One way of defining success is by focusing on the most important Principles of Success.
To achieve success in the journey of life, you must first decide on your destination by setting personal goals. First, ask yourself “What is your big goal for 2021”?
It is then important to maintain positivity. Staying positive can be achieved by reading morning affirmations every day. Along with positive psychology you will also need positive energy. Every day should involve taking action.
But to fulfil your goals of life, you will need to understand and practise the Principles of Success.
Ten Principles of Success
1. You are the only person responsible for your
success.
know success
You need to reach a point in your life where you, and you alone, start to take full responsibility and are in full control of your future. It will be a highlight in your life when you let go of leaning on others, relying on others or blaming others. Decide to let go from the control of others and start to be the master of your own ship. The future is in your hands.
2. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel
Success can happen when you put your own creativity to work on something that perhaps already exists and put your own creative twist or feel to it, thereby giving it its own “unique selling proposition”.
3. There is no progress without taking action
No action always results in 100% failure rate. If we never start, our dreams will never be realised. Action requires determination, which results in progress.
4. Persistence always wins.
As Winston Churchill once said, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” A river cuts through rocks because of its persistence over time.
5. Focus is key.
Focus is everything. Clear focus leads to
efficiency. Multi-tasking can lead to distractions along the way. Individual
tasks need individual 100% focus.
6. Failure is necessary.
If we never fail, we have never learnt anything.
We need to experience these failures and disappointments to help us refocus and
interpret each failure as a learning experience that will lead down the road to
success.
7. Positivity fuels productivity.
Success comes from positive energy. You can choose
to get caught up with negativity, but Positivity is a choice. Surround yourself
with positive people, read positive books and choose positive surroundings.
8. You must believe in yourself.
Find the place inside yourself where dreams start.
Dreams become a reality, when you write them down. When you are fully
determined, committed and take positive action, your dream will become a
reality.
9. Helping others is part of being successful.
Successful people always help those around them, inspiring
and encouraging them to also fulfil their dreams and passions in life. Find a
way to help, assist and serve your community and others in your life.
10. Success is a journey of countless small steps,
one at a time.
Growth and success come when we take one step at a
time towards our dreams. We need to hold fast to our principles, always
striving for a higher standard than others and constantly seeking to improve.
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We need three elements in our lives to make us happy. The three ingredients for a happy life are:
Purpose
We all need a purpose in life, something that engages us and helps us look forward to the day. It doesn’t need to be paid work, so long as it is an activity that gives us connection and interaction.
Relationship
We need someone in our lives to share the good and the bad. Someone who cares about us.
Money
We don’t need heaps to make us happy. We just need a modest amount to feed, clothe and house ourselves with a bit left over for pleasure
THE IMPACT THAT STRESS AND ANXIOUS FEELINGS HAVE ON THE IMMUNE SYSTEM
strengthen immune system
Many of us would like to feel a little happier, especially in this currently stressful world of Covid-19. Isolating at home during the Covid 19 pandemic can be one of several stressors that can result in psychological stress, which can in turn lead to a compromised immune system. This can reduce your immunity to viral infections. Reduced immunity is one of the physical symptoms of anxiety that can affect your health and wellbeing.
LAUGHING TO BOOST A WEAK IMMUNE SYSTEM
joy meaning
One of the best ways of reducing anxious feelings and stress-related issues is to try laughing more often. Laughing out loud can be an effective way of combating feelings of being socially anxious, especially if you are staying at home during the crisis of Covid-19.
It has often been said that laughing is the best medicine and it’s true that laughter can directly improve your feeling of wellness and even make you happier at home. You don’t need to be the joker, laughing all the time, but to be happy and to relieve stress symptoms, you need to make laughing out loud a regular part of your day.
WHAT IS STRESS?
We experience stress when demands are placed upon us, but we fear we do not have the resources to cope. Stress is an internal reaction that can be caused by either physical or emotional pressure. Stress can result in an uncomfortable, anxious feeling that can even cause overwhelming distress. Such feelings are often described as anxiety disorder or strain. It occurs in circumstances of environmental pain and suffering.
When feeling highly anxious about possible events, whether real or imagined, a symptom of such anxiety may be its effect on the immune system.
Psychological stress can result in one being socially anxious when going out. (Social anxiety is the fear of being judged by others).
