Every single person wants to live a happier and more successful life but rarely who actually takes this desire in their hands.
If you are one of these people who wants to take responsibility for their own happiness than you probably wonder what habits you should implement.
There are countless advices on the internet about what you should start doing to be healthier, happier and more successful.
However, what not so many people speak about is the time of the day that has the biggest effect on your daily mood.
The best period of the day you should concentrate the most and try to use in your favor is the morning. Here are 9 things you should start doing each morning to be happier.
9 Things You Should Do Every Morning To Live Happier:
1. Try to wake up one hour earlier than you normally do.
2. Create a morning ritual that will put you in happy and successful mindset.
3. Listen to inspiring videos, motivational speeches or music that uplifts your spirit in the morning.
4. Do one thing every day that your heart loves you to do it.
5. Do not eat at least 2 hours after you wake up.
6. Do at least 5 minutes of a simple morning exercise.
7. Drink something healthy the first 30 minutes after you wake up.
8. Read at least 30 minutes from a book by someone with positive mindset.
9. Have a proper hygiene and groom yourself in order to increase your self esteem.
With the start of the new year most people create resolutions and goals they would like to follow and achieve.
But majority of them will forget about these resolutions, majority will lack the discipline and the will power.
It’s because the same people who wait for something like start of a new year, start of a new week, start of a new month, these people have the wrong mindset to begin with.
Making a change in your life does not start based on some man made calculation to keep track of the planet’s movement. It starts every day, every moment.
Every now you have a chance to make a better choice, to change things, to create a beautiful life. But since a start of a new year is a great push, start doing these 3 things.
3 Ways How To Make This Year The Best Year:
1. Follow your heart unconditionally.
There is intelligence within your heart that you cannot even consciously comprehend. You know, deep in your heart what you really want. So listen more to this honest perspective of yourself. Let it guide you. It knows you from your depths and it knows what it’s best for you even if you don’t consciously know. Trust your heart more, without questioning it, and follow it daily.
2. Do more of what makes you happy.
You have certain ideas about what you need to be happy. And these ideas might be pretty big. These ideas and goals are important for you and it’s ok to try to reach them, but don’t let them fool you that it’s what you need to be happy. There are countless things around you that make you happy, countless experiences you can do for free, so don’t forget to do at least one of them every day.
3. Take care about your health and energy.
Your health is one of the most important elements you should not neglect chasing your goals. Your energy as well. You should start taking proper care of yourself, start eating the food that’s healthy for you, start moving your body, start removing toxic habits, start giving yourself what you need to be healthy and full with energy. It’s the most important thing, it’s what fuels you.
We all crave for that special someone, for that destined person to come into our lives and show us what real love truly means.
However, not many of us talk about the other part of the equation, ourselves. We don’t really care to become the special one for someone else.
The funny thing is that the moment you start caring about the other side of the equation, the side that you can actually do something about it, the right people start showing.
And you might even find your special one, your so called destined partner. But no matter how much you both fit with each other, your relationship demands healthy maintenance.
Relationships are tricky. Different people unfold different relationships. However, every single healthy and successful relationship must have one thing.
One Thing All Successful Relationships Have:
Mutual Attention. What does mutual attention really mean? It means that both of you give each other the right amount of attention you need.
This means that being busy is outside of your vocabulary. Even if you are busy you will find a way to give your partner attention when necessary.
Just by being there for each other you are doing the most important thing anyone can do within the context of building and maintaining a successful relationship.
Giving attention to your partner is something most people underestimate. But it’s the key to any successful relationship. It might sound simple but most people fail at it.
Your partner wants to talk to you and you say you are tired. You are upset with your partner and they are busy with work.
These tiny problems can fester so quick if they are neglected, and not giving each other mutual attention is doing just that. It suppresses these problems and they fester.
Most fight in a relationship start because at least one of the people in the relationship feels emotionally neglected, they feel lack of attention.
So they will create drama just so they make sure you care enough about them, because you are so unaware that creating drama is the only way they can get your attention.
If both of you create a time of the day to just sit with each other and have a real talk, to be honest with each other and listen, you are building a healthy relationship.
We all want to be happy. Everything we do in our life is to eventually increase the level of happiness that we feel.
But chasing happiness is tricky. That’s why countless neuroscientists continuously research this topic.
How to increase the amount of happiness we feel in our life has more to do with how we use our brain and mind than with what we acquire and possess.
