How To Be Happy by:Alison Andrews
I think we all know how to be happy
I think we all know how to be happy. However, sometimes we lose our way and seem to 'forget'. As children we knew how to be happy, we would just go and play outside, or spend time in a dream world, imagine what we might get for Christmas. No matter how tough our home lives may have been, we generally had some 'how to be happy' tricks up our sleeves.
However, as we became teenagers and then adults, all the childish games and dreams and imaginings fell away in a bid to become 'realistic.' Well being realistic gets a lot of attention, so how about we forget all about 'realism' as it is purely subjective anyway.
Happiness begins in our thoughts. We decide what to think, every thought we have has been chosen by us and comes from our internal belief system.
Our thoughts create energy and carry vibrations, and these vibrations attract similar vibrations. Therefore negative thoughts attract more negative thoughts, which leads to negative outcomes.
You know if you are feeling angry and thinking an angry thought, your brain loves to toss out a few more reasons for you to be angry and before long you are seething with rage!
BUT YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS!
You are separate from your thoughts, and you have control over your thoughts.
Lets imagine this: you are feeling angry, someone has cut you off in traffic. Your brain tosses you a few more reasons to be angry, maybe starting with a thought like: 'all the drivers in this horrible place are like that.' That thought brings forth another negative thought: 'I hate living in this awful city, the traffic is such a disaster, and all these jerks cutting in all over the place, who do they think they are? Do they think their time is more important than mine?' And so it continues.
What if you said to your brain 'thank you for sharing but I choose not to give these thoughts any importance', and instead reached for a thought of a different vibration, something that made you feel a little better, like 'well at least sitting in traffic isn't so bad with the air conditioning on, thank God for aircon' and that thought leads to 'I really like this song playing on the radio' and you keep reaching for a better thought until you are singing along and smiling at everyone around you.
Sure, this is a little simplistic and it isn't always as easy as this, sometimes you just WANT to be mad. But remember, it is your choice. Being happy is just a matter of choosing to be so. And here are some great how to be happy pointers.
How To Be Happy Tip 1: Gratitude
Be sure to express gratitude on a daily basis. If you are short on time, do it while you are driving your car, or while you're brushing your teeth in the morning, whenever you can.
Think about what you are grateful for: your relationships, your health, fitness, finances, knowledge, family. Even if your life seems quite bleak there is always TONS you can be grateful for.
Just get started with something, perhaps: 'I am so grateful for this beautiful sunny day' and just go on from there and you'll be amazed at how much there is of value in your life. Are you grateful for your education, for your access to information, the internet, the place you live, your friends, your eyesight, music, a car that starts first time every time, the food in your fridge?
Expressing gratitude is a very powerful way of raising your vibration and beginning to attract many wonderful things into your life.
If you are ungrateful, you are simply sending out a message to the universe saying: I don't want any more of this. So anything that you DO want more of, such as love and health and great relationships, be sure to express your gratitude for regularly. It also has a powerful impact on your mood and helps you to see your life differently.
No matter how bad you think things are, take time to find something good, something to be grateful for, and build on that, let the emotion follow the words, feel the gratitude, and know that you are powerfully shifting your vibration.
How To Be Happy Tip 2: Meditate
Meditation is a great way of lifting your vibration and bringing more joy and happiness into your life. We are here to live outstanding lives, to be joyful and to achieve everything we desire. It is only our own resistance to our good that prevents the abundance of the universe from flowing constantly in our lives.
When we meditate, we put the resistance aside, and we are in a state of allowing. We allow all the good things that we powerfully desire, but are resisting through our own negative thought patterns and limiting beliefs, to flow into our lives.
To meditate sit in a comfortable chair or lie down in a quiet room with no distractions, close your eyes and concentrate on something, like your breathing. I usually count, I'll breathe in for one two three, breathe out one two three and count along with the breathing in my mind.
Whenever a thought comes into your head let it go with the breath. Another thing to try is to imagine the flickering flame of a candle and focus on this image. Or you could focus on a sound, like the drawn out Om sound.