Overwhelming Psychological stress can result in physical symptoms of anxiety that can affect not only the immune system but your overall health and wellbeing.
If you are feeling highly anxious about having to stay home alone, it may be that you need to destress, and this might include an online chat with a professional at a health and wellness centre.
EFFECTS OF STRESS
When you are highly anxious, stress affects the body and particularly the immune system. Whether it be a psychological stress, an environmental stress, or even or a physical stress signifying danger, your automatic response mechanism reacts immediately with the “fight-or-flight” reaction.
Stress can be related to your own internal perceptions of an outside force. Stressors or environmental situations, that may impact on your health and wellbeing, cause you not only distress, but to become highly anxious. When you are regularly in a heightened state of stress, your health and wellbeing is compromised, and you may be at a much higher risk of stroke or heart attack.
SIGNS OF STRESS
When you experience significant stress… either physical, emotional, or psychological stress, your nervous system reacts and causes the adrenal glands to respond suddenly to the stressors, putting a huge strain on your heart.
When the nervous system frequently reacts to stressors, it puts continuous strain on the heart and blood vessels. When frequent chronic stress is experienced from stressors, this also puts extra strain and stress on your digestive system. So, your heart, your blood vessels and your immune system are all affected. Even children can suffer from childhood anxiety and distress which can compound and develop into chronic stress in adult life.
If you have experienced childhood anxiety, work stress, or chronic stress or feelings of being socially anxious all these stress-related issues have a negative impact on your immune system.
STRESS SYMPTOMS
Symptoms of anxiety and stress
A certain amount of stress in daily situations is normal and can be a good thing, but……
if you are experiencing the following symptoms, you may be experiencing overwhelming stress which may be detrimental to your health and wellbeing …….
These are the warning signs of stress
Memory and cognitive problems
Feelings of depression or excessive anxiety
Lacking clear thinking
Anxious feelings or distress
Weight fluctuations
Digestive problems
Problems sleeping
Reproductive system issues
Feelings of isolation and being lonely
CAUSES OF STRESS
OUTSIDE INFLUENCES THAT CAN AFFECT YOUR STRESS LEVELS …
Marriage or partner breakdowns
Shifting house
Financial difficulties
Loss of employment
Having a new baby
Relationship difficulties
Custody battles
Overwhelmed with work
Change of school, uni. or work
Facing a deadline, or exam
A death of a family member
A major health issue or crisis
Hospitalisation
A major accident
An impending retirement
STRESS MANAGEMENT
We all experience stress and resulting anxiety differently.
Many people, facing challenging situations, thrive on the adrenalin rush whereas others melt with anxiety and are overwhelmed with anxious feelings, resulting in sleepless nights and psychological stress and strain.
These unexpected emotions caused by sudden stress can be tremendously debilitating. When a person experiences one, two or more of these stress related situations all at the same time, this could lead to major chronic stress, depression, serious health, and wellbeing issues, all affecting your immune system.
It’s always wise to seek a professional’s advice if you find yourself suffering with overwhelming stress and anxiety, whether it be from external stress causes or from emotional or psychological stressors.
HOW DOES STRESS AFFECT THE IMMUNE SYSTEM?
Whether it be psychological stress, work stress, exam stress or just feeling stressed and depressed, studies have shown that your immune system function will be affected to some degree.
Depending on the severity of the stress the responses to stress vary somewhat. Many changes to behaviours can occur, putting stress on the immune system. Such examples might be influences to sleeping patterns or increased alcohol use, changes to diet, a precondition to health and wellbeing issues.
For a healthy immune system, it is particularly important that the body has an adequate amount of the varying types of immune cells. Studies have shown that differing degrees of stress and stressors can play a damaging role in the capacity of the immune system to function normally.
Studies have shown that in some cases of increased levels of stress, there were changes to a person’s immunity because of their age, precondition health issues plus other issues such as bereavement and trauma. This chronic stress made them more vulnerable to a significant decrease in T cell response and the killer cell cytotoxicity, when subjected to infections and viruses.
Stress shifts the balance of the immune response and opens it up to becoming a weak immune system. Psychological stress, acute stressors, anxious thoughts and thinking patterns of behaviour weaken a person’s health and wellbeing and it eventually takes its toll on your immunity.
A healthy immune system subsequently becomes a compromised immune system and is more susceptible to infections, virus, and other health issues.
