5 Simple Steps To Enhance Your Happiness

If you want to be happy, be. ~Leo Tolstoy

We have all been hearing and reading so much about Happiness.
How to find happiness? How to be Happy?
This is not going to be one of those articles where I tell you how to find happiness…

Why? Simply cause I believe happiness is within each and every one of us. We need not look for it elsewhere. We don’t need to search for happiness, because it can never be found!

How do you really find something that isnt lost in the first place??

Happiness can be self controlled and enhanced through certain practices.  A large portion of being happy comes from our own power to change. Change is usually a good thing, especially, if you’re in a dormant not-going-anywhere kind of situation.

So today I will give you 5 simple steps/practices that will enhance and improve your happiness quotient:

1. Be Grateful:
   Write letters of gratitude to people who have helped you in your life.  Maybe it was something small or something big…but write that letter. Email or Text the gratitude note or letter. Its my guarantee, you will experience a lasting and increased sense of happiness. But you wont know till you try it!
2. Be Optimistic:
   Everyday before you go to bed or while you meditate, visualize an ideal future for yourself. For example-living with a loving and supportive partner or finding a job that is fulfilling. You can visualize whatever you want and describe that vivid image in a  journal entry. After doing this for a few days: one- the universe will start positively aligning things for you, two- you will have an increased feeling of well being.
3. Count Your Blessings:
   Practice writing down three great things that have happened to you over the week. You might have met someone nice or might have bought something new. You being alive and breathing is a blessing too. You living and experiencing this wonderful life is a blessing too. Write it down and see the heightened state of euphoria you feel after you do. You will start noticing blessings you didn’t even know you already had!
4. You have strengths, Use them:
   Take time to think about your strengths. You might be loving, giving, nurturing, helping, a good friend, a good person, a good host/hostess, great at your job, great with kids…the list is endless. Identify your strengths and then make use of these in your daily life. Everyday will become a blessing you will want to write about in your gratitude journal.
5. Commit acts of kindness:
   Helping others also helps ourselves. Donate some time or money to charity. Better still be kind, help and assist people in need. Watching another person smile because of something you did, is the best feeling in the world! You will miraculously feel your worries vanishing, only to be replaced by a heightened soulful sense of happiness.

Simple, isnt it?

Now go ahead and gently introduce these practices in your life. You deserve every ounce of happiness you can garner from this wonderful life.

You live but Once!

Now its your turn…Do you have any practices to share, which have helped you enhance your happiness quotient? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.