Our world is a place where people face struggles, challenges, and unpleasant circumstances daily, so learning how to be happy with yourself consistently can be pretty tricky.
It gets worse when you haven’t mastered how to be happy alone without friends and people around you. You must keep in mind that knowing how to be happy every day or how to feel happy consistently is a process that requires time.
If you must learn how to be happy alone and how to make yourself happy, then you must be ready to be intentional about it. Happiness is like a precious jewel that must be protected at all costs, especially for your mental health.
This reality brings us to this point. How then can we experience genuine happiness in a world like ours?
Mastering how to be happy with yourself genuinely is a product of the combination of different tips and steps that, when used efficiently, can help you keep and maintain your happiness and peace.
In this article, I’ll show you quickly a few steps and self-help techniques that will teach you how to be happy. Interested? Alright! Let’s dig in!
1. Prioritize And Focus On Things Within Your Control
I had a friend who was always smiling. It was never a dull moment with her. Somehow, she had mastered how to be happy, and it followed her everywhere.
Her kind of happiness was very contagious, and you were bound to catch yourself in fits of laughter if you spent just a few minutes with her. I can be quite a curious cat, so I asked her why and what always made her happy.
Guess what she said? She said that she never worried about situations that were beyond her control. According to her, what she could not handle was not her concern.
It looks like a simple and easy thing to say and do, but it isn’t. Most times, we fret and fuss about things, situations that we have little or no control over.
Things like bad weather, a sudden change in plans, or when life doesn’t go our way as just a few out of the many reasons why people are unhappy.
You are bound to always be sad or moody if you allow circumstances to affect you negatively. But, as I said earlier, learning how to be happy requires intentional efforts.
This means that you must choose not to beat yourself over issues beyond you, even if you might not like the outcome.
Be like my friend who chooses always to be optimistic about life and her experiences. You will live a happier life when you decide to stop being fussy and moody of circumstances that life presents to you. You are the bigger force. So decide not to be affected negatively by unfavorable happenings and situations.
2. Constantly Practice And Express Gratitude
One of the ways to learn how to be happy is by maintaining an attitude of gratitude towards life. Being grateful for whatever you come across is a way of reminding you that things could have been worse or better.
It is easier to complain and whine about what life throws at us, so being grateful will need a lot of intentionality from you!
You can learn how to be happy by practicing the mindset of being grateful always! How can you do that? Easy! A simple way to achieve that is to get a gratitude/happiness jar!
Yes! Get a container with a size of your choice and keep it in your home, office, or anywhere that you spend more time. In the morning, write down something that you are grateful for and put it in that jar.
Or, you can get a little notepad or journal and write down five things that you are grateful tor, every evening at a fixed time. Those things can be anything, a person, a pet, or new book, or even a new lesson learned!
It doesn’t have to be just a morning or evening routine. Do this whenever you feel sad, joyful, or peaceful. It will help you fix a sour mood and remind you that better days lie ahead of us.
Practicing gratitude or how to be happy begins with small, simple steps, and using the gratitude jar is an easy way to begin. So what are you waiting for? Start practicing gratitude now.
3. Invest And Be Gentle With Yourself
The first secret you should know that will show you how to be happy is to understand that the best investment you can make is to invest in yourself.
Investing in mind, body, and soul gives you an edge over others and gives you the advantage of expertise. The more you invest in yourself, the more your chances of success in life.
Investing in yourself also requires consistency and time to yield results, but it is inevitably a massive source of success!
However, it is possible to become very cruel to yourself in the process of growth. For example, habits like not resting to study more and starving yourself to save more money can be very hazardous to not just your health but also your progress.
Hence it is essential that to learn how to be happy, you must ensure that you take things easy. Your journey into maturity in every sphere of your life is not a 100 meters race with 15 competitors. No! It is a marathon with yourself.
One of the reasons people wear out and get tired before the real deal begins is their impatience and inability to build their capacity and skills consistently.
Whenever you get the chance, do not hesitate to invest in yourself! You can do this by learning and enriching your mind through informative books, video materials.
In short, any item, material, or tool that, when accessed and used, makes you a better person, should be invested in
You must learn to avoid haste and handle yourself with care while making as much progress and improvement as you can! This is the secret of learning how to be happy!
If you are still unclear on how to invest in yourself, I have created a resourceful guide on the best ways to invest in yourself and build a better future at a free or low-cost endeavor to; check out the guide.
4. Take Care Of Your Body, Spirit, And Soul
Taking care of yourself is another important principle that you must imbibe if you must know how to be happy. The fun fact is that there are diverse manners and ways to achieve this.
