Probably, each of us dreams, waking up one morning, to feel maximum happiness and peace of mind. Happiness is a state of complete satisfaction own life. It's exclusive subjective characteristic . Looking at a person from the outside, we can only guess whether he is happy. Only he himself feels it.
The feeling of happiness never depends directly on the status, financial opportunities, social environment, etc. Often people with material wealth, many friends and a good family feel unhappy. And sometimes a person who is not particularly wealthy, with a difficult fate, can experience real happiness. Everything here depends entirely on us.
What affects the feeling of happiness
- Values. Each of us has a certain set of significant values ( "to love and be loved", "family", " interesting job”, “freedom”, “permanent development” etc.), and if they are present in our lives, then the feeling of happiness does not leave us.
- Achievement of the set goals. For some, simple and quickly achievable goals prevail, for others, ambitious and requiring great effort. But one way or another, the main criterion of happiness here is the result.
- Satisfaction of needs. The key is to satisfy precisely those needs that a person puts at the head. You can be a hungry artist, but if recognition or self-expression is the most important thing for him, and this is realized, then he is very likely to experience happiness. But if the most significant needs regularly remain unsatisfied, then the person is unhappy.
- . If we are satisfied with ourselves and adequately evaluate ourselves, then we become more confident and feel inner harmony. If we are not in harmony with ourselves, constantly engaged in self-digging, then we cannot feel completely happy.
- Health. Health problems are always more or less reflected in the feeling of happiness. Therefore, it is important to be attentive to your condition in order to be able to prevent serious violations in time.
What prevents you from being happy
Unfortunately (or fortunately, sorry for the tautology), our own attitudes, beliefs, and thoughts almost always interfere with being happy.
- Creating obstacles. Quite often, we ourselves come up with various difficulties and obstacles on the way to happiness, believing that it is not easy and you have to pay for everything. It seems that true happiness must be gained through suffering, won... But paradoxically, while we are struggling with fictitious barriers and obstacles, it goes away, and we do not notice it. We don't let ourselves be happy. .
- The burden of the past. Being happy is often hindered by negative events that have ever happened to us. The experiences associated with them constantly bring us back to that time, and we fixate on the problems of the past.
- Wrap around. It simply cannot be such that nothing pleases and at least for a moment is not a reason for happiness. It is made up of little things. You have been complimented, you have successfully completed an important task, your baby smiled at you, you attended an interesting event… Every day we have many reasons to be happy. Our task is to notice them and rejoice.
Listen to the singing of birds, the rustle of grass in the wind and leaves underfoot - beneficial actions for inner peace and connection with the world. Rejoice most simple things. They charge with positive energy and allow you to distract from bad thoughts, feel happier.
- Break the vicious circle.
For example, we may be sad that we do not achieve what we want. And we don’t achieve it because we sit and do not take any actions (or act in the wrong way), since all thoughts are occupied with unnecessary experiences and the search for the guilty ones. And often it seems that this circle cannot be broken. We are still waiting for the circumstances to change dramatically or for some kind of great luck. The probability of this is low. And the only way out is in ourselves. You need to break the circle by stopping worrying and starting to act. Any steps and attempts to change the situation or attitude to life will bring you closer to happiness.
- Get carried away.
You should definitely have something to your liking - something that inspires you and energizes you. Engaging in creativity, sports allows you to express yourself and cope with stress. But it may not be just a hobby. For example, the realization of oneself as a mother, a caring wife, doing household chores also allows you to feel truly happy woman at any age: both in 20 and in 40 years.
- Rest and.
If you are exhausted and don't get enough sleep on a regular basis, you can hardly feel completely happy. Healthy sleep not only helps to restore strength, but also to put thoughts and feelings in order.
- Follow your goals and finish what you start.
The more completed cases you have in your piggy bank, the freer and more harmonious you will feel. and do not retreat from them when faced with obstacles.
- Breathe happiness into another person's life.
The more often you do good deeds and please others, the happier you will become. Positive energy from your good deeds will definitely come back to you. Such is the pattern. Give gifts to others, say nice words, provide support, do charity work. The feeling that you are changing the world for the better helps you understand how you become happy.