Many people who seem like they can have everything are clinically depressed, and folks who seem like don’t have much radiate with happiness.
UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb says that your happiness is something you can control and gives us the hows. He gives us 3 easy ways to genuinely feel happier.
Neuroscientists Suggest 3 Easy Ways To Feel More Happiness:
1. Push your brain’s happiness buttons.
Your brain is powerful, really powerful. But it is meant to be used by you, it should be used as a powerful tool. If you let it be responsible for your happiness you would not be very satisfied with what it does.
Our brains are biased to think more negative thoughts because this was evolutionary advantage while we were surviving as primitive humans back in the past. It gave us an edge to be more cautious and careful in a world full of danger around every corner.
Most neural connections within our brain we would not consciously even consider to have anything together, are interlinked together. Experiencing guilt or shame might be your brain trying to activate its reward system.
Korb continues that “worrying stimulates the medial prefrontal cortex and lowers activity in the amygdala, thus helping your limbic system, your emotions, remain copascetic.”
“Despite their differences, pride, shame, and guilt all activate similar neural circuits, including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and the nucleus accumbens. This explains why it can be so appealing to heap guilt and shame on ourselves, they’re activating the brain’s reward center.“ says Alex Korb.
So how can we use our brain and how to push its buttons for happiness? Neuroscientist Alex Korb suggests asking yourself ‘What am I grateful for?’ is pushing its happiness button. His reasoning is chemical, “One powerful effect of gratitude is that it can boost serotonin. Trying to think of things you are grateful for forces you to focus on the positive aspects of your life. This simple act increases serotonin production in the anterior cingulate cortex.”
2. Genuinely accept that you are not perfect.
Most of us strive for perfection. You might say you are not, but if you are tested whether or not you are satisfied with who you are right now, even if it means this is the best you’ll get, almost nobody will be fully satisfied.
This slight predicament gives us a state of constant anxiety. It makes us feel as if we are always one step behind of something, as if we are always late or chasing something that’s right in front of us. It’s like a carrot on a stick.
We are always chasing something, we are always looking for ways to be better, to fix something, we are always competing. This is the biggest drive in our life, to get the thing that will make us whole, enough, worthy. And this stands in the way of our happiness.
“Trying for the best, instead of good enough, brings too much emotional ventromedial prefrontal activity into the decision making process. In contrast, recognizing that good enough is good enough activates more dorsolateral prefrontal areas, which helps you feel more in control…” says neuroscientist Alex Korb.
“Actively choosing caused changes in attention circuits and in how the participants felt about the action, and it increased rewarding dopamine activity.” continues Korb. He says that making active decisions while accepting that you are not perfect is key to feel happier.
“Making decisions includes creating intentions and setting goals, all three are part of the same neural circuitry and engage the prefrontal cortex in a positive way, reducing worry and anxiety. Making decisions also helps overcome striatum activity, which usually pulls you toward negative impulses and routines. Finally, making decisions changes your perception of the world, finding solutions to your problems and calming the limbic system.”
3. Touch, hug, pat, hold or shake hands with people daily.
Human touch is our basic need. We might think food, shelter, oxygen and water are necessities, but try living without any human connection. Some even speculate that for our psyche connection is more important than food.
If you want to test whether or not this is true, try to think about a moment when you broke up with someone you really cared for. Most people will lose hunger all together and stay with the sole craving of reestablishing connection.
Of course, for survival food and water are more important, but our psyche has a perspective that needs another element, human connection. We need to be physically around other people otherwise we are prone to mental illness.
That’s why in order to increase the happiness in our life it is crucial to have physical connection with other people daily. Of course, we should touch and hug people that want to be touched and hugged.
“A hug, especially a long one, releases a neurotransmitter and hormone oxytocin, which reduces the reactivity of the amygdala.” says Korb. Hand holding, pats on the back, and handshakes would also do the trick.
Korb cites a study in which subjects whose hands were held by their partners experienced a reduced level of anxiety while waiting for an expected electrical shock from researchers. “The brain showed reduced activation in both the anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, that is, less activity in the pain and worrying circuits.”
There is one interesting dichotomy, or maybe we can even call it the paradox of modern society.
It’s the strange phenomenon that we live in possibly the best period in all human history, but people report the biggest level of depression.
We report the biggest amount of anxiety and panic attacks than ever, we report feeling the most unsafe than ever, yet we are the safest than ever.