For your body, you can start with building your fitness. Consistent habits of exercise, eating healthy and whole foods, taking walks, and drinking substantial amounts of water can be a big boost in the process of building a fit body.
Getting lots of rest and sleep can be very helpful in helping you maintain a fit body. You can even use apps, books, or the expertise of a fitness coach to help you achieve all this. With a healthy body, you are to feel happier and more fulfilled!
For your spirit, you can begin by building healthy habits that can help you gain spiritual enlightenment like meditation sessions, Yoga, and even prayer.
Through these activities, the goal is to build a greater and more sensitive, enlightened, and wiser version of yourself.
And finally, for your soul, you can start by exposing your mind to helpful and valuable information.
Make efforts to read more books, watch more informative videos, listen to life-improving music, podcasts and audiobooks. To make this process easier for you, we have compiled some lists of the best motivating podcast and inspiring TED talks to listen to
The most important thing is that you enrich your soul with as much information and positive energy as possible!
Once you begin to work on your body, spirit, and soul, it gives you a feeling of fulfillment, satisfaction, and peace.
Check the life of people who are always happy, and you’ll realize that they spend a reasonable amount of time building their bodies, spirits, and souls!
You can also be among those set of people who live longer lives because of how happy they are!
So, make out time or even use schedules to help you make consistent efforts to build yourself!
5. Develop/Maintain Uplifting Relationships
The importance of having valuable relationships with people cannot be overemphasized.
Nothing hits better than knowing that no matter how dark the times get, we have beautiful people who genuinely love and care for our well-being.
Our lives are like plain pieces of paper that become beautiful because of the kind of people we meet and spend time with.
Ensure that you always tell and show your loved ones how special and important they are to you, and do not hesitate to develop new relationships with strangers.
For a lot of us, our closest friends to us right now were once strangers. Imagine if they hadn’t talked to you or said “Hi”.
Take steps to create new relationships with people. Offer to help out a stranger when next you meet one or be the first to say ” Hello” or a kind word. If you do this frequently, you can make more friends than you think.
If you are an extrovert and find it difficult to connect with people, a detailed article on how to keep friends has been written just for you to encourage you to come out of your shell and relate to new or familiar people even in the slightest way. Remember, relationships can open firm and life-changing connections.
6. Understand That There Are Reasons For Seasons
Once upon a time, you were a baby crawling around the room. Soon enough, you began to walk and then run! But, there was a reason why you didn’t start running first!
Life is a process, and seasonal changes and events guide that process. If you attempt to skip those seasons, you might make terrible mistakes and even harm yourself.
The reason for the existence of seasons is to teach us lessons while building and enriching our perspectives and experiences in life!
You will never value warmth until it is cold. You will never appreciate abundance until there is scarcity. See? Seasons help more than we think.
A simple yet interesting example of how seasonal events and changes, especially unpleasant ones, can catapult us into success is Steven Spielberg’s story.
“Steven Spielberg was rejected three times when he applied to the USC School of Theater, Film, and Television.
He ended up going to Long Beach State. After directing and producing such blockbuster hits as Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, The Color Purple, Saving Private Ryan, and Lincoln, he now sits on the Board of Directors of the USC film school and donates a million dollars a year to the school.”
Great story, right? Now imagine Steven has not experienced the pain of failure. He would never have gone to Long Beach State, and he would probably never direct and produce those amazing movies.
Failure, unpleasant situations, and even financial struggles are seasonal events that can become the reason for our success when managed efficiently.
Part of the many ways that can help you know how to be happy is if you learn to recognize seasons in your life and take advantage of them. If you understand this early, you’ll succeed early!
7. Eliminate Toxicity In All Forms, Including People
Here’s one reason you should avoid toxicity in any form, especially if you want to learn how to be happy; Toxicity works like weeds; they choke and affect your growth and development.
Toxicity expresses itself in diverse manners. You learn to identify the sources of such toxicity in your life and cut them off. What happens when a consumable substance is poisoned? It becomes dangerous and harmful to whosoever consumes it.
The same applies to anything that can affect your well-being. If certain habits are becoming hazardous to your growth and peace, then eliminate them.
If it is the people around you, friends, colleagues at work, or even family members, find a way to create distance between yourself and such persons.
I have come across folks who struggled to maintain their mental health and protect their peace and happiness because of the number of toxic words they were exposed to consistently!
How do you identify and get rid of toxicity? Simple. Once it affects your growth, and in any way and form, then it is toxic and should be avoided. Your happiness is a treasure. Guard it at all cost!
