how to be happy despite the circumstances… what a complex topic, but as an ever-big topic, it should start with a big eye-opening eye-popping statement and happiness, this is: You choose to be happy. Happiness was not found; it is crafted, forged and chosen. You won't achieve happiness by having a great job, home, and life. You decide to wake up and appreciate what you have and you choose to be happy by building a life that makes you happy.
Where to start?
Obviously we don't all live in our #BestLives. Sometimes circumstances are beyond our control and break us down, make us discouraged. Bankruptcy, divorce, discrimination, death, destruction and false accusations, should I continue? The world is a rather unpleasant and cruel place at times. At this point, you ask me, well, how can I choose to be happy when the world seems to be so cruel? You see what you have, where you want to go and take the next step forward. Life is one thing, point of view. Reality shapes your point of view, so all you have to do is change your outlook on life. Your life is a combination of many ideas planted in your head and you see the world through it. When we are born, we are from scratch, just a white piece of paper. As children, our opinions and values are mostly boys wholesale, Transformers is the best, I love my mom. But as we grow, others add us with their views, ideals and values and every week a new meaning is planted and seedlings blocking your view of who you are. That once white sheet of paper is full of other drawings of peoples. As a result, we are lost, I do not know where your home is, blinded by all these and other values of the peoples and opinions that we have adopted as our own. So we stumble through life saying that we really don't know why we say it or why we believe it and we wonder why we are so unhappy. All we want to do is be at home, safe and happy, just like when we were kids, when life was less complicated, confusing and conflicting. The only way to get home, fortunately, is to erase some of those ideals that no longer serve you, so you can see a little more clearly. Ideals would be planted, we will never be good enough, based on the experience you had as a child. Or you are not yet at a basketball game and you have been publicly humiliated by the coach and now you are convinced you will never play basketball well. These are the values and experiences that get in the way of your happiness because they are not true. They are just fairy tales that you believe to be true. Take basketball for example, I'm sure you sucked in basketball once, that doesn't mean you'll always suck. With enough practice, you could be great if you actually tried it and decided that you would instead of just saying that you will always feel bad. So how do we make being happy easy? Life is only as hard as you make it. So what can we do to start flipping through our mentality?
1. Choose It
Happiness, like everything else, is created and chosen; so the first thing you have to do is make the choice of happiness. It's not the easiest way, you have to let go, don't let everything get to you and you have to fight the negative impulse to be a victim. Happiness is a long life commitment and like all good marriages, you must put in constant effort to maintain your spouse's value. Happiness should be valued and you have it, because it can be fleeting, the world is not always as kind as you. This article will help you choose happiness easier: how to always choose happiness even in difficult times
2. Show appreciation for your life and all that you are blessed with
You are incredibly blessed in your life. We all sit and decide that we are suffering, we are victims, and we are losers, but look around: You have running water, medical care on demand, enough money to survive, loving people around you. You have more than you choose to admit because you are so engrossed in what you don't have, you take everything you have for granted. So take a moment and look around and every day, write down, think, speak and show how much you appreciate at least one thing. Gratitude can be addictive, once you realize all you really have, happiness will follow the sweet sound of gratitude. Here's More Reasons to Be Thankful: 32 Things You Should Be Thankful for
3. Change the story you tell yourself
We are a collection of our history, we tell other people (times we were super cool) and stories we tell ourselves (every failure or unpleasant interaction we've ever made). We are what we say we are. If you tell someone you are an honest person, people will think you are an honest person. If you tell yourself you cannot do something, you cannot do it. You with Your Stories. What stories do you tell about your life? Failure history? Jonah? In today's society, it's popular to be a victim, to be weak, because in the movies, the outsider wins in the end. But the underdog wins by getting more challenging and doing what is right and brave and they write their own story. So throw away the books you keep re-reading about embarrassing, embarrassing and destructive screw ups, those tales of loss, pain and heart ache, something thrown away. I never support burning books, but in this case, throwing them into the fire. You are not a combination of your bad experiences, but you are acting like this, it's time to ask who you are under those experiences. Who are you? And who do you want to be now? Because the beauty of writing your own story is that you can choose it. You can say, Hey, I'm not a loser, I'm a strong person. I no longer have anxiety because I will do my best to make sure I am not worried. I am a decent person, I go to the gym. Find a story that will make you happy, then show as the main character every day. Write your story and make sure its happy, which leads us to…
4. Build the life you want
The reason you cannot be happy is because you are not living the life you really want. You live authentically, and that's okay, but if you want to be happy, you'll have to live according to authentic values. Decide who you want to be, what kind of life you want to lead, and then make a plan to go and get it: how to be true to yourself and live the life you want Make a plan so you're doing something small every day to build towards this life, dream and know that when you get there. You may feel happier doing this, but remember, life is a journey and you should appreciate the climb, not just the view from above. The most important thing you will ever learn is this: You will never be happy if you think anything else will make you happy. A new job will not make you happy, nor a new partner, home, vacation, object, animal. It's not happiness, it's a chemical reaction in your brain. Happiness in the long run is the choice to enjoy and appreciate those things every day, even when the going gets tough and you're not where you want to be, you don't get a job, you still have it. You partners did not appreciate you? Well, appreciate them first and foremost and encourage them to do the same.
Final Thoughts
Happiness is in your hands. It is a mental choice to see the positive in the negative. One thing I learned in life is that whatever I was rejected, I was redirected to where I needed to be and when I suffered, it was so that I could learn a few things to make me a better person. The struggle is growth and strength, the struggle where happiness is forged. No matter how hard, painful or hard your circumstances are, there is always something to be thankful for and you deserve to be happy if you choose to be.
More About Happiness
- How to have happy thoughts and train your brain to be happy
- 5 steps to create self-realization in hard times.
- Why negative emotions aren't so bad (and how to deal with them)