- Look to the future not with fear, but with hope.
Stick to the principle and constantly remind yourself: Now it's good, but it will be even better". Make plans and look forward to their implementation. The more actively you can act and realize your plans, the more interesting the future will seem to you.
- Have in your arsenal a list of life-affirming phrases that uplift your mood and make you feel happier. For example:
"I'm getting better and better at coping"
"I like myself"
“There are many pleasant moments in my life,” etc. - Weigh your "I want" and "I'm afraid".
It is most convenient to write them down on paper in 2 columns. Try to remember as many of your "I want" and "I'm afraid" as possible. Well, if the first turns out to be much more than the second. After all, the energy of desires always inspires us, makes us more confident, and the energy of fears slows down actions, forcing us to abandon our intentions.
How to be a happy wife
When creating a family, a woman always wants to become happy and loved. What helps to achieve this?
- It is important to remain feminine, affectionate and attractive. Let your men feel like reliable defenders and knights next to you. This is a powerful stimulus for self-realization.
- Show care and attention towards your husband. Smile while waiting for him to return from work, ask how his day went, give him the opportunity to fully relax, delight with delicious food.
- Maintain a man's self-esteem: praise him, recognize his achievements and abilities.
- Do not be too demanding of your husband, do not control his every step. He needs to feel a certain degree of freedom and independence.
- Maintain comfort and order at home, keep it clean, create comfortable conditions for the life of the family, take the utmost care of the children. A man is always in a hurry to return to a warm home.
- Give your love, seek physical intimacy, trust him and respect him.
How to become a happy mom
For most of the fair sex, the question of how to become a happy woman is equated with the task of becoming a happy mother.
- Feel the joy of every contact with your child: when he smiles at you, when you feed him, when you sing a lullaby and watch him fall asleep, when you play with him and just talk.
- Allow yourself to relax and do personal things, because the child needs a lot of your attention and care. You need to restore your strength and recharge with positive energy. Don't forget about proper sleep and your hobbies.
- Love yourself and show your child self-confidence. This will allow you to be convinced that "I am a good mother and doing everything right."
- Be active and emotional when interacting and playing with your baby. The more pleasant emotions you experience with him, the higher your satisfaction with motherhood will be.
- Try to trust the child at any age, encourage his initiative and respect his personality. He feels it and will treat you the same way.
- Rejoice in the development of your child, notice positive influence your educational impact.
- Be flexible when raising your baby, listen to his needs and mood.
- Visit cultural events with your children more often. Interest is provided both to you and to them.
- Children develop us and change us in better side. Be open to this experience. They really have a lot to learn.
We summarize all of the above in the following lines:
Happiness decorates our lives
Sow the seeds of it in your soul,
And hurry to give it to others.
All good things will come back - believe in it!
Video on how to become a happy woman.
A person has at least six reasons to feel happy. , of course, depends on the feeling of responsibility for your life and on the understanding that you can change everything for yourself at any moment. But there are six statements that are universal for all, bringing positive emotions and fill life with meaning.
1) You are alive. If this thought does not make you feel happier, think about what an alternative could be. If you often experience depression and despair, find out for yourself what caused them and try to eliminate it. Sometimes the origin of negative emotions is based on internal diseases that require immediate medical attention. The reason may also be psychological disorders: complexes, which would also be nice to solve with professional help. If the thought that you are alive does not bring a feeling of joy, delve into yourself - find out why this is happening. And then start working intensively on the cause.
2) There is at least one person in your life who loves you, and that is yourself. Your self-image is formed from a certain amount of self-respect and self-esteem. If you have a harmonious, positive self-perception, be sure that it is based on real achievements and a logical sequence of actions, and not on a painfully heightened sense of ego. If your self-perception is negative, you need to do everything possible today to start thinking good about yourself. Make attempts in the area where you are sure to succeed. And then step by step larger ideas, strengthening faith in yourself.
3) Your being has purpose and meaning. There is something that brings more satisfaction than their work. This is an understanding of the need for the work that we do. We all get money and reputation by working for the benefit of people. So unnecessary people no, society needs us all.
