5 Practices for Creating More Happiness in Your Life

1. Look for the Best in Others

Happiness is either fostered or diminished by how we see and respond to others.

My first suggested practice is to teach yourself the habit of looking for and focusing on the things you like and appreciate in people.

This is not as simple and straight-forward as it seems.

For example, if we are habitually critical of and impatient with ourselves, we can easily silently turn that same critical, impatient eye on others. What we tend not to notice is how this perceptual/emotional habit subtly but significantly affects our inner state.

Try thinking of a quality of a friend that irks you. Can you remember a time this friend was engaging in this irksome behavior? What feelings does this memory stir up in you?

Now focus on a quality that you appreciate and enjoy in your friend.  How does this appreciative focus leave you feeling inside?

Which inner state would you rather nourish?

There is a time and a place for the ability to look at something with a critical, discerning eye.  Habitually living from this perspective, however, robs us of positive experiences of connection and enjoyment.

To better relate to others, practice noticing your similarities with them.  If you focus on qualities we all share as human beings traversing the road of life, it is easier to experience compassion for your own as well as others’ blind spots, emotional scars, and vulnerabilities. When we experience compassion we are definitely augmenting our inner happiness quotient.

There is an inner perspective where we can experience that we are all perfect and loveable as we are. We are all loveable in our imperfections. The more we can appreciate and accept others, as well as ourselves, the more enjoyment we will experience in life.

2. Be Present for Life

Life is expressing itself through you. Be present to experience it.

Practice keeping your attention and your heart in the present, and embracing life in the aliveness of each moment. We tend to spend most of our waking hours in thoughts of the future or the past (or on our smart phones 😊). In doing so we are not present for the living of our lives.

Young children innately live in the present moment. This is a natural state that we all lose track of as the awareness of time and the demands of life start to dominate. Joining with children in their joy at seeing or experiencing something for the first time is delightful.  However, when their ability to live without a sense of time is about to make us late for work, it can be quite annoying!

There is an easy trick to rediscovering delight in the moment. It is available to us through paying attention to our five senses, because our sensory experiences are always happening in present time. The secret to being present for life is to take time to be with the sensation of what you are seeing, smelling, and hearing, as well as sensations you are experiencing in your body.

Inner Exercise:

Pick one of your senses to focus on, perhaps something interesting to look at, or the sounds around you, both distant and near. Allow yourself to be with this sensory experience for several minutes with an attitude of openness and curiosity, as if you are seeing or hearing it for the first time.  Try to stay with this sensory experience for several minutes, until you find yourself taking a spontaneous deep breath. This is the signal that your body has shifted into a relaxed state. This exercise allows you to slow down, expand your awareness and experience a deeper, more satisfying and more innately enjoyable inner state.

As busy as we all are, all of us can spare a few minutes to deepen our enjoyment of life!

3. Give Yourself Permission to Feel Whatever You are Feeling

We tend to have the expectation that we should always feel happy, and that if we feel bad, life is not going well. When we feel bad, we try to do something to get rid of the bad feeling, so we can feel good again. We distract ourselves, eat, drink, or DO something, anything, to try to eviscerate that bad feeling.

But life is all of this; the good and the bad, the happy and the unhappy, the good times and the difficult times. Accepting what is, rather than disavowing it, actually allows life to flow more smoothly.

Like water, feelings are always changing.  Allow the movement.

There is an art to allowing your feelings to move through you without getting stuck (like in a stagnant pond) or caught in a constant whirlpool.  Life is all of our experiences – the whole spectrum. It’s not supposed to be just happy experiences.

Inner Exercise:

The next time you are having an unwanted feeling, try letting it move through you, like an energetic wave.  It will come to a crescendo, or perhaps several smaller crescendos.  It will have its own rhythm and pattern.  If you acknowledge it and allow it to move through you without attachment, restriction or fear, it will pass more quickly and easily.

Allow good feelings to pass through you as well!  We cannot hold on to the good feelings either. Sometimes we don’t allow ourselves to experience the good feelings because we are worried that they will go away.  We find ourselves “waiting for the other shoe to drop”.  And drop it will, in some way, at some point. But this does not have to be a catastrophe.  We are always in the ever-changing stream of life.

4. Recognize that You Do Not Need Anyone or Anything to Prove You are Loveable

One of the factors involved in the sustained experience of happiness is your degree of self-esteem. The more you doubt your worth, the more this influences your reactions to all that happens in your life.

The more secure you are in knowing your innate worthiness, the less you need to focus on yourself, or how you are seen by others. When our self-worth is not in question, it is natural to respond to others as our equals, and to contribute to life in a way that is fulfilling.

When self-worth is no longer the filter through which you experience life, life is much simpler and lighter.

Inner Exercise:

Try to notice situations in which you are treating yourself unkindly. This could be something you notice in your inner self-talk or a habitual negative attitude towards yourself.  In these moments, practice shifting your perspective and seeing yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you.  Perhaps you could view yourself as you would view your own child, or through God’s all-forgiving eyes, through the eyes of a special loved one, or even the eyes of an imaginary person who you feel loved by.

Take a moment to notice how this shift in perspective affects your view of and your feelings toward yourself. The more you practice this, the easier it will be to hold on to an experience of yourself as loveable as you are.

5. Actively Contribute to Life

Finally, find a means of being helpful and giving to others.  The more we participate in life in a helpful-to-others way, the more connected we feel to all of life.  In this way, a deep sense of meaning and inner happiness accompanies us as we move through our days.