3 WAYS TO BEST DEAL WITH…
THE SYMPTOMS OF STRESS,
ANXIETY AND
THE STRESSORS IN YOUR LIFE…
1 LAUGHTER AS STRESS RELIEF
LAUGHTER IMPROVES HEALTH AND WELLBEING
There are many ways to relieve stress but laughing is the best medicine to destress and unwind. When we are with friends, family and with kids, laughing is a great way to relieve stress and anxious feelings.
Laughing is the best medicine for not only releasing stress but laughing has the power to help overcome and heal any anxious thoughts and feelings.
LAUGHTER AND HEALING
The experience of laughing and being a happier person releases endorphins in the brain allowing you to better cope with pain and anxious feelings. This allows the body to heal itself. These naturally produced endorphins affect the nervous system when laughter occurs and allows the body to better cope with pain, whether it be from psychological stress or other stressors that put strain on your everyday health and wellbeing.
Laughing with friends can reduce anxiety about health, giving you a better feeling of self-worth and wellness.
LAUGHTER AS EXERCISE
The body needs regular physical exercise and a good belly laugh exercises many muscles, A good dose of laughter is healthy as laughing is the best medicine to relieve stress and anxious feelings while reinvigorating the body. There is nothing better than laughter to soothe the mind, body, and spirit. Laughter is often regarded as a stress release, just the same as physical exercise.
Laughing is an anxiety reducing exercise. So, watch a funny movie when you can. Laughter benefits your health and wellbeing and can consequently improve your immune system.
LAUGHTER AND HAPPINESS
Laughing is a great way to destress and allow highly anxious feelings to subside for a moment and allow you to be or feel much happier. Laughing out loud at a joke or comedy show releases tension and stress.
Laughter not only helps to relieve stress but helps you to feel a much happier person. Laughter boosts not only your mood but enhances your emotional health and wellbeing, while helping protect your immune system from the effects of stress.
Join a laughing group
Perhaps join a laughing group. These groups are specifically set up to destress the body from stressed or depressed feelings. It helps socially anxious people to cope better while in a small group and is a way of meeting new friends.
These groups have found that laughing improves a person’s health and wellbeing and people feel much happier within themselves. Laughing with others strengthens a person’s resilience to stress.
Laughing, as when someone tells a joke, is releasing stress and boosting your happiness level.
2 EXERCISE TO RELIEVE STRESS
It’s always a good idea to regularly schedule an exercise program because it allows the body to destress from daily work stress tensions or any unforeseen stressors that may affect your health and wellbeing.
Exercise is an excellent remedy for stress symptoms.
Benefits of exercise on your health and wellbeing
Exercise not only stimulates movement in the muscles and joints, but it pumps good blood flow to the heart, lungs, and blood vessels around the body, while filling the lungs with oxygen.
If you’re out of shape, stuck behind a desk all day, or feeling stressed and depressed, exercise (even indoors) will not only activate, but boost your brain’s production of the feel-good endorphin.
These endorphins are important for strengthening the immune system and your overall health and wellbeing while building a much happier person and a better sense of self.
So, set a goal to exercise more, engage in walking, yoga, or more physical exercise as this helps alleviate stress and anxious feelings.
Get up out of the chair or from in front of the TV and start walking. Buy a bike (or exercise bike) and ride with a friend. If possible, join a walking group, meet new friends, and explore the outdoors and you will soon feel happier.
To relieve stress in cold weather or if you don’t like walking outdoors, join the local shopping centre walking group who walk safely around inside. 30 minutes of low impact exercise will strengthen your muscles and joints and provide a boost to your immune system and your mood, while strengthening your health and wellbeing.
Exercise helps you become a much happier person
+ Exercising Regularly Strengthens Your Health and Wellbeing
It’s an excellent remedy for stress symptoms. Walking, running, jogging all destress the body from stress related issues. Deep breathing increases better oxygen flow to the lungs and heart and strengthens the immune system function.
+ Exercise Improves Your Mood
Join a dance class, exercising while meeting new people improves your mood and you will be a much happier person.
+ Exercise Increases Your Energy Levels
It helps you to cope with the stressors in your life. Your immunity will improve, and you will feel happier.
+ Exercise Helps You Sleep Better
Most people need 8 hours per night of good quality sleep to cope with the day’s events. Exercise increases your deep sleep and your quality of health and wellbeing improves.