4) Simple pleasures are free and exist everywhere. Wonderful sunsets and sunrises will give positive impressions. Watching children will give good mood. Seeing how people smile, how they help each other is also a positive emotion. Look around carefully, notice the most unexpected amenities, share your impressions. And remember: the more you are, the easier it is for you to be happy.
5) Your thinking is limited by prejudices and outlook on life. All inventions and innovations are man-made. Everyone can become a creator. Think big. about more. Turn your world upside down. Turn your idea 180 degrees and look at every detail from a new perspective. The mind has no boundaries! Enjoy his exploration. Write a book. Compose a poem. Invent a gadget that will solve the problem that is bothering you. Do something that makes the world around you even a little better. You can! You have to at least try to see if you can do it.
6) Count everything that life has blessed you with. Most of us can make a long list of everything life has given us. Many have their cozy house, beloved person, adorable children, interesting work. Think about how much this means to you. Feel what a gift it is, how good it is that you have all this. In conclusion, I would like to recall already widely famous words that everything is known in comparison:
- If you woke up healthy this morning, you are happier than 1 million people who will not live to see next week.
- If you have never experienced war, imprisonment, torture or starvation, you are happier than 500 million people in this world.
- If you have food in your refrigerator, you are dressed and shod, you have a roof over your head and a bed - you are richer than 75% of the people in this world.
- If you can go to church without fear and the threat of imprisonment or death, you are happier than 3 billion people in this world.
- If you have a bank account, money in your wallet and a little change in a piggy bank, you belong to the 8% of wealthy people in this world.
- If you are reading this, you are not one of the 2 billion people who cannot read.
Satisfaction with life and a subjective feeling of happiness are categories that, it would seem, do not always depend on us: people sometimes exaggerate the significance of their failures, believing that they are now unlucky or have a black streak. Meanwhile, there are many simple ways feel happier than a minute ago. It is not simple common words: the mechanisms that are involved in them are disclosed and described in studies conducted by psychologists.
Send a thank you letter
Gratitude is a feeling that allows us to enjoy what we have: if we have something for which we can be grateful to other people, then life is no longer hopeless. Send a message (text, email or any other message) close person, listing everything you can thank him for: the one you are in love with - for the happy moments spent together, and if you are married - for smart children and many years of a happy marriage, to your parents - for the fact that they taught you to believe to myself, to my friends for their support.
A study conducted by scientists at the University of Kent (USA)* found that just one letter a week is enough to feel happier and more satisfied with life. An experiment in which 219 people took part showed that letters of gratitude also reduced the severity of symptoms of depression.
In the Thank You! (“Thanks!”)** University of California (USA) psychology professor Robert Emmons even measured the proportion of happiness that expressing gratitude to other people gives us - people who often experience this emotion feel, on average, 25% happier than everyone else . The professor obtained this result by analyzing the subjective feelings of life in a control group of volunteers who wrote weekly (for 10 weeks) notes mentioning what they are grateful to other people for.
Remember 3 good things that happened today
Even if you think that you have achieved everything yourself and you have nothing to be grateful to others for, you can feel a surge of happiness by saying “thank you” to chance or fate. Take a few minutes to remember 3 good things that happened to you today.
First you will look for big events - no, distant relative did not bequeath to me a million; no, I was not promoted... And then remember that in the morning you went out into the street in a bad mood - but you saw that the sun was shining, and smiled. And a colleague who had not noticed you before suddenly smiled at you and said hello for the first time. Also, when you got home, you were right at the start. new series favorite series. This method develops the habit of appreciating small joys, subtly reshaping the attitude towards life.
A study conducted in 2005 by the founder of positive psychology, Martin Seligman ***, showed that this exercise gives a long (up to six months) positive effect. It is all the easier to resort to this method because it has recently turned into a popular flash mob in social networks.
Spend money on someone else
It's nice when your financial problems are unexpectedly solved by other people. However, if you yourself decide to spend money on someone else, this can bring you even more happiness.
