How to Be Happy

In today’s blog, I’ll be talking about the key factors to creating more happiness in your life. You’ll learn how to turn inward to create your own happiness and how to release dependence on external factors for your own joy. Learn practical skills to increase your happiness factor that are easy to implement to access greater compassion, joy and satisfaction in life.

Key Topics Include:

Common pitfalls to happiness
What are the key factors in happiness from basic needs to a positive perspective based on current research.
How to access a positive mindset to create more happiness in your life.
The importance of self-empowerment in creating a happy experience of life.
Gratitude and external judgement as tools to create a more joyous life.
This judgement takes away from happiness.
An exercise to culture a positive mindset.

The World Happiness Report, a publication of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, is based on survey responses of people rating their lives across the globe. Their research cites six key quality-of-life factors to happiness across the world that include: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity and absence of corruption.

These are all important factors in providing our basic needs on an external level. Yet happiness goes beyond these external factors to become a personal choice determined on an individual basis. Because of this, there is no one-size-fits-all bio-hack to happiness, but there are some steps you can take to set yourself on a path to experience happiness anywhere, anytime and with anyone.

In my experience, one of the pitfalls people face when creating happiness in their lives is to become too dependent on external factors for their happiness rather than finding it within themselves as well. Of course, things like family, children, home, career, friends, and travel can activate a sense of happiness which is a great thing. Having happy life circumstances including a harmonious family life, a supportive community, work that gives life purpose and financial security goes a long way to creating a happy internal experience in one’s life.

Yet the amount of people who have these factors, or at least a good few of them, and are still not happy and content in life is estimated at 50% by recent studies. If you are in the 50% happy category then count yourself blessed, and also know that there is always room to make a good thing better. If you are feeling less than satisfied with your life, and find it difficult to be truly happy then know that you are not alone. And that there is a way forward to find a path of happiness in every situation. It is simply about changing your perspective, releasing childhood conditioning and learning to reframe situations to look for the divine purpose and positivity in every challenge.

The book The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama explores happiness and how the human outlook alters perception, positively and negatively. In the book, a psychiatrist poses questions to the Dalai Lama to explore the key factors in creating a happy life. It outlines that happiness is determined more by the state of one’s mind than by one’s external conditions, circumstances, or events—at least once one’s basic survival needs are met and that happiness can be achieved through the systematic training of our hearts and minds.

This is an essential point to creating your own happiness. Stop looking outside yourself as your sole source of happiness and start nourishing your internal states of being, including your mind, heart and spiritual connection.

This is the first key factor to creating happiness in your life. To take back your power in knowing your mindset is what determines your happiness. The good news is that you are in control of how you feel, which is also the bad news. You see, we have deep subconscious patterning that works to sustain limiting beliefs about ourselves and the world, ancestral entanglements to suffering and childhood conditioning from how we were raised that get in the way of being able to sense true happiness.

Since 90% of what we do, think and feel are governed by our subconscious patterning. 5 % from the conscious mind. This is why you can use all the willpower you can muster to try to create more happiness but this is not enough to go up against the deeper patterning within us. So the more heaviness we carry in our subconscious patterning, the harder it will be to reach states of joy, bliss and contentment.

For example, if you had ancestors who had financial issues such as losing a fortune, being cut out of a will or mishandling a business that caused financial difficulties or ruin for a generation then you will naturally have fear around financial abundance that will get in the way of your happiness. If you have limiting beliefs about not being good enough or that the world is not a safe place, then you will experience fear in situations that should be loving and supportive for you, these will directly affect how happy you feel in your life.

Once you take back the power of your own mind, by working to revise the subconscious patterning aligned with unhappiness, struggle and suffering, you will be able to have a deeper experience of happiness in your life. Consciousness Medicine is one way to work on these subconscious patterns to free you up from ancestral entanglements using Family constellation Work, revise limiting beliefs to empowering ones and clear childhood patterning with Holistic NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), and clear and balance your chakras and energy body to access greater life force energy through spiritual alignment. So that your conscious intention of creating happiness will be supported by your subconscious patterning, rather than it getting in the way.