All of this is due to our misuse of our own mind. We fall under the countless mental fallacies and biases and let them portray a distorted version of reality.
That’s why it’s of crucial importance to remind yourself of some facts and truths that will help you use your mind to be happier.
5 Things You Should Think To Feel Happy:
1. The fact that the world exists.
As we go with our everyday stream, we tend to forget the most basic fact of all, that the world we live on actually exists.
We forget all the little, tiny things that needed to be in order so this world would exist, all the coincidences and events that needed to happen so humanity will exist.
We forget about the beauty that was created with this Nature that we come from, we forget about the countless sceneries and phenomenons that can leave us in awe.
We forget that despite everything we do selfishly and out of greed, Nature still keeps giving us and giving us resources unconditionally.
Having a moment to ponder about this will certainly make you happier. It will get you out of the small things that stress you and make you see the bigger picture.
2. Every thing that is working in your favor.
It’s common for people to get stressed and obsessed about the tiniest things. We tend to stress about someone frowning to us, the traffic, the work we need to do.
We worry about every single detail that is not going in our expected favor. However, we forget about all the other things that work solely for our favor.
We forger about the people who protect us with their lives, we forget about people who spend their lives inventing things so our lives can be more comfortable.
Think about your parents and all they did for you, raising you, feeding you, think about people around you who cared and loved you.
When you take your perspective out of the tiny amount of things supposedly going against you, you will see a whole world of things that work in your favor.
3. Having the basic needs fulfilled.
Can you imagine living 100 ago from today? How about 1000 years ago? Can you imagine the life back then?
We tend to numb ourselves to all big things, inventions, technologies and advancements in our society because we are surrounded by them everyday. They become the norm.
But just because they are the norm it doesn’t mean to not be thankful that you have roof over your head, hot water, food around every corner, internet, electricity, security.
Do you know how hard it was to get your own food, even find a shelter and safety back in the past? People would literally risk their lives for the things you have by default.
Thinking about how much society gives you, how much technology has advanced and how easier the life is now compared to 1000 years ago, you cannot help but feel thankful.
4. The abundance of things.
Most people have desires and that’s ok. But let’s say they want to get something and they attach themselves to this thing so much, that they miss on all the other options.
This makes most people miserable in a world that’s overflowing with abundance of almost everything.
There are countless songs, art, books, movies, shows, activities, knowledge, games, wondrous places, incredible opportunities, sports, foods and passions you can try anytime.
You have a device that can give you access to almost any knowledge and piece of information that was recorded in all history in seconds, with just a push of few buttons.
Thinking about all the things you can do, try and experience, all the things that are given to you for free, your little desires will fade. You can have so much more than them.
5. People secretly loving each other.
Watching the media and the news you might get an idea that the world is out to get you and that people inherently have bad intentions towards you.
But the reality of the world is much different. Yes, there is danger, there are some people with bad intentions, but these things are nothing compared to the goodness there is.
People inherently and secretly love each other. You can see it in children, in the sincerity of their interaction.
You can notice it in yourself, the feelings you try to hide when you feel compassion for someone else. Even in the little things, like the fact we greet with a wish of good morning.
Thinking about all the ways people might secretly love each other will shift your perception to actually see this as a true fact in reality.
In the modern world we live today there is a pandemic of anxiety and panic attacks. People feel more and more stressed, anxious, afraid.
The funny thing is that we live in the best times human civilization has ever lived. There is advanced technology, safety and connection globally.
However, our anxiety is due to our hectic lifestyle that doe not live us enough room to sit with ourselves and feel our emotions. Our lifestyle creates our anxiety.
There are people who notice the symptoms, who go through the process and deal with it. However, there are people who have accepted their anxiety and live with it.
These people who live and function with constant anxiety are called people with High Functioning Anxiety. Here are the signs you might be one of them.
9 Signs You Have High Functioning Anxiety:
1. You are always busy.
Being busy is a sign of not being peaceful with yourself. It’s a manifestation of feeling like you are always one step behind for something. Being buys creates anxiety by itself because you are always racing with time and the world around you.
2. You are a people pleaser.
People who have anxiety usually feel like they are guilty for something. The anxiety makes them unable to entertain more drama so they try to avoid stepping on anyone’s nerve. People who live with anxiety will neglect their needs to please others.