In an experiment conducted in 2008 by a team American psychologists****, volunteers were given small amounts of money - from 5 to 20 dollars, offering to use them at their discretion: spend on themselves, buy something for other people or donate to charity. It was found that the feelings of the “unmercenaries” who spent their money on others turned out to be much better than those of the “egoists” who chose their loved ones as recipients of beneficence.
Serving an old woman on the subway or paying for a colleague's breakfast in the cafeteria, you present several "gifts" to your own psyche - you begin to relate better to the people around you, increase your self-confidence and feel closer ties with society.
Manifestations of generosity (often even excessive) appear in many rituals noted by ethnologists among various peoples of the world - let us recall the potlatch holiday among North American Indians when the leader of the tribe and his guests try to outdo each other in the wealth of gifts given to each other.
surrender to dreams
It may be castles in the air and a waste of time, but if you think of very real possibilities, this is another way to feel happier.
To paraphrase Hippocrates, one could say: we are what we expect. A series of 5 experiments conducted in 2007 by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder ***** showed that when people think about events that may happen in the future, people experience almost as strong emotions as if they were happening right now.
These emotions, for example, are much stronger than the sensations that a person has when remembering past events - even very joyful or, conversely, very sad ones. Dreaming about visiting friends, participating in a holiday or a trip to a country where we have long wanted to visit, we imperceptibly program ourselves for a positive perception of our life - and the more detailed our dreams are, the more compelling visual images they contain, the fuller the feeling of happiness that arises.
The joy of life is even sharper for those who make plans with friends - the study even estimated the monetary equivalent of this opportunity: to get the same amount of happiness that you get in the process of regularly discussing plans for the future with friends, you need to earn a year additional 130 thousand dollars - almost 6 million rubles. You can buy an apartment.
Get into a job you're good at
This method is better than others saves from the feeling of routine. Have you heard praise from others regarding your professional skills for a long time? It's no wonder if you don't consider what you do to be your life's work. Think of an activity where you're really talented—maybe you're writing amazing poetry, you're good at hitting 3-pointers in a basketball basket, or you're good at talking to older people.
Hobbies are not just a pleasant way to spend time. This is an opportunity to gain self-confidence and satisfaction in life, as a 2002 study proves: doing what you love not only allows you to relieve stress and get rid of fatigue, but also an important factor, which affects our perception of how our existence corresponds to the ideal criteria that we set for ourselves.
*S. Toepfer, K. Cichy, P. Peters "Letters of Gratitude: Further Evidence for Author Benefits", Journal of Happiness Studies, 2012.
** R. Emmons "Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier." Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007.
*** M. Seligman et al. "Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions". American Psychologist, 2005.
**** E. Dunn et al. "Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness". science, 2008.
***** L. Van Boven, L. Ashworth "Looking forward, looking back: Anticipation is more evocative than retrospection". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2007.
****** S. Sonnentag "Job characteristics and off-job activities as predictors of need for recovery, well-being, and fatigue". Journal of Applied Psychology, 2006.
"How to feel happy?"
Daily routine and everyday life are sometimes oppressive, and a person ceases to feel that life is tasty, interesting and bright. It seems that for happy and interesting life It takes time, which is usually very short, and money. But fortunately, this is not the case at all. Enjoying life is simple and pleasant. What should be done?
.... Dedicate time to your favorite things.
You need to do this every day. You can set aside at least an hour to learn something, read something, watch something, engage in self-development. This will help you understand what you really like, help you gain self-confidence and broaden your horizons.
….Get rid of harmful things.
This applies not only bad habits, smoking, alcohol, but also the food that is consumed every day.
….Reading interesting books.
The main thing is to find something that will be interesting. You can start with three pages a day. Books allow you to escape from the daily routine, help to reconsider and rethink many life situations.
.... The weekend is the time to spend it with benefit.
Not just lying on the couch in front of the TV, but going to nature, playing sports, going to the cinema with friends and many more options. Only by doing something new and interesting, you can feel how rich and diverse life is.
….Setting global goals and developing stages to achieve them.