Self-empowerment and taking responsibility for your choices, feelings and experience of life will clear the path to happiness. When you can make empowered choices for what fills your existential tank of happiness, that meets your needs and create situations that enrich your life your happiness rating will improve drastically. This may mean making some life changes that are not aligned with your truth, needs and intentions. While this can be challenging, see it as a welcome opportunity for change to elevate your happiness factor.

The idea here is to create a sense of contentment within, that guides your happiness. For example, wherever you are you are happy. Many people fall into the trap of thinking that if they change their relationship, home, job or location THEN they will be happy. But as the saying goes, wherever you go there you are, so if you are not truly happy a major change in life might help for a while but eventually, you will find your way back to your old patterns. So, resisting the urge to make major changes in your life to create happiness is another thing to pay attention to. Instead, acknowledge what isn’t working in your life, and work with that underlying feeling rather than trying to run from it. For example, if you think: If I have another child I will be happy. If I have more money I will be happy. If I find the love of my life I will be happy. If I move somewhere else I will be happy. Then simply sit with the feeling you have now. Acknowledge that this feeling is temporary and you have the power to change it. Drop into your heart and connect within yourself with self-love, pride and gratitude. For all that you’ve accomplished and for all that you will accomplish.

Gratitude is another important factor in creating a happy life. Take time on a daily basis to be grateful for what you do have, what is working in your life, ways you are loved and supported. Call to your conscious mind all the things you are grateful for. This elevates the vibration of love through gratitude which is essential for happiness. Sometimes this takes releasing judgement or comparison of what others have, or what you’ve had before.

Judgement is based on lack and fear which counter your ability to feel true harmonized happiness. Instead, when you find yourself evaluating or analysing a situation take a moment to come back to your breath and do the mindfulness exercise of noticing what you feeling, seeing, smelling and hearing in the present moment. This will bring you back into the present moment. Next, drop into your heart by bringing awareness to that area of your body. With each breath, like you are fanning the embers of a fire, stimulate the heart frequency within yourself to recognize your divine nature of being. Finding happiness in life means being able to stay fully present in the moment rather than being out in the future worrying about what hasn’t happened yet or lost in the past with old hurt.

Adding practices to your life that help you to stay present, relaxed and fulfilled in the moment will assist you in finding the happiness within that travels with you wherever you are and whoever you are with. Yoga and meditation are two practices that help to build your spiritual body’s integrity to weather the storm of challenges. So that when a challenge presents itself you are able to view it from a full tank of energy, rather than a depleted or stressed place. This will allow you to keep perspective to know that every challenge is an opportunity to grow stronger and connect more deeply with yourself. And in fact, is showing up in response to what you are asking for. In order to make a change to manifest your intention you must first clear the path and release your old limiting patterns. Knowing that the challenge is an important step on your path to creating more happiness will help you keep the necessary perspective to stay strong, connected and empowered.

This also helps to nourish a positive mindset, which when supported with a clear and empowered heart is the winning formula to finding your own happiness that will become an unwavering support like a best friend who always has your back and helps you stay positive.

One way to culture a positive mindset and make the mind-body-spirit connection is to practice remembering positive experiences in your life. For example, remember back to a time when you felt overjoyed with life and full of life-force energy. Pick the strongest or most recent experience to access the strongest response. The idea here is that the brain can’t tell the difference between a past memory and the now. Memory is a timeless place. A memory is just a set of neural net pathways in the brain firing that creates a biological response. So, when you remember a really positive experience and immerse yourself in it… stepping back into where you were, what you were feeling, who you were with, what you were seeing and hearing,…this activates the feel-good brain pathways in your brain. The more you experience this the more it becomes habituated. The more you experience the feel-good brain chemistry the more it will begin to run on it’s own, creating a carrier wave of transmission to the world to bring to you experiences that bring you joy, laughter and love. Any time you notice getting into a negative thinking spiral, interrupting it and redirecting it onto the feel-good brain pathway will activate positive thinking. This will literally rewire the brain’s neural net pathways to create a happier experience of life for you. This is the science of happiness.

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