The purpose of this is to clear your mind of the clutter. There are usually so many thoughts flying through your brain. By focusing on your breath, or an image or a sound, you are stilling your mind and you are in a state of allowance. Try and do this for 15 minutes every day. If you can, increase the time spent as you get better at it.
How To Be Happy Tip 3: Guided Meditations
Guided meditations are wonderful tools to lead you to happiness. Kathy Freston's "The Daily Dose" guided meditation is fantastic. Using visualization techniques you release your fears and limiting beliefs and focus on your ideal self.
How does your ideal self look? How does your ideal self walk and talk? Does s/he have more confidence, is s/he thinner, is s/he more loving, where is s/he, what is s/he wearing? You build this image in your mind and allow your emotions to flow AS IF YOU HAVE ALREADY ACHIEVED IT! This is a crucial part of how to be happy. You have to choose to feel the happiness now, in order to attract the corresponding circumstances.
All those who told us as children to 'stop dreaming' and to live in the 'real world' were sadly unaware that WE create this real world. We create it through our thoughts. Dream, imagine, visualize how you want things to be, feel the feelings as if you are already there, and know that everything you ever dreamed of is on its way to you.
How To Be Happy Tip 4: Float Downstream
Knowing how to be happy, is knowing that things shouldn't be a struggle. Whenever we do struggle, whenever we find things difficult, it is likely that we are not in vibrational alignment with what we are doing.
For instance, maybe you are struggling to lose weight, you are trying various diets, cutting your calories, exercising ruthlessly yet you are not losing weight. You may not be in vibrational harmony with your goal of being at an ideal weight.
Is this because you have an underlying belief that you do not deserve to be thin? Or is it that you have negative beliefs about thin people? Do you think all skinny girls are nasty? Or is it that you hate yourself so much because of how you perceive yourself to look, that everything you eat, drink or do is imbued with self judgment and self criticism?
When we are aligned with our goals it is as if we just float on a comfortable floating mattress all the way downstream where what we want is waiting patiently on the shore.
If you were aligned with the goal of losing weight, it might go something like this: you make the decision to lose some weight, within a couple of hours, a friend happens to mention to you a great weight loss book, you read this and all your questions are answered. You start following the plan in the book, wow you are loving your food, eating more than you thought you could and heck you seem to be losing weight.
As your clothes get loose, suddenly you WANT to exercise so you start riding your bicycle instead of driving your car, and wow there you see a sign for a new dance class that's starting a block away from where you live, funny that since you've always wanted to join a dance class. Suddenly three months later you are slim and fit and it was no effort at all. This is what happens when you are aligned with your goals. They happen almost by magic.
So how do we get aligned with our goals? Feel good NOW! Feel happy NOW! Feel as if your goal is already achieved.
How To Be Happy Tip 5: Listen To Uplifting Audiobooks
There is never a need to get impatient in traffic again! Buy audiobooks to listen to in your car or while you exercise. I love anything by Anthony Robbins! He understands how to be happy. It is also wonderful to listen to stuff like "Ask and It Is Given" by Esther and Jerry Hicks.
It will really uplift you and raise your vibration.
How To Be Happy Tip 6: Forget Reading Newspapers or Watching The News
An important part in knowing how to be happy is to filter out all the information that is not to your benefit.
Mainstream media focus on the negative and feed fear in order to sell newspapers. In a survey done of a neighborhood the residents were asked to estimate levels of crime in their area. The ones who watched the news or read the papers grossly overestimated the crime, whereas those who didn't follow the news were spot on in their estimations.
How To Be Happy Tip 7: Be Healthy
It is so much easier to be happy if you are also healthy. It is enormously difficult to maintain a great attitude, choose great thoughts and great vibrations, if we don't feel well.
Addictive substances like alcohol and drugs are a fast track to depression. It is much, much easier to choose to be happy when these things are out of the equation. Even things like coffee and tea stress our adrenal glands, leading to hormonal imbalances, exhaustion, weight gain, disturbed sleep etc.
Eat healthy foods that make you feel good. Do exercise that you enjoy, if you don't enjoy it you are not going to do it, so signing up for something just because you think you 'should' is going to be a futile endeavor. Do what you like to do. The best exercise is the one that you actually do. It is so much easier to be in a natural state of high vibration when you feel strong and fit.
