5 Secrets to Finding Happiness from Within

How To Find Inner Peace and Happiness from Within Yourself?

You don’t find it. You make it.

Happiness, as with all other moods, is directly affected by your activity. To find happiness from within yourself, you first must be okay with who you are.

This means letting go of other people’s judgments and developing your own self-worth.

Are You Happy?

This is not an easy question to answer.

I had different answers to this question during different stages of my life. I am sure many of you had as well.

But as I get older and hopefully wiser, I came to a point where I consider myself to be a happy person.

• It’s something I practise and get better at overtime.
• It’s something I have learned.

Happiness is such an elusive term.  It’s something that everyone wants but is very difficult to chase.

And I don’t consider myself a happiness expert at all.

But in this blog post, I want to share five lessons with you, that I have learned, that have helped me to become a much happier person overall. I hope they will be helpful to you as well.

I think it’s important before we go into 5 secrets that will make you happy to talk about the difference between feeling happy and being happy.

FEELING HAPPY is an emotion we feel right now. And it can be invoked in an instant. We also call it joy. We feel full content, joyful, we are laughing and having a good time. These are the little moments we collect every day and that adds up over time.

BEING HAPPY is more a long-term thing. And we identify as someone who is generally happy and satisfied in life, even if we don’t always feel good and positive.

HAPPY PEOPLE tend to LOOK AT THE BIGGER THINGS.

• Safety
• Comfort
• Having nourishing relationships
• Having freedom
• Feeling fulfilled

Happiness does not mean that you always feel happy and joyful and relax.

You can feel a full range of emotions. And life can be challenging at times, even if someone considers themselves to be happy.

You Can’t Force Happiness

One of the traps of happiness that we sometimes fall for, and I have certainly done this myself, is to associate happiness with certain activities or situations and then trying to force those things to be good.

Wait, do people depend on others to bring them happiness?

Some things are associated with happiness and then we tend to look forward to those things to make us happy.

Your wedding day, for example, is supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life. Doing fun things, going on a trip and travels, going to parties and restaurants, museums, and parks.

Having certain relationships in your life. We look to things like that to fill us with happiness and make us feel content.

However, our expectations can be dangerous. Especially with things that are outside of our control.

Just let things go as they go.

Do not wish for things to be different than they are. Learn to be present and enjoy those little things, as they are often the most magical.

“Finding happiness is like finding yourself. You don’t find happiness, you make happiness. You choose happiness. Self-actualization is a process of discovering who you are, who you want to be and paving the way to happiness by doing what brings you the most meaning and contentment to your life over the long run.” – David Leonhardt

Decide And Follow Through

I have always struggled to decide. And I don’t mean a little thing, like which peanut butter to buy or what to wear. I mean the bigger things.

• Do I want to move somewhere else?
• Do I want to switch my job?
• Do I still want to pursue this friendship?

In weighing all those options, I try to do the impossible, which is finding the solution of which I am 100% sure is the right one.

I have learned that in life there are often choices we must make where both options aren’t perfect. And neither one can guarantee us anything.

Straddling different opposing choices, we don’t choose anything and end up feeling dissatisfied with all.

By not wanting to make the wrong decision, we sit on it, and we make no decision. And we become even more anxious.

But I have learned that there is often not a right and wrong decision. Both will have pros and cons and it is impossible to know for sure what happen next or how my choice will pan out.

What matters isn’t what you choose, it’s that YOU CHOOSE. And then following through on your decision.

If it ends up that you made the wrong choice, you can always make changes along the way.

The worst decision is usually a no-decision.

Getting To Know Yourself

If there was a certain someone with whom you would have to spend every minute of every day for the rest of your life, wouldn’t you want to know that person well?!

Of cause, the number one relationship you will ever have is the one that you have with yourself.

Getting to know yourself deeply, not who you want to be, but who you are now.

PRO TIP: Practicing self-acceptance and compassion and forgiveness, is one of the most important things if we want to live a happy life.