3 BUILD STRONG SOCIAL BONDS
Socialising helps to relieve stress.
There is huge value in socialising for stress reduction. Socialising strengthens your immune system and those who do appear to have increased longevity. A strong engaged social network of happy, laughing friends not only improves your health and wellbeing, it supports your brain health, lowers your blood pressure and wards off any symptoms of anxiety or stress related issues.
Socialising and increased laughter greatly decreases stress while helping you to feel much happier at home. Having good social connections where you can perhaps all be laughing out loud strengthens your immune system are and is a great ways to become happier in life.
It’s important to surround yourself with positive people who promote laughter that you can feel relaxed with, while having a lot of fun.
To relieve stress, set about increasing your endorphin levels. Meet with friends or family on a regular basis as connecting with others, laughing, having fun, or watching a funny movie together is a great way to engage in lots of laughter and destress.
Meeting with friends on a regular basis for coffee or lunch will aid in helping you feel happier.
If you have any of the signs of stress, symptoms of anxiety, or feel stressed or depressed, and you feel your health and wellbeing may have affected your immune system in some way, it’s important to seek advice from a professional health provider and get a health check.
It is important that you have a good opinion of your self-worth or self-value.
We all should have high self-esteem. Your self-confidence will diminish if you feel that you have low self-worth. Having a low self-esteem can deprive you greatly of the fulfilling life you were meant to have, where your self-worth and self-respect are energised and valued by both you and others.
Low self-esteem can take you on a journey of negative self-talk that can lead to a negative self-image. It takes strength of character and an enormous self-belief to emerge from the downward spiral of low self-esteem.
Many people have a self-image that is not what they would regard as their ideal self.
How would you rate your own self-esteem on a scale of 1 – 10?
If your score is under 7, then you should seriously consider looking at a way of boosting your self-esteem.
Building Self-esteem begins with having Self-respect.
Achieving self-respect is the first step in building self-esteem. So then, how do you boost self-respect?
To begin building your self-respect, it is helpful to take part in confidence building activities. Such action can give you a real confidence boost and will, in turn, help you to gain self-respect. Building self-confidence is not only important for adults, but for developing confident kids as well.
Why is it important to have a high self-esteem?
A HIGH SELF ESTEEM IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE:
You will gain more respect from others
You will have more self-confidence to take on new challenges, boosting your self-worth
You will be happier, feeling better about your self-worth
You will attract more friends, improving your self esteem
You will be far more successful in life, achieving the things that are important to you
You will have much more fun and be a happy person to be around
5 STEPS TO BOOSTING YOUR SELF-ESTEEM
1 Recognise Your Limiting Belief System
A LIMITING BELIEF is a perception of something that is not true about yourself and prevents you from reaching your full potential. Limiting beliefs are often created from your own feelings of inadequacy. They may have come from learnt behaviours or can be passed on from others.
This inaccurate viewpoint is often built up over many years and reinforced by those around you who may think in a similar way. These inaccuracies generate negative thoughts that can cause great harm or frustration, and can develop into long term damaging assumptions, affecting one’s self-respect and self-esteem.
Limiting beliefs hold you back from discovering your true passions, happiness, and true fulfilment. They stifle your capacity to learn and grow. A limiting belief system impacts heavily on your self-esteem because it disempowers you.
2 Identify your limiting beliefs
You need firstly to identify your individual limiting beliefs around your self-worth and make deliberate amends to eradicate these self-esteem-damaging thoughts.
By identifying the specific areas of your life where limiting beliefs are holding you back from achieving success, you need to ask yourself…
Where did your limiting beliefs come from and why?
Is it of your own making?
Is it from your parents, family, friends, or colleagues?
Is it your environment? Is it difficult at school or in the workplace?
How do you perceive yourself?
How do you think others perceive you?
Is it a false perception of yourself?
Identify these limiting beliefs by making a list and writing down which areas of your life you wish to change. A change is the only way forward to boost self-esteem, transforming your thought processes into positive ones, thereby improving your overall self-image.
Areas for change may be…
Your behaviour and the way you speak to others
Your health, weight, and exercise
Your mental health and well-being
Your relationships with family, friends, and work colleagues
Your body image as well as your self-image.
