20The Powerful Habits

Happiness

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” - Aristotle

These habits will not solve all your problems and make you happy all the time from now on, but itcontains some of the pieces that I believe are most important for living a happy life. Those pieces,or habits, can help you to feel happier a lot more and help you to handle challenges in your life. But to gain the benefits you have to implement the advice consistently. You have to live it.

Habit # 1 : Choose Happiness The first thing you must do is to choose happiness. Just like misery. Both of them are optional. As you use these techniques you start to realize more and more how much you can affect and choose your own happiness. Just like tying your shoes choosing to be happy is a conscious choice. You choose each day what you focus on and how you interpret your reality.

“Most people are about as happy asthey make theirminds up to be.” Abraham Lincoln

Habit # 2 : Keep Your Focus on What You Want What you think about most of the time you see around you and become. If you see the world and yourself through a lens smudged by negativity then you’ll find much misery. If you look outwards andinwards through lens brightened by positivity you’ll find much to be happy and appreciative about.So being happy or miserable is seldom so much about the external circumstances at the moment.

Habit # 3 : Be Grateful for What You Got Just appreciate the weather, your friends and family, the food in front of you, your roof and clean water, your awesome shoes and the cute wo/man that just walked by. Yeah, it might seem a bit silly. But just doing this for two minutes really works well to turn a sour mood into a more positive and open one. Do this whenever you feel down or like your focus is in the wrong place.

Habit # 4 : Use Big and Written goals By setting goals, writing them down and posting them on a wall where you can see them every day you can keep your focus steadily on what you want instead of what you don’t want out of life. I would also recommend setting big goals, not reasonable ones. Suddenly, I felt uncomfortable but also excited. My mind started to spit out solutions to help me reach that goal.

"Happiness is not in the merepossession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

Habit # 5 : Ask Yourself Useful Questions This is a powerful way to refocus if you slip or to find even more clarity in what you choose to focus your time and energy towards. Here are two great ones. 1) Is this useful? By asking if something is useful you can stop yourself while heading down a negative path. What is awesome about this situation? Your mind starts to accept that you can indeed find something good in just about any situation.

“Very little is need to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”

Marcus Aurelius

Habit # 6 : Choose an Environment of Happiness Your environment has a big influence over you. You are in it every waking hour so you need to be proactive and create an environment that supports your happiness and habits. Being a bit ruthless and cutting out as much of the negative influences and busywork makes your mind clear, uncluttered and focused.

Habit # 7 : Socialize with People that Lift You Up Some people tend to drag you down. Some people may be kinda indifferent. Some people tend to lift up you up and support and motivate you. Focus on spending as much of your time as you can with the third group of people. It will be very hard to live a happier life if the people you hang out with the most always are negative and complain about everything.

Habit # 8 : Create an Action Habit. I admit, it’s not always easy to take action. It can be scary and difficult. But if you don’t take action you’ll be missing out on most things. Including many moments, people and experiences that can bring you a lot of happiness. If you don’t create a habit where you take a lot of action you won’t get a lot of results in real life.

"Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results.” Dennis Waitley

Habit # 9 : Use a Morning Ritual You simply set up a routine in the morning that you do as soon as you wake up. This works so well because what you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. As humans we have a strong tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. That’s one big reason why a bad start often leads to a bad day and a good start often leads to a good day.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

Habit # 10 : Do Things Even If You Don’t Feel Like It Your inner voice and feelings can be disregarded if you like. You can do whatever you want to do anyway. Just do it. The more you get into habit of doing this, the easier it will become. Focus on and take responsibility for the process, not the potential results. Take responsibility for showing up and doing your workout.

Habit # 11 : Be Here Now Tomorrow isn’t here yet. Yesterday has passed. Now is the present moment. And all three of them are always the present moment when we are living in them. So much time is lost by thinking compulsively,over and over again, about things we have little control over. And it distracts us - blurs our vision andshatters our focus - and keeps us from fully enjoying what is really the most important time. Now.

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.” - Buddha

Habit # 12 : Help and Make Other People Happy When you do the right thing and make people happy you feel good about yourself. When you make someone else happy you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you. And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. So focus on giving happiness instead of zeroing in on receiving it. It’s better for everyone.

If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap. If you want happiness for a day — go fishing. If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else. - Chinese Proverb

Habit # 13 : You and Your Relationship with Yourself Now, increasing the love and value you give isn’t only about other people and what they give back. By doing positive things for other people you start to see yourself as a person who is better and more deserving of more love, good things and happiness in life. This is essential to avoid self-sabotage on your path to more success and happiness in life.

"Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

Habit # 14 : Don’t compare yourself to other people One thing that can cause quite a bit of unhappiness is comparing yourself to other people and their lives. You compare cars, houses, jobs, shoes, money, relationships, social popularity and so on. And at the end of the day you create a lot of negative feelings within. And perhaps also outside of yourself. This won’t help anyone.

"If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.” - Joseph Addison

Habit # 15 : Compare yourself to yourself See how much you have grown, what you have achieved and what progress you have made towardsyour goals. This habit has the benefit of creating gratitude, appreciation and kindness towards yourselfas you observe how far you have come, the obstacles you have overcome and the good stuff you have done. You feel good about yourself without having to think less of other people.

Habit # 16 : Do What You Love to Do When you do something you love you don’t have to push yourself so much. You keep going because you like doing it, not just because your want to reach some goal (although that can be exciting too). Taking action also becomes natural when you doing something you really want to do. A lot of the time you can’t wait to get going with it.

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” Albert Schweitzer

Habit # 17 : Explore YourselfWhat activities make you feel the happiest? What activities that you do make time just disappear? You may also want to think back and explore your past. If you are really busy with life – family, long hours at work etc. – then what were the things you used to do when you were younger and had more free time? And what things did you have a talent for or what skills have you developed throughout your life?

Habit # 18 : Let Go We often carry with us a lot of stuff. Not in our hands perhaps. But in our minds. It can become like you are carrying half the world on your back. Not very helpful. So you need to let go of things. Not only to move lighter and more freely. But also to be able to fully move forward in life. Letting go enables you to drop irrelevant stuff and makes the choice to focus on the stuff that bring you happiness easier.

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” - Lao Tzu

Habit # 19 : Give Up “Being Right” Realize that you may cling to things because they might make you feel right as you replay an argument or conflict over and over in your mind. It gives you a certain sense of satisfaction as the other person is wrong. But you have to give up that kind of satisfaction to move on. Accept it. Then let it go

"We need to learn to let go as easily as we grasp and we will find our hands full and our minds empty.” - Leo F. Buscaglia

Habit # 20 : Change Your Life by Changing Your Bad HabitsChanging a habit is a lot of mental effort. Don’t try to do this all at once. Focus on one habit at a time for 30 days or more. It may seem slow and I understand that it’s easy to get wrapped up in the enthusiasm and the hope that you will give your life a total overhaul right now. Nothing wrong with that. You won’t be able to keep it up until your new habits are established and stable.

Stick to the path of applying these habits as much as you can in your daily life. Not only will the habits themselves help you. Because when you actually live habits like these, when you do what you know deep down is the right thing then you also raise your self esteem and you feel that you actually deserve good things in life. This is a big factor for increasing your happiness.

Thank You Very MuchSompong Yusoontorn

"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” - Benjamin Disraeli