Being happy with yourself is the best lesson we can learn in life. What does it mean? How can we start? We talk about it in detail in the following lines. When we feel happy or at ease with ourselves, we are able to fully live the present and look towards the future with optimism and hope. In other words, we flow with life.
The opposite happens when we haven’t learned to love, forgive or accept ourselves, since fears, anxiety and worries present themselves in these states. So how do you learn to be happy with yourself? If you follow the steps presented in this article, you will find that you can look at events from a new perspective: through the lens of self-love.
How to be happy with yourself
Find out what “happiness” means to you
When you know what happiness means to you, it will be easier for you to find it. Then explore happiness . What does it mean for you? How does it look and how does it feel? Define your idea of happiness to recreate it more easily in your life.
Set your priorities
How can you build the foundation of happiness if you don’t know your priorities? What really matters to you? What makes you really happy ? Find out what are your “firm points” on which to build your idea of happiness.
Build self-confidence
You wouldn’t worry about achieving happiness if you didn’t believe you could actually achieve it. Build your self-esteem and nurture self-confidence – it’s essential to convince yourself that you can increase your happiness . The best way to do this is to start with simple habits that generate gratification. Highlight your positive qualities and identify your strengths. You’ll reach your goals faster and fuel the idea that it’s really possible to change your life for the better .
Cultivate positive attitudes
Will is power . Believing you can change what you don’t like about yourself or what’s wrong with your life is the first step towards success, the first step towards your happiness. Practice smiling and laughing. It is not obvious. There are people who think laughing is stupid and smiling naive.
Minimize and simplify
Eliminate everything that is superfluous, that weighs you down and creates anxiety. If a thing or a person is really necessary for your life, cherish it jealously. If it’s the other way around, get it away from you, get rid of it. You will prevent it from becoming an unnecessary and frustrating burden in your life and from taking away space and time from what really matters in who you are and what you do.
Surround yourself with positive people
“The secret, is to surround yourself with people who make your heart smile.
It is then, only then, that you will find Wonderland.”
Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland
Spend more time on yourself
In one word: LOVE YOURSELF. Time for yourself is the first to be sacrificed in a busy and hectic life. If you want to be happy, however, you should learn to defend it and never give up on it. Listen more to your needs, take care of your thoughts and emotions. Give yourself time to think, to pamper yourself, to rest, to have fun. Create moments just for you, alternatives to everyday life and which restore energy. It’s not selfishness, but just a great act of love towards your life.
Travel, Travel, Travel
Travel to discover, to broaden your horizons, to grow, to learn, to get to know. Travel is life, travel is freedom . Traveling helps you understand your place in the world . And only by traveling will you be able to understand the value of differences. Travel is wealth.
Create your balance and overcome burnout
How could you be happier and have the right energy to be happy if you are tired and frustrated in life and work? It’s almost impossible. Building new skills, skills that will help you be happier, will take time and energy. That’s why it’s crucial to create a better work-life balance in the first place .
Create memories and positive thoughts
Positive thoughts breed positive attitudes . Worrying about negative thoughts and memories is useless, it is detrimental to ourselves and to our attitudes and frustrates our pursuit of happiness.
Learn to be amazed by the little everyday things
“Life is made up of little insignificant happinesses, similar to tiny flowers.
Little things happen every day, so many that I can’t keep them in mind or count them,
and among them are hidden grains of a barely perceptible happiness,
which the soul breathes and thanks to which it lives.”
Listen to music, read, dance… be free!
Do whatever – healthy – can lead you to carelessness . Without brakes, without inhibitions. With the lightness and spontaneity of children.
Share your joys
Happiness is real and greatest when shared. The secret is to share joys and emotions with others. Sharing happiness will therefore make not only ourselves happier, but also others. Those who have the habit of sharing the good things that are happening to them and the related positive emotions with people close to them also tend to feel happier and more satisfied with life.
