Pursuing Happiness And Happiness Habits

Exactly how do we pursue happiness? We know happiness is far more than just money, fame or power. There are lots of people who have all three who are not especially happy. What are the secrets to living a happy, spiritually successful life? Are there reliable road maps to the state of happiness?

If you want to live a happy life, study happy people. Observe what they do, understand why it works so well and then adopt their behaviors and beliefs. We can choose to pursue and cultivate habits and skills we know will lead to happy, spiritually successful lives.

This is the approach we used to develop "How To Live A Happy Life - 101 Ways To Be Happier." Here are secrets from the habitually happy people we studied and interviewed:

Cultivate a sense of fun and share it with everyone you meet. Habitually happy people truly try to have a good time all of the time. Critics cry, "Don't be silly, you can't expect to have a good time all of the time!" Habitually Happy people reply, "I can!" Or, "with an attitude like that you will never be really Up or happy!"

Exercise your freedom to choose happiness. Decide who you want to be, what sort of person you want to become. Define yourself as a happy, spiritually successful person. Let that goal become a sort of role that is real and authentic for you. Try to be your best, spiritually successful self all of the time. If we don't consciously decide what sort of person we want to be, our environment and experiences define our identity and our destiny for us.

Rebel against people or situations that try to drag your spirits down. Don't hand control of your thoughts, actions, feelings and well-being over to annoying people or outside circumstances that can rob your happiness. Cultivate an indomitably strong, independent, positive good spirit.

Choose emotional independence. Decide how you want to think and feel. There's no rule that says just because something bad happens, you have to feel sad. Remember, you must be at your best to do your best. Choose actions and attitudes that help you to succeed and be happy.

Make Goodness a Guiding Goal. We are amazed how truly happy genuinely good people are. "Goodness for goodness sake," one said. Habitually happy people are extraordinarily kind, caring and compassionate. The Dutch proverb "Happy people are never wicked" was proven by our research.

Give freely and without strings attached. Habitually happy people are genuinely altruistic, they do good for the joy of doing good. They give without strings attached, they do not give just in order to get. Goodness is it's own reward. They rarely pass up an opportunity to be kind when it costs them or risks them little.

Don't be a people pleaser. Enjoy sharing joy and making other people happy, but don't depend on other people's approval to be happy yourself. Feel good by knowing and appreciating your achievements and all the things you do well.

Take care of yourself, value yourself. Habitually happy people value their time, their talents and their resources. They continually seek to develop themselves, strengthen their skills and gain a greater understanding of the world and the people around them. They value other people's time and resources as much as they value their own.

Be adventuresome. Habitually happy people continually explore, try new things and do new things to stay fresh and to continually experience difference and change. It helps them grow and maintain their enthusiasm and positive spirits. One commented, "I get bored with the same old stuff, I want each day to be new, different, something special." They try to make each day special.

Don't beat yourself up. Habitually happy people move from problems to solutions quickly. They know time spent dwelling on problems tends to reinforce mistakes they want to avoid. They don't condemn themselves for errors. They channel their angst over mistakes toward finding solutions or rectifying problems. They do not intentionally hurt themselves.

Avoid The Fault Finding Feel Goods - Criticism, blame, ridicule, bigotry, all falsely elevate our sense of power and self worth by finding fault with something else. These feel goods are fed by a negative focus. You cannot be truly happy by continually finding fault, focusing on what's wrong, judging or criticizing. Habitually happy people don't complain and they avoid people who do.

Have high integrity and live according to your values. When you live by the highest and best values you can feel confident that, even if you stumble, you have done YOUR best. Few things are worse than compromising your integrity and then failing too. Habitually happy people cherish good values and they live by them. They know happiness only comes with a clear conscience.

Love is an active verb. Love is an action, it is something we decide to do. It is an emotion we can choose to feel and to project and share with others. Love can be expressed in everything we do. It's not just something that happens to us. Love propels happiness. The more we love, the happier we become.

Don't be a snob, value everyone. Happy people don't have to feel better than others in order to feel good about themselves. They try to find something of interest and value in everyone they meet. They try to touch each person they meet with a smile and a bright, positive spirit.

Continually celebrate success. Habitually happy people continually celebrate success, their own and other people's successes. This fuels everyone's positive energy, confidence, desire to do well and propels people to achieve more. Celebrating success provides positive role models.

Me And My Ofice

If asked, define your workplace, what would your answer be. A place that that's fun, exciting and stimulating or one that's staid and dreary. Most likely we will go with the second description. Ever wondered, why? Why we have to get up every morning or even night and force ourselves to go to a place which, given a opportunity we might set fire to but then we know life is cruel and not all our dreams come true.

What makes our workplaces so boring and arid? To start with we need to understand that
offices are mini societies and we have a role to play in it. The air might be serious and formal but that doesn't imply that we become android, in the way we think and act. Workplaces need discipline, but one that doesn't try to alter our personalities to the extent that we start feeling that we are loosing ourselves and trying to be something we are not.

Irrespective of where we are, we will still be humans and exhibit aspects of our personalities, good or bad. We often forget that we are dealing with real people in our workplaces and not mere human resources. Interactions here are of a more complex nature as one has to be politically correct and abide by the rules, nevertheless at the end of the day we are dealing with human emotions. It is in this context that behavioral aspect of a employee becomes important. It is not rocket science, it simply means that we pay attention to things that matter to us and have a direct relation with the way we conduct ourselves and how we perceive different people and situations in our workplaces.

Our attitude, anger, stress management abilities, interpersonal skills, communication skills, leadership qualities, emotional intelligence, being introvert or extrovert and like all have a major role to play in creating a world around us where we can be at peace with it or just dislike it. When we don't get along with our colleagues or when our seniors seem to be finding us incompetent for all the wrong reasons, instead of frowning and getting annoyed with them we should endeavor to understand what are the real reasons behind their behaving in that manner. Sometimes, people might have genuine problems which we fail to see or the person in question has a problem outside the office or maybe some people just like it that way as it is their only way of getting attention. There could be several reasons, it is upto us to decide whether we really want to solve this mystery that is getting obscure everyday or want to leave it unresolved.

Remember, you can make the difference. Be nice to people and yet be firm. Try to make your workplace that you don't loath going to, make it a place, which has warmth and relaxes you and your friends and is fun to work in. It is easier said than done, with the deadlines to be met, clients calling in, reports to submitted, getting late for an appointment and all that goes on in a regular office but that's what work is all about. Its up to us to learn to handle the situations positively and come out learning something new from them, however small. It takes a lot of practice, perseverance, the right attitude and most important of all the willingness to do so. It is all in our hands and it all starts with questioning ourselves- what kind of world have I created around myself, because what we give is what we get.