Don’t settle for how happy you are right now. Take action and increase your own happiness! Sometimes it seems like happiness is arbitrary, coming and going as it pleases. But there are plenty of things you can get started on right now that will make a permanent positive impact on how good you feel. That’s why we’ve collected a list of the top 50 ways to increase happiness and self-contentment.
Do the Right Thing:
Live life with the right conscience. Having a clear conscience and a healthy mindset contribute accomplish many goals with the right perspective.
Stay Active:
This goes without saying, keeping your body healthy will promote healthier outlook on life and less stress along with the physical benefits such as better circulation and a clearer mind.
Consume a Healthy and Balanced Diet:
It’s so important to live a balanced lifestyle. Although stress can hinder having a healthy and balanced diet sometimes, there are ways to consume your fruits, veggies, and grains throughout the day and get enough nutrients and vitamins.
Improve Your Posture!
Good posture will prevent fatigue, reduce the frequency of headaches, and give you more confidence in your daily life!
Self-Compassion:
Having compassion for yourself increases self-improvement motivation compared to self-judgement. A study showed that self-compassion promotes personal improvement from regret experiences via acceptance.
Use Healthy Motivation Habits:
Surrounding yourself with people who motivate you is important. Have a workout buddy, looking at images of healthy foods, fitness inspirations, bloggers, and utilizing social media as a tool to gain motivation and integrate those habits into your own lifestyle.
Have a Positive Outlook On Yourself:
Having self-confidence is extremely important, especially in this day and age with the presence of mass media dictating personal image. What many people do not realize is that paying too much attention to what is depicted in the media can end up harming self-esteem.
Prioritize Your Workout:
Making your workout a priority among your other tasks during the day will ensure that you follow through with it! Sometimes, the hardest part of working out is getting yourself to the gym, so planning your day around a mandatory workout session will allow you to get it out of the way while completing your other tasks for the day. Plus, working out boosts endorphins, which increases overall happiness.
Remind Yourself of the Benefits:
The benefits of having a positive outlook in life can remind you of what’s really important to your self-value, morals, and can help you contribute to society.
Focus on What You Really Like to Do:
Being passionate about the things in your life and what you do career-wise can make one very happy. It’s important to live for what makes you happy, like the saying “don’t work to live, live to work” and here at HFR, we believe that being passionate about something can bring more happiness to life.
Ask Yourself Daily: What Are 3 Things I Can Appreciate About Myself?
Listing 3 things that you appreciate about yourself each day will help remind you of your good qualities. Not only does it foster positive self-encouragement on a daily basis, it can act as a good pick-me-up on those particularly tougher days.
Talk To Strangers:
Humans are very social by nature and benefit from having positive daily interactions with strangers. The rationale behind this is if we are able to approach strangers with kindness, we are more able to be less moody and happier with our loved ones. Elizabeth Dunn, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia conducted studies that showed not only do we benefit from positive interactions with people we are close to, but may also benefit just as much from positive interactions with strangers.
Try Something New:
Trying new things can improve your cognition and social skills. By making this a habit, you’re allowing yourself to step outside of your comfort zone. According to the mayo clinic, you can learn to overcome your fear, build your strengths, have fun, and challenge your mind.
Accomplish Your Goals:
You are more self-motivated and likely to accomplish your goals when you are doing something that you genuinely enjoy.
Overcome Procrastination:
Overcoming procrastination will reduce depression, low self-esteem, and anxiety.
Stop Comparing Yourself to Others:
As our society is progressing, it’s easy to compare ourselves to the lives of others through the use of social media and print media (magazines, print ads). It’s very unhealthy to compare ourselves, it builds a negative connotation into our mindset.
Overcome Perfectionism:
Settle for “good enough” sometimes when you need to, but don’t use it as an excuse to slack off.
Steer Clear of Addictions:
Avoiding addiction to substances such as alcohol and tobacco are extremely important to having a healthy spiritual standing. Avoiding addictive substances will ultimately lead to lower stress and a better quality of life. HFR even wrote a list of the Top 10 Tips from AA.
Build Self-Trust:
Building trust in yourself can be done in small steps, in fact, it is easier to accomplish with small tasks such as drinking water or completing a workout session every day.
Be Kind to Yourself:
Studies show that there are more benefits when you go easy on yourself–having kindness in your thoughts toward yourself will ensure you judge yourself less and accept yourself the way you are with an open heart.
Be Kind to Others:
In a study done by the Department of Psychology of the University of California, researchers found that preadolescents who were kind, or showed prosocial behavior, were more likely to be accepted by peers and had a higher sense of well-being.
Notice your ideals:
It is easy to be discontent with how we look based on what we see in mass media. Base your goals on reality and not perceived reality.
Focus Less on External Sources of Happiness — Find Contentment From Within:
You know the saying “money can’t buy happiness”. Having materialistic things in life is not the same as internal happiness, loving yourself before loving anyone else, and finding yourself.
Exercise to Release Endorphins:
Exercising is a great way to keep your energy levels up and boost endorphins. Not only are you working on keeping your body physically fit, you’re increasing the levels of good hormones being released!