Reduce the use of social networks
Too often social networks tend to have a negative effect on our mood and happiness. Scrolling through our bulletin boards, we implicitly and unwittingly compare ourselves to others: to those who seem happier than us, to those who seem more accomplished, to those who have something that we don’t have. All of this often creates a sense of inadequacy in us. By choosing to take breaks from social media or by changing how we use it, we can actually increase our happiness .
Don’t pretend to have control over everything and everyone
Often wanting to have control over everything and everyone has a highly negative impact on our lives: it affects our spontaneity and prevents us from abandoning ourselves to emotions and changes . Thus we end up living in fits and starts or, simply, with the handbrake on. But is this really what we want?
Have no expectations
Stop having too many expectations about your future or about people’s behavior towards you. Less expectations, less disappointments . Less disappointments, more happiness. Without expectations, every positive thing will truly be experienced as a “gift” or an “achievement”.
Eliminate negative thoughts
Eliminate your negative thought patterns. Let’s face it: Sometimes we are what is making us miserable. We just can’t stop thinking about how the dude offended us, or how our life didn’t turn out the way we hoped. Negative thought processes – such as worrying, ruminating about the past, self-judgment and fear of rejection – lead to being unhappy and unable to move forward. When you find yourself thinking negatively, pause and refocus your thoughts . Over time, your brain will be able to do this more easily on its own.
Experience Nature
Living in contact with greenery makes us feel better and makes us happy. Nature soothes the mind and calms the inner buzz, promotes awareness, tranquility and balance. Practicing green wellness has enormous benefits. It doesn’t take much to experience nature: just notice it at every corner around us and want to appreciate it, to grasp its beauty. Treating yourself to a few breaks in contact with nature increases concentration and introspection; improves mood and reduces anxiety and depression. Getting in touch with nature dampens aggression and helps you relate in a more serene and authentic way with those around us.
Play more sports
Playing sports is good because it stimulates the production of serotonin and endorphins in the brain. These are neurotransmitters which, if released in the right quantities, produce states of well-being, joy and euphoria.
Challenge your limits
Learn to understand that ” Want is power “. Remove the word “impossible” from your vocabulary. You will discover how much strength is hidden behind a fortified “I”, to achieve a more concrete happiness.
Love your job
“Love your job and you will never work a day in your life” (Confucius)
Working with passion and dedication is a powerful source of strength and inspiration. Definitely a fundamental ingredient for building happiness .
Give others more than they expect from you
When we are kind to others, we feel better about ourselves. We can do nice things for others, be empathetic , or we can just treat each other with respect, communicating kindly rather than assuming the worst.
Give space and free rein to emotions
How could you revolutionize your life if you don’t even know how you feel or why you feel it? To become happier, try to gain clarity about your emotions ; find out what you are feeling and what caused those feelings.
Live your values
As you begin to explore yourself and your values, you may find that you always knew what would make you happy, but you won’t. To be happy, clarify your values, so you can live your life independently, according to your principles and what is important to you.
Use your imagination to create the life you seek
Did you know that your brain has a hard time distinguishing between things that happen in your imagination and things that happen in real life? So when you imagine something — even happiness — your brain acts as if it’s real. We can use our imagination to create happiness out of thin air and enjoy our experiences more.
Leave your comfort zone
“Twenty years from now you will not be disappointed by the things you have done…but by the things you have not done.
So lift anchor, abandon safe harbours, catch the wind in your sails.
Explore. You dream. Find out.” Mark Twain
If you’re unhappy, how can you change your life by continuing to do the same things you’ve always done? It’s pretty hard. Instead, push yourself to overcome your fear and approach life with enthusiasm. Try “doing the opposite” to see how it feels and to make your brain more flexible. To maintain your happiness, you have to step out of your comfort zone and keep adding variety to your happiness plan.
Find your life purpose
We all want to feel like we’ve made some sort of positive impact in this world, but sometimes we’re unsure of what kind of impact we want to make. Explore exactly what gives you a sense of purpose and how you want to pursue that purpose to give your life the right meaning , the right direction.
