Learn to be Happy Through a Happier Mindset

It’s been a rough year and it doesn’t look like too much is changing anytime too soon. We all want to be happier in our lives but how do we achieve this? How do you create a permanent state out of an ephemeral feeling? In this post, I’ll be discussing how you can learn to be happy.

First of all, happiness is abstract. It cannot be owned, held down, or used up.

It is an emotion or a state of being. As you know, emotional states are dynamic, not static.

Therefore, to be happier or to have happiness does not mean you are going to feel happy all the time.

It does mean that you will be a happier person and have a happier life overall though. You will be able to find your “happy place” or see the silver lining when things get tough.

You may think that a person is either born happy or not and that you are just not a happy person. But the good news is that having a happier mindset is learnable. You can learn to be happy.

Even now, dealing with all of this uncertainty, happiness is achievable. If you have the right mindset.

You can learn to be a happy person

A happier person is not someone who smiles all the time and frolics in fields of daisies. A happy person is one who experiences contentment in various areas of their life, feels happy at times, and deals with their problems seeing them as transient.

It may seem like you’re either born a happy person or not. But it turns out that this is not the case and that it is possible to change yourself to become a happier person.

Parameters to happiness

What goes into happiness? How do we measure it?

There are a lot of parameters to measuring happiness and while it’s still not fully established, the main ones according to the University of Trento, are life satisfaction, self-awareness, emotional control, and perceived well-being¹.

If you had a lot of money, you might think you would be happy. But is it actually money that makes you happy or the idea that you have stability in your life and the means to provide for yourself and your loved ones if they need it?

It’s easy to fall into the trap of “if I had this one thing” or “if I had more of this”, I would be a happier person.

Happy starts from the inside out

The first step to being a happier person is not manufacturing your happiness from the outside in. This means you cannot use things, people, or status as a form of outside validation for your happiness.

What you decide is important to you and brings you joy has to be internally driven. You create the parameters for your happy life. If that mean being a stay-at-home parent instead of a career driven person, then that’s your choice.

You also cannot use “superficial” internal ways to become happier. This means, unfortunately, you cannot just come up with a positive mantra and repeat it to yourself over and over again.

There are no “quick fixes” as Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People would say³.

One great way to start thinking about what’s important in your life and what you need and need to do to be happier is to think of the end. It’s morbid but take a moment to think about it.

What do you want to be remembered for? By loved ones, by others?

What do you want to have accomplished? What will you regret having not done?

Make time for reflection

It’s going to take time to get to know yourself so plan for time each day to reflect on how things are going, what you are thinking about. Getting in touch with yourself may at first seem unnecessary. After all, aren’t we always in our own minds?

But knowing ourself is actually a great challenge.

Knowing others is intelligence;

knowing yourself is true wisdom.

Mastering others is strength;

mastering yourself is true power.

– Lao Tze, Tao Te Ching²

Knowing what you want from what kind of jam, if any, you would like on your toast to what you want to be when you grow up plays into self-awareness.

If you don’t know what you want, you cannot create a life that will satisfy you. Perhaps, it seems like a great idea to be an influencer on Instagram. They have such vibrant lives, have exotic cars, mansions, and are beautiful people.

Besides not seeing all of the behind-the-scenes work and not-so-picture-perfect times, you may, in reality, be happy with a very different kind of life than what is shown on Instagram or in celebrity magazines. If you don’t give yourself the chance to find out what kind of life makes you happy, you will be miserable trying to achieve something you don’t really want.

Know your emotions

Being aware of your emotions is very challenging. Just like knowing yourself and knowing what you want, you can be unaware of your bad moods and your triggers.

When I was younger, I was often moody and it wasn’t just a teenage phase. I would suddenly shift into bad moods and take it out on my family. Until I started to recognize my mood before I snapped at someone and made everything worse, I acted like this.

Start with recognizing your emotions

The simple act of just recognizing my mood gave me the chance to reflect on why I felt that way and then move on. It sounds weird but, for example, we would go out to breakfast and I would suddenly feel really irritable and wouldn’t want anyone to talk to me. I found my mother and my brother very annoying even though they did nothing wrong.

Before I acted on my emotion, I recognized that I felt irritable and angry. I then asked myself why. (At first, all I did was just recognize it and sometimes let my family know I was feeling irritated for some reason. That was enough. Figuring out the reason why came later.)

Sometimes, I felt irritable because my clothes were uncomfortable or a sudden memory of something I felt guilty about or ashamed of popped into my head. After that, it was just a matter of either reasoning with my thought or allowing myself to move on from my emotion.

This is a powerful technique that happier people are able to do. Rather than dwell on something negative or something out of their control, they recognize how they feel, figure out if there is anything they can do, and move on.

Happiness is achievable

To learn to be happy is one of those things that as you journey to try to find it you won’t realize you have it until you look back.

I think happiness is subtle. Just like a truly confident person, a happy person is not in your face trying to prove their happiness.

Being happier is a mindset shift. It’s about looking at the glass half-full. It’s about being okay with what you don’t have control over and cannot change. And it’s about knowing yourself and believing that you do have the power to create the life you want and deserve.

Three things you can start working on:

Start journaling or meditating

A great way to reflect is to write down your thoughts or set aside time to just think. We honestly don’t give ourselves enough time to think about what we want. Instead of being fed what we should want or need from outside sources, find some quiet time to allow your inner voice to speak.

Find your rhythm

When people are in a “flow state”, they are reported to be most happy says positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi¹. A flow state is when you are working on something and you are completely absorbed in it so time doesn’t matter. This usually is when you’re doing something you are passionate about or doing a task where you can relax and become fully involved in it.

Treat yourself

Positivity starts with doing something nice. Why not start with yourself? Aren’t we usually our harshest critic or our greatest disappointment? Create a positive feedback loop by doing something nice for yourself. It can be as simple, yet effective as saying something encouraging to yourself after you accomplish something.

Start now by getting to know yourself. Figure out which methods work best because knowing yourself is a lifelong effort. Life changes us because we learn and adapt so we also need to stay in touch with ourselves.

You’re not a static personality, and in this ability to change, although difficult and complicated, you can learn to be a happy person. It starts with how you think, your mindset.

Live happier,

Nicole

---

Let me know what you thought of this post in the comments below!

Have an idea about a topic you want me to write about? Let me know on my Contacts Page.

Other posts you might like:

• How to be Happier about your Money
• There’s Not Just One Kind of Love
• Start a New, Better Habit to Improve Your Life

Share this post with your friends!

---

Sign up for my bi-weekly newsletter and never miss a new post!

Join me on social media for updates and inspiration!

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Tumblr

Liked what you read? Consider buying me a coffee to show your appreciation!

---

References

1. Anderer, John. You can teach yourself this emotion, stunning new study suggest. Ladders: Fast on your feet. 2021, Mar 23. https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/you-can-teach-yourself-this-emotion-stunning-new-research-suggests
2. Tzu, Lao. Tao Te Ching. Goodreads. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2979-knowing-others-is-intelligence-knowing-yourself-is-true-wisdom-mastering.
3. Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Simon & Schuster. 1989.