Spend More Time with Supportive People and Less With Destructive People:
Supportive people in your life come in all forms, these could be family members, coworkers, people you worship with or people you see often during your daily routine. Having a positive network has been shown to reflect healthy personal habits and life choices.
Believe in Yourself!
Self-efficacy is the belief in your ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish tasks. A study by Dr. Pajares at Emory University studied the effects of self-efficacy, which showed that high self-efficacy created feelings of serenity in approaching difficult tasks and gave better results.
Remove Yourself from Unnecessary Information:
Since the technological revolution of smartphones and tablets made information available at our fingertips at any instant, humans have started to live faster paced, information-saturated lives. Usually, this information that is available through social media is useless to us. Unplugging from this unnecessary information that does not relate to our happiness will leave you with a clearer mind to focus on your goals.
Acknowledge Your Weaknesses and Move On:
Acknowledging your weaknesses contributes to a greater sense of self-awareness and will help define your strengths. Contrary to criticizing your weaknesses, acknowledging your weaknesses will enable you to identify what you need to improve and push you in the direction of carrying out these improvements.
Meditate:
By taking time out of your day to meditate,you are giving your brain a break during the typical hustle and bustle. Many studies show that meditation has many health benefits such as a clearer mind, increased happiness, and reduced stress.
Realize your moods over your emotions, happiness is inconsistent:
According to philosopher Aristotle, the human existence aims for the pursuit of happiness. However, realizing that being happy all the time is not possible, it’s inconsistent and comes and go.
Reflect More on Your Actions:
This idea encourages you to focus more on yourself and your thoughts instead of your actions. Our culture emphasizes constant action and little reflection. It is good to take a step back every day and reflect on accepting what has happened.
Keep Learning New Things:
Learning new things will give you a sense of accomplishment and pride. Adding new things to your weekly or daily schedule will keep you sharp and improve your time management skills because you are motivated to make time for what you want to do and will use your time more wisely.
Slow Down!
Slowing down will connect you more meaningfully with others and ourselves and gets us in touch with the present moment.
Read a Book a Month:
Reading boosts your brain power and according to a study done by the University of California exposure to new vocabulary has been observed to increase intelligence and produce higher scores on reading tests.
Be Mindful!:
There are so many ways to be mindful, you can practice mindfulness meditation and allow yourself to be present in moments that count like spending time with friends or family, or a long distance relationship.
Take Pride in What You Do: Ethical Egoism
Being proud of what you have accomplished is a sign of healthy mental mindset, it allows you to set goals for yourself and be independent.
Make a Weekly List of Goals and Complete Them!
Having a list in front of you can help you achieve your weekly goal easier and it helps to encourage you
Go For A Hike
Simply put, being outdoors makes us happy. You get a good dose of Vitamin D when you spend time outside and there are many [benefits] to getting a sufficient amount of Vitamin D.
Reduce the Rumination:
While rumination may have benefits such as allowing the thinker to understand certain situations in smaller, detailed chunks, it is not always the most forgiving strategy of coping. Instead of ruminating, try switching to self-reflection. Self-reflection will focus on concrete parts of a situation and what improvements you can make in order to address it, and you don’t have to beat yourself up in the process.
Practice Good Personal Hygiene:
Simply put, maintaining good hygiene helps you have better self-esteem and clean living habits keep us healthy.
Smile!
Studies show that people who smile are more attractive and when upset, smiling even helps boost self-esteem.
Incorporate Mood Boosting Foods Into Your Diet:
Certain foods have been linked to boosting your moods! By introducing more of these types of foods into your diet, you can enhance your mood levels.
Volunteer:
Volunteering is gratifying and gives you a chance to contribute to your community. A study done by Carnegie Mellon University showed that people who volunteer more had lower blood pressure and reported better mood and a greater sense of well-being.
Play With a Pet:
A few minutes of petting a cat or dog has been shown to increase levels of serotonin, prolactin, and oxytocin. In addition, petting your dog or cat will decrease levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn regulates appetite and cravings for carbohydrates.
Remember to Have Gratitude:
Studies conducted at Berkeley have shown that having gratitude correlates to lower blood pressure, higher levels of positive emotions, and improved immune systems.
Go On Vacation:
Studies have shown that social leisure time is essential in demanding careers for reducing depression and stress.
Get More Sleep:
Getting adequate sleep is extremely important for daily functioning and health. Carrying a sleep debt, or not getting enough sleep, is detrimental to your performance and studies show that an adequate sleep pattern is conducive to better test scores and a clearer mind.
Cooperate With Others:
Studies have shown that humans are more inclined to cooperate than to compete with others. There is more cohesiveness within groups that cooperate well with each other and cooperative individuals have a higher chance of survival because they can reach goals that would be unattainable among less cooperative groups.
Remain Optimistic:
A study done on 309 middle-aged coronary heart procedure patients showed that patients who were more optimistic were less likely to end up in the hospital again after six months. Studies also suggest that being optimistic results in lower blood pressure.
Don’t Beat Yourself Up: Self-Compassion Increases Self-Improvement Motivation:
Everyone makes mistakes! The way we recover and learn from our mistakes is what sets us apart. Having compassion for yourself when you do mess up will help you understand what you need to change and the steps that should be taken to move on.