This will help you navigate your desires, as well as how to implement them. Sometimes one has only to plan an inaccessible goal, as it becomes clear that everything is as simple as shelling pears.
….Restrict news viewing.
About the main events will still become known from friends, on the radio or from colleagues. The constant negativity broadcast on TV only contributes to feelings of anxiety, helplessness and self-doubt.
….Communication only with nice people.
It is necessary to limit the impact on the life of whiners, manipulators, aggressive personalities and those who like to cut off their wings and say that nothing will work out.
….Sports and yoga.
Doing your favorite sport is not only good for physical health. Sport develops endurance, helps to get distracted, relieve tension, and quickly cope with negative emotions. Bad mood? - You just need to go for a run.
….Doing something for the first time.
Sometimes it’s worth changing something in life, but it’s scary. You can start small - go to work in a completely different way, go to a new place, enroll in some courses, try a new dish.
.... Get rid of the trash in the house.
Surprisingly, in the process of sorting things into the necessary ones, “junk” helps to put things in order, to find a solution in difficult situation, make the right choice.
p.s. Happiness is made up of such small things that sometimes you can’t even believe that everything is so simple. Sometimes it’s enough just to go out onto the balcony early in the morning with a cup of steaming coffee in your hand, meet the sunset, enjoy the chirping of awakened birds. Much in life is determined by the attitude towards it.
How to live and feel happy?
Happiness is here and now
Sometimes it seems that happiness is wandering very close: “Here I’ll endure a little more (lose weight, meet big love) - and finally everything will be fine. Alas, the idea that happiness is somewhere in the future, around the corner, around the corner, is a big and crafty illusion. If there is no feeling of happiness now, tomorrow it will not be either. Notice all the light and good that you have today, and you will notice how many reasons you have to feel happy. What we ourselves fill our lives with is our happiness - the choice of friends, favorite work, hobbies, travel, communication with those who are dear to us and who are ready to spend their time on us. What else is there to be happy about?
Happiness is in the details
Many people are waiting for . That is why they are looking for him in some global things and fantastic states - breathtaking love, constant luck, enviable achievements, no problems. It is a trap. You can think of any sky-high heights and never reach them. And you can move from one feasible goal to another and feel joy and pride from small but real victories.
Our existence is a constant patchwork. There are no successes without failures. You can't just be happy and never cry. Happiness is not the absence of problems and troubles. Everyone has them. The whole question is how to perceive them - as proof of one's own bad luck or as a new life experience. It is not always joyful and pleasant, but in any case very valuable. Experience helps to realize and not repeat mistakes, grow and learn something new. Any experience gives us something and enriches us with something: if today you were cheated in the store, then tomorrow you will be more attentive. If at work you made an offensive mistake, then in next time you won't do it anymore.
Remember: everything that happens in your life is necessary and right for you personally. Even if you build relationships with the “wrong” people over and over again and step on the same rake, it means that you need this rake for something. They help you understand what is wrong and what needs to be done differently.
Happiness is in you
Like self-confidence, you can't get it from the outside. Nobody can make another happy. Happiness grows only from within. To feel comfortable and harmonious, accept yourself as you are, with all your shortcomings and imperfections. Learn not only to blame yourself internally, but also to protect yourself, do not be afraid to make mistakes and try to do something for yourself every day. Circumstances do not make a person happy, but the ability to enjoy what is. Therefore, do not chase after happiness. It is always within yourself.
Everyone deserves happiness
Many people live with the mindset that happiness is difficult to achieve, it must be “deserved”, “suffered”, but just like that it is not given. It is not true. All the best things in life - smiles, kisses, hugs, laughter, good memories, communication, meetings - we can get for free, i.e. for nothing. As I said Mother Teresa, there are none. The door is always open.
What to do to be happy?
Take care of yourself, hear and satisfy the needs of the soul and body.
Do what makes you happy more often, pamper yourself.
See all the good things in life (and thank the universe for it).
Gather in the piggy bank of wisdom ways to cope with difficulties.
Think positively, but the main thing is to be able to enjoy life. real life, which is now, and not the one that is seen in dreams or is waiting "around the corner."