change so if we don’t observe what’s going on inside how can we adapt in a way that enables more joy? A great way to do just that is to sit down with a pen and paper. First up write down on the paper any question you would like to ask. Don’t hold back it can be absolutely anything. Then ask yourself what is my head saying in response to that question, what is my heart saying in response to that question and what is my gut saying in response to that question. Write down the answers to all of the above without any filtering just simply observe what comes up. Whilst it can feel a little uncomfortable, the reality is growth occurs in discomfort and learning more about ourselves is a beautiful way to unlock joy.

Stop comparing your life with others: 

“Happiness is found when you stop comparing yourself to other people.” – Anonymous

Comparison is crazy and usually futile, for it has no valid basis to prove its existence. Reason for so much of the unhappiness in many people’s life could be comparison. People see other people doing certain things, living life in a certain way and become sad about their phase and the quality of their life or achievements. They forget to be happy because they are usually busy noticing what others have and they don’t. Don’t compare, make peace with what you have and make use of your abilities to change your situation.

Read this article for more on this subject: Stop Comparing Yourself to Others.

Say no to overthinking: 

When you overthink, you make bad use of your thought system and exhaust yourself by drawing negative or unhappy conclusions about something in your mind. Replace your hour of overthinking with some good activity like sport, dance, art, drives, yoga, meditation etc. Something that consumes your focus. The time you waste in overthinking can be replaced with some act of learning, self-improvement or entertainment. This way you will be able to infuse the lost enthusiasm and good vibes in at least chunk of your day, which will help you to be happier and find more joy.

Read these articles for more on this topic:
– How To Stop Rumination and Overthinking Being Your Downfall. https://www.adam-eason.com/how-to-stop-rumination-and-overthinking-being-your-downfall/ 

– How to Control Overthinking.

Acknowledge your flaws:

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” — Nhat Hanh

A considerable lot of us take a stab at flawlessness – we want to drive ourselves to be our best. Yet, so as to be genuinely cheerful, you should grasp the blemish that is important forever. Flawlessness is impossible, and holding ourselves as well as other people to such an ideal is pointless. We will consistently wind up feeling let down. Acknowledge that life is defective and perceive that there is magnificence and elegance in that flaw.

Do what you love:

“Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home… it’s your responsibility to love it, or change it.” — Chuck Palahniuk

It’s entirely difficult to keep up joy if you have disdain for the activity you are engaging in. Try not to squander the greatest long periods of your life in a sad activity. What are you keen on? What are you really enthusiastic about? Zero in on activities, pastimes and even professional employment that you find fun and gives you an elevated level of fulfilment, and your joy factor will go up exponentially.

Read this article on this topic: How to do What You Love.

Make significant connections:

“Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” — Mark Twain

Joy, love, kinship, and network go connected at the hip. As people, we have a crucial need to cooperate and associate with others. We normally look for our clan – the individuals who will uphold us, get us, and be there for us through life’s exciting ride. Without significant connections, we are desolate and secluded. We’re more joyful when we can make significant connection with others. The Harvard study of adult development https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org , is almost 80 years old and has proven that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier. Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study has revealed.

Spend time with upbeat individuals:

“Loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.” — Robert Waldinger 

Ever spend time with a melancholy individual and leave feeling freeloaded? That is on the grounds that mind-sets can be infectious. Incidentally, sentiments can be moved to start with one individual then onto the next, and the more we share encounters with each other, the more our feelings and practices become synchronised. One mystery to long haul joy is encircling yourself with other people who are upbeat and positive.

Self love and Self respect is important: 

“Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.” — Helen Keller

We accumulate variety of experiences and few of them make us forget how to love and respect ourselves, because of which we become less confident, fearful, inferior, pick up fights often and look for negative in every situation over the period. This makes us appear more bad and due to which we begin to dislike ourselves and forget to be happy. Give yourself enough love and respect, so that you can experience happiness within.

Not everything and everyone needs your reaction/attention:

Learn to ignore. When we feel vulnerable and weak inside, we tend to react to every small thing and thought. Such as reacting to people who provoke us deliberately, weeping over inability to accomplish things, getting over reactive to issues that could have just taken a pass with your few minutes silence. Learn to ignore as much as you can. Don’t give arguments and fights so much space in your day-to-day life. To become happy, you may need to choose peace first. Moreover don’t give anyone that much of power, with which they can spoil your mood and temperament easily.

Don’t try to control situations and learn to let go: 

We often repeat this mistake of clinging to things and people and wish to control situations, when anything goes against our planning. We keep on holding onto things; making situations look worse and freak out whenever we notice thing slipping from our hands despite of our extreme efforts. Learn to let go, because this will make you feel lighter, more positive, accomplished and ultimately you end up becoming stronger.

Be mindful:

You could do a 10-minute meditation but not everyone loves to meditate. If it’s not your thing why not explore your own take on mindfulness…draw, journal, watch the wind blow a tree, do something with your hands that requires concentration. Sometimes, just 10 minutes is more than enough to connect you back into the moment and re-energise your overall being.

If you’re someone who wants to try a meditative practice of some kind or who hasn’t found a type they enjoy then explore and experiment with a variety of practices. There is truly a style and a session time length to suit anyone when it comes to meditation, self-hypnosis and mindfulness.

Go for a walk:

The science says the more we connect with nature the happier we become. There is an emerging practice of connecting with nature called Grounding or Earthing, and Forest bathing. Quite simply it’s about undertaking activities that connect you to the earth and with nature. It’s as easy as taking off your shoes and having your bare feet touch the grass, laying on the ground or being truly mindful when out in nature.

“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” – Greg Anderson

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