8. Develop A Relationship With Yourself
One reason why people do not live happy and fulfilled lives is that they never show any value to themselves.
Here are simple questions you should ask yourself often.
Do I indulge in self-care routines often?
Do I criticize myself too much?
How much do I know about my needs, desires, and personality?
Answering the above questions can provide enough insight to discover what you can do to make and keep yourself happy!
Because for you to know how to be happy, you must also know your personality type and what makes you smile!
For example, I enjoy music a lot, and it makes me happy. I discovered it after months of studying my personality, interests, and desires.
It becomes easier to know what works for you and what doesn’t when you have sufficient knowledge about what you love and what you have.
You can develop with yourself by spending more time alone. Being alone gives you space to think, recollect yourself and just enjoy your own company.
Another way you can develop a relationship with yourself is through little acts like journaling your thoughts and ideas in a notepad or self-care routines like warm baths and spa sessions. The goal is to give rise to a better and happier version of yourself!
9. Stop Falling Into The Comparison Trap
Comparison is a very toxic activity that I would not advise anyone who is intentional about growth and improvement to indulge in!
Most folks, particularly young people, fall victim to the influence of unhealthy expectations from themselves and the people around them.
It is so easy to look at others and feel that you are not doing enough. It gets worse when it comes from loved ones, especially family. They expect you to have finished college or earned a good job at 25 and other expectations.
Having such expectations is not wrong in itself, but placing unhealthy demands and pressure on such can be extremely dangerous and steal a person’s happiness and fulfillment.
People suffer severe mental ailments such as depression, anxiety, inferiority complex, and low self-esteem, many of which commit suicide because of the side effects of comparison.
True happiness lies in being able to find satisfaction and fulfillment in your pace of growth.
You are bound to wallow in self-pity, sadness, and unnecessary bouts of sorrow if you do not learn to express gratitude while being satisfied with the present state of things.
The key to learning how to be happy is being satisfied while thriving to be better!
10. Celebrate Your Wins Or Victories, No Matter How Small
This particular tip goes along with being grateful for what you have and what you have experienced. In the process of growth, it is possible not to know the value of little victories.
Most times, we want to celebrate and enjoy the thrill of a massive win while forgetting that small victories are part of what brings the existence of larger ones.
You might think that little wins are too significant to be celebrated, but that isn’t true.
People do not know that celebrating little wins gives you a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. It makes you feel happier and serves as excellent proof that your efforts are yielding results. It can also show your how good your progress is.
Celebrating small wins also teaches you the art of gratitude, and it can serve as a source of encouragement, pushing and showing you how much growth can be achieved.
If you face self-doubt, celebrating little wins can be a route for you to build your self-esteem and confidence. It can also help you build enthusiasm and the motivation you need to keep going for the prize!
So next time you get victorious, no matter how insignificant it might seem, celebrate it like it is a massive win!
11. Find And Create A Healthy Balance In Life
Being able to live a consistently balanced life can be a great source of happiness. It makes you feel in control over the affairs of your life while giving you a feeling of wholeness and peace.
However, you must know that building a balanced lifestyle is a project that requires time, intentional and consistent efforts, and a sense of responsibility.
To live a balanced life, one must develop a way of building each aspect of their life without allowing one to affect the other.
A simple example is a common scenario where a person allows their job to affect their health and also their sleep schedules or eating habits.
As cool as it might look, it is not fulfilling and balanced. If you spend all your time working and you do not have time to visit your loved ones, you are bound to feel lonely.
Sometimes, our lives get so demanding and fast-paced, and it becomes so easy for us to lose our joy and happiness because of work and a desire to succeed.
You can learn to live a balanced life by planning for it! How? By using daily to-do lists, schedules, financial budgets, and other ways of planning. You can find out more by reading this article; How To Plan Your Day For Optimal Productivity.
Hence, the need for balance. One of the easiest ways to know how to be happy is to have a plan and time for every area of your life.
You can rest at night, exercise in the mornings, and work during the day. On weekends, you can attend parties, fix dinner dates, meet new people, or stay with a family member. With a balanced routine like this, happiness will never be far from you.
12. Practice Mindfulness And Live In The Moment
A common challenge with growth and improvements are those moments when we get haunted by our past experiences and mistakes or the fear of the future.
You must learn and realize soon that the mistakes and the events of the past can’t be changed. That means you can’t do anything about it.
Whatever happened in the past stays in the past. So instead of wasting so much time wishing you can change it or wallowing in regrets and self-pity, why don’t you focus on the present?
There’s so much that can be done now. There is so much that can be changed now! If only you can make efforts to learn from your past mistakes and use them to prepare for your future!