How To Be Happy Tip 8: Get Enough Sleep
Eight hours should really be a minimum. So many people try and function at their peak when they do not rest enough. Waking up in the morning refreshed and energized sets the tone for the day, and reaching for a great outlook and attitude can be significantly harder when you are sleep deprived.
How To Be happy Tip 9: Reduce Stress
According to Brendan Brazier in his book "The Thrive Diet" nutritional stress accounts for up to 70% of uncomplementary stress. This is the stress suffered by the body in dealing with bad diet and lifestyle choices and in finding itself starved of the nutrients it requires, though it may be overfed. This stress can be removed simply by choosing a healthy diet and lifestyle.
Eating foods that are easy for the body to digest and assimilate and very nutrient rich, such as fruits and vegetables, and getting healthy exercise and sufficient rest, significantly reduces stress and plays an enormous role in feeling good about yourself and your life.
How To Be Happy Tip 10: Daily Affirmations
When people realize that their thoughts are powerful it is often scary as they begin to realize how many negative thoughts they have swirling through their heads. They start to panic that they may be bringing terrible circumstances down onto their heads.
Remember that a positive thought is much more powerful than a negative thought. An important factor in how to be happy is choosing to think in positive affirmations. When you find yourself thinking negative thoughts, acknowledge them, say 'thank you for sharing' but choose not to give that thought any power, instead do a positive affirmation and call up some positive emotion along with it.
It is not the lone thought that determines what we are attracting, but the overall state of our vibration. We cannot be thinking mostly negative thoughts and feel good, nor can we be thinking mostly positive thoughts and feel bad. So all you need to worry about is how you feel. If you feel depressed, you are clearly thinking negative thoughts. If you are happy and joyful, you are thinking positive thoughts.
You do not have to panic about every stray thought that flitters through your head. But make an effort to choose positive thoughts wherever you can as this will create a set point of happiness which will attract more happiness.
How To Be Happy Tip 11: Focus on what you DO WANT, NEVER on what you DON'T WANT!
Recently I found the scale going up. My thinking started to spiral downwards along the lines of 'why do I ALWAYS gain weight, what is wrong with me? Why do I eat so much? Why am I such a fat pig?'
Along with this I started to jump on the scale multiple times a day. It seemed that all I could focus on was the scale going up and my fears about being fat.
I used all the considerable power of my thoughts AGAINST MYSELF by focusing so hard on something that I DIDN'T WANT TO HAPPEN. I picked up my rate of exercise and did even more than before (though I was doing a lot to begin with), but this didn't feel positive at all, it felt like something I HAD TO DO to stop the upward movement of the dreaded scale.
What do you think I attracted? More fat! Of course! What you focus on, is what you attract. Always focus on what you DO want, and never on what you DON'T WANT.
It was only when I made the conscious decision to point myself downstream again that the panic subsided and I am once again happy and serene. I don't care what the scale says right now, as I know I am once again aligned with reaching my ideal weight. I am exercising because I love to exercise, and eating the healthy foods that I love to eat, in quantities that satisfy me. Panicking about being fat and focusing on being fat only MADE ME FAT!
So remember, we are here to live amazing lives, we are here to be happy. We can't wait for things to occur before we become happy, as we will forever be placing our happiness out of reach. So don't say, I'll be happy when I am at my ideal weight, or I'll be happy when I get that perfect job. Decide to be happy NOW. It is only you who can decide to put your happiness out of reach, so don't do it.
All we have to know about how to be happy is that it is just a choice. All we have is now. Our lives are happening now, the past is gone, the future is only an illusion. It's time to live.
About the author
Alison Andrews is a full time author, blogger, vlogger and musician. She is also the author of the book Desperately Seeking Jude: Confessions of a Sex-Mad Beauty Queen. She lives in Dubai with her husband Jaye, and spends her time creating content for her websites
http://www.loving-it-raw.com/index.html and
http://www.alison-andrews.com/index.htmlLearn more about HOW TO BE HAPPY at
http://www.alison-andrews.com
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