3. You are perfectionist.
Because when you feel anxiety you are scared but you don’t know of what, you are looking for everything to be in it’s place. Everything is suspicious and you need everything in order. This makes people who live with anxiety perfectionists.
4. You have addictions.
To reduce the constant hum of anxiety in the background people with anxiety will get addicted to distractions that make them escape reality for a moment. These addictions can be TV shows, movies, social media, games, alcohol, and other things.
5. You hate little social things.
Anxiety is a state that is neither here nor there, you are not scared but you are not relaxed either, you expect impending danger and you don’t know from where. That’s why people with anxiety avoid phone calls, messages and meeting new people.
6. You are an overthinker.
People who have high functioning anxiety can be really successful. However, they will overthink everything. They will worry about the littlest things and they will imagine every scenario, possible and not possible to make sure.
7. You are overly judgmental.
If you have anxiety and you accept living with it without doing anything, you will create a really judgmental voice in your mind so you’ll be able to notice even the slightest detail that’s out of place.
8. You have periods when you isolate yourself.
People who deal with anxiety need to do it on their own. They need to sit with themselves and deal with the bottled up emotions waiting to be felt. People with high functioning anxiety will be pulled to periods of isolation but they will avoid facing their anxiety.
9. Your body posture is shy and slouchy.
Every emotion we keep suppressed has some kind of an impact on our physical body. The emotions we feel dictate most of how our posture is expressed. People with anxiety tend to have shy and slouchy posture, like they are weak and want to avoid conflict.
When a New Year comes most people are obsessed with resolutions. However, probably more important is to become aware of what the current year taught you.
Having resolutions is fine and it can be a great trick for many people to instill the habits they want in their life.
But every year can teach you somethings and you need to be aware of these lessons. If nothing else, just being proud of your accomplishments is enough to get your reward.
While most people try to decide what kind of habits they want to implement in their life not so many think about what they want to let go off to be a better self.
There are 3 really important questions you should ask yourself before the end of this year to enter the new year as a better self.
3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before This Year Ends:
1. What I learned?
Every year has something to teach you. Ask yourself what was the biggest thing you learned this year? Write down the answer and make sure that you remember this lesson or these lessons.
2. What I am proud of?
Looking back at your accomplishments is one of the most satisfying things that most people forget to do. What did you accomplish this year that you are most proud of? Answer this question and analyze your accomplishments.
3. What I need to let go of?
You don’t have to drag things that no longer serve you. What is no longer serving you and you want to let go off? Answer this question and when you know what it is, ask yourself if you can let that thing go. If you can, than do it.
Asking these questions will give you a chance to create even better resolutions!
When you hear someone say ‘just be yourself’ you might want to throw up. I know I get really irritated by this watered down garbage of advice.
What does even ‘just be yourself’ mean? You want to be successful, how does ‘just be yourself’ can help you? What does it really mean? For most people nothing, it’s cliche.
But as with most cliches, when you get the real meaning behind this overused advice, it’s probably the best advice anyone can give you.
What does Be Yourself really mean?
It means to drop all attachments you have to certain personality, to certain characters, to certain traits and ideas you need to identify yourself.
It means to drop all labels you put on yourself!
Just be yourself, the thing most people say as a biased reaction, means to stop caring who you are and let this responsibility to others.
It means to stop trying to define yourself!
You don’t need definition. You are a constant process of becoming. And these labels and definitions just limit your potential. Be yourself means to let go of these limits.
It means to free yourself to become who you were meant to be!
By not having limits and definitions you continue your unfolding and becoming into the truest version of yourself!
You don’t depend on any of the world’s molds that other people created with their uniqueness.
Being yourself you become unique, irreplaceable, your own archetype!
We try to control and customize how other people perceive us, we edit and cut parts of ourselves to fit the idea we have for ourselves, the mold.
But you have no idea who you can become!
You cannot possibly imagine your true potential!
You cannot possibly know your uniqueness!
Controlling how other people perceive you, creating and editing your character to fit into a mold, that’s not your business.
Let other people perceive you as they perceive you. Don’t try to fit into any mold, instead, strive to create your own mold.
So stop controlling, your business is nothing more and nothing less but to be you!
You don’t have to design your character, you don’t have to identify with the work you do, you don’t have to label yourself with your passions.
Stop trying to define yourself. Stop trying to find yourself. Instead, strive to be yourself most of the time.