The same applies to the anxiety we sometimes experience when we think about the future.
I like to think of the future in this manner; The future is a bleak empty piece of paper, and I, through my actions, can determine what will happen!
This means your future is in your hands, and that also means that you have control over it! So why worry over something that you have the power to control and manipulate?
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying you should not prepare for the future; however, maintaining the ideology that your present decisions and actions can affect your future could end up being the reason why you succeed tomorrow.
Stressing yourself and being fearful of future events is unnecessary and will only do you more harm than good. Apart from the fact that it makes you unhappy, you can fall victim to health issues like High blood pressure, depression, and other mental ailments. Practice this if you want to know how to be happy.
Once in a while, learn to access the situation around you. It could be that what might be stealing your joy or hindering your progress might be the regrets of past events or the fear of the unknown.
Learn the value and enjoy the good that is presently in your life and choose to take the most advantage of your present situations! That’s a great way to be happy!
13. Accept Your Flaws And Imperfections
As humans, we are naturally flawed beings. To be flawed means to be imperfect. What this implies is that we suffer a certain degree of limitation that is a result of those flaws.
Our flaws differ individually, and most times, these flaws can not be completely edited. They can be managed but not completely!
Sometimes, the mistakes that come from us are a result of our imperfections. However, most people do not realize this and so suffer from guilt and regrets because of these mistakes and end up losing their peace and happiness.
A major step in learning how to be happy is to first accept your flaws. Accepting your flaws does not just make you happier, but it also helps you accept yourself. If you must effectively manage your flaws, you must first accept them.
Accepting your flaws means that you are taking responsibility for them and also rejecting any form of failure that might come from them in the future.
Do you want to experience and live a genuinely happy life? Then accept your flaws and take charge of them!
14. Be Authentic- Do You!
Have you ever comes across folks who live fake lives or pretend to be what they are not? If you check correctly, you’ll realize that in their attempt to be someone else, deep down, they are not happy with their lives. They might never say it or admit it, but it is the truth.
This brings us back to the previous tip of accepting your flaws and your personality. Most of the people who pretend have not accepted and are haunted by the reality of their flaws so, in an attempt to get rid of those flaws, they try to be like others (usually someone they admire who seems perfect.)
While in that predicament, they lose sight of who they truly are. People who pretend are never happy. The key to being authentic is to first accept your flaws and imperfections and begin to love yourself for who you are! A proof of self-love is value.
If you value and love yourself, you will work on your toxic traits and flaws. If you love yourself, you will be gentle with yourself and make consistent efforts to improve every day.
Be proud of who you are, and always do you! Be you everywhere. Do not lower your standards or break your principles for anyone else. Let people know your stand on certain issues.
If you like it, say it. If you don’t, also let people know! Be sincere in your approach and let folks know who you are and why you say and do the things you do!
The secret to being a smiling, happy person is to be authentic. Be you! Be yourself daily!
15. Indulge In What You Love And Are Passionate About
One of the things that make and keep us happy are the things, activities that we love to do when we get the chance to.
Depending on our personality type, we are all passionate about different things, and despite the diversity of those things, we always smile or feel better when we engage them.
Sometimes, because of work, responsibilities, and other important things, we find it challenging to create time for the activities or things that we enjoy doing, and yes, it is wrong!
That’s an example of an imbalanced lifestyle! A true sign of being happy is being able to enjoy the things we are passionate about: music, food, sports, travel, and tourism, or even the arts like singing, painting.
So, you must learn how to be happy by indulging in or doing the things you love. If you love to sing, make sure you do so every day.
If you enjoy visiting museums and art galleries, please do not hesitate to appreciate good art when you get the chance to!
It all boils down to your interests and passions!
Finally, another way you can become and maintain happiness is by becoming successful. Everyone has dreams, plans, and expectations for their lives, and nothing makes a person happier than living the lives of their dreams.
The great news is, you can do the same too! Yes, you can hit the hallmark of success and finally get the life you have always wanted. But on the journey to getting your dream life, you’ll need tools.
You’ll need knowledge and every help you can get. We have a lot of helpful tools in our shop; be sure to check them out.
Here’s one last secret I didn’t include in the entire article. Another secret to living a happier life is to practice what you have learned. Knowing and reading about tips and steps to being happy is not enough.
Practicing those tips and techniques is what will birth results! You got it now! You are ready to live a happy life and, much more than that, a fulfilled one!
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Nice Post! “Being satisfied while thriving to be better!”, I love the line. This post quite appropriately reflects the true meaning of happiness!