If you are always feeling frustrated with yourself, if you’re putting yourself down, or forcing yourself to do things that don’t match with your personality, how can you expect to be truly happy?   

I’m in my 50s and content with what I have and don’t have, in my life.

I have found a way to live my life alone where I am content, with enough flashes of happiness and joy to keep me going.

“Live your life according to yourself, not others.”

It’s kind of liberating to not care so much about what others think of me. Don’t compare yourself to others, only focus on improving yourself and reaching your own goals.

Comparison Is the Thief of Joy

We have endless opportunities every day to compare ourselves with others.

We compare what we have, what we’re doing, what we look like, and who we are.

Sometimes I could be having a perfectly fine day, feeling good about myself, and then see something on my phone that completely shakes up my world.

I go from feeling fine one minute to feeling insecure and unsure the next.

I think happiness also comes, in part, with being satisfied with what you have instead of being discontent because you perpetually wish for something – or someone – else.

• Instead of looking at what you don’t have, focus on what you do.
• Instead of looking people with more than you, look at those with less.

An interesting experiment I read recently about is to imagine a world where you wake up and all other people are gone. Completely vanished. Everything (inexplicably) still works like electricity and water but there are just no people. Would you still want the latest phone, a big TV, expensive clothes, a new car?

It makes you stop and question how many of your decisions are based on external approval.

I am content with what I have achieved in recent years, and I have accepted my life the way it is.

Being happy with what I have has made my life so much better. That doesn’t mean I don’t strive for more, but I’m grateful for what I have.

Finding Happiness in Everyday Life

Gratitude can make all the difference. Most of us know that gratitude is important and a big source of happiness.

However, it’s also conflicting with some other things that we are often told.

• To be ambitious
• Strive for things
• Never be satisfied or accept what we have now
• Not to think to much of ourselves
• Be humble
• How successful we are

We’re always focused on growing and improving.

And saying out loud that you are perfectly content with how things are now, might make people think that you are complacent or unambitious.

We can be our own worst abusers at times – it shouldn’t be so difficult to see the good in ourselves, but sometimes it is. Some of us take that to an extreme, self-deprecation comes more naturally, feels more “sincere” and more “down to earth”, than boasting about accomplishments or looking at what is good in ourselves.

But in my opinion, feeling gratitude can be like magic. It often gives me instantly pick me up when I need it.

Gratitude can help us to be more open, more positive, and more connected with the world around us.

We don’t have to “save” gratitude.

We don’t have to save gratitude for the really big things in life. Gratitude can be like a habit in which we learn to pause and take stock of what has gone well and to be content with things as they are.

I think gratitude is the most powerful when we learn to be present and enjoy those small things. And be grateful for them.

• The smell of freshly brewed coffee or tea.
• Or the feeling of your worm soft bed right after you wake up.

The more we can feel this, the more it can enrich our everyday experience.

When it comes to learning how to be grateful, I think there are different methods you can try that might work for different people and there are many suggestions out there.

For example, I have tried journaling and gratitude lists. But I found them not to be very helpful because they feel more like a chore.

So, what I try to do instead, is just practicing that muscle of recognizing things as they are happening and taking a short moment to feel grateful for them.

For example, when I’m cooking dinner, just taking a short moment to be grateful for all that food that we are about to eat that nourishes our body and soul.

The more you practice this, the better you will become at this, the better you will become at it.

I’ve learned that you can’t seek out happiness. It is not a state of being we can achieve or a place we can get to.

I think it’s already inside of us.

And it’s something we can cultivate from the inside out.

Once we have our basic needs met, happiness doesn’t depend so much on outward things. It’s more about how we choose to see those things.

“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing what we do have.” – Frederic Koenig

And therefore, being happy can be like a skill. Just like gratitude and compassion and forgiveness are a skill. It takes practice, hard work, and patience. But practice makes it better.

Finding happiness within yourself is the only way to be truly free.

WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL HAPPY?

I would love to hear what makes you happy in the comments section down below.

What works for one person doesn’t always work for others. You have to find your own set of tools to find happiness.

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