Your schooling, study, and career
Your attitude towards money, finances, and wealth-building
Your happiness… your right to be happy
Your dreams for the future… what is important to you
3 Eliminate Negative Thinking
Negative thinking processes need to be challenged, as they hold a huge sway over your self-image. They will tend to damage creative or clear-thinking processes. Doubt is a direct result of negative thinking and can be very damaging to both self-worth and self-respect.
4 Take Action on Building Self-Esteem
The only person who can change the situation is you!
Set Goals to Strengthen Your Self-Esteem
You may be being bullied and it is affecting your self-esteem. You may feel useless, unworthy, incompetent, or stupid.
What exactly are you going to do to gain back your self-respect, self-worth, and self-confidence in the particular areas that you have identified?
ACTIONS YOU MIGHT TAKE TO BOOST SELF-ESTEEM…
Distance yourself from negative or bullying people. Spend less time with them.
Seek out positive people who build each other up
Encourage new friendships that are supportive
Look after your health and wellbeing
Develop a health program of exercise, weight loss and fun
Spend more time building positive family relationships
Find new opportunities for career prospects
Create a budget to overcome debt and finance traps
Create a wealth building program
Plan for your dream future-happiness holiday
5 Recreate yourself into the person you want to be…
Letting go of the old beliefs, habits, behaviours means creating a new mindset…YOUR NEW BELIEF SYSTEM
BE YOURSELF AND BECOME THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE.
CREATE VALUE-BASED GOALS … STRENGTHEN YOUR SELF-ESTEEM
Create your own road map based around your core value system…
Have a clear purpose, time frame and always allow for changes
Your goals and values should be aligned with each other
Take control of every aspect of your life, your values, attitudes, behaviour
Build on your strengths for a more solid self-esteem and self-image
Accept your imperfections, acknowledge them… just do your best
Believe in your own abilities as it will strengthen your self-confidence
Always plan ahead because setbacks will happen
Allow for slip-ups that will test your resolve and affect your self-respect
Stay focused on the goal of building self-esteem your self-confidence.
You may have noticed that happiness can be contagious when you’re around happy people. They seem to enjoy life, know how to have fun and experience joy, meaning and purpose in their lives. Happy people not only appear to know how to be happy but they have the ability to make other people happy also.
This is because their happiness comes from within.
When you take off your blindfold and finally realise that true happiness can be found within, you too can become a much happier person, achieving success of your own making. This may be a major light bulb moment for you, or a reality check, that the source of happiness and your feelings around happiness can be found at your very own doorstep.
HOW TO BE HAPPY…
Before we get into the ways to inner happiness, it may be wise, if you are continually unhappy, to ask yourself, whether you perhaps have a fear of happiness. Such a fear is fairly common and is known as cherophobia.
What is Cherophobia?
Cherophobia Definition — “A phobia where a person feels afraid of being happy or having fun as it may cause something bad to happen”.
There are those who have an irrational aversion to happiness and suffer from what is referred to as “cherophobia, a fear of being happy. These people seem to avoid, at all cost, participating in anything that might be a fun activity with happy people as it makes them feel anxious and fearful.
There may be many different reasons why cherophobia occurs in some people. Those who suffer from this fear of happiness may have built up a defence system as a protective barrier against anything that might cause past events, related to happy emotions, to resurface. However, if anyone feels they may identify in any way with these feelings… a fear of happiness or being with happy people, they should seek some professional advice or speak with a counsellor or their family doctor for guidance about the matter.
12 STEPS TO INNER HAPPINESS
We often equate success with happiness and think that only successful people are happier than most. We delude ourselves if we think this to be true. We may conclude that rich people seem to have more rights to happiness than others and that happiness will only come to those who are self-made millionaires.
So, what exactly is it that happy people do to stay happy?
Here are some tips for being genuinely happy…
1 SET GOALS
Happy People Set Purposeful Goals
Whilst financial success does not guarantee happiness, it is also true that financial struggle can be an inhibiter of inner happiness.
Happiness can simply be the by-product of many years of toil and hardship. However, happiness may have been reached much earlier if certain guidelines had been followed and specific goals had strategically been drawn up to monitor progress and to avoid any pitfalls that may have occurred along the way.
Goals create purpose. They provide guidelines and structure that permit monitoring of progress toward a specific future outcome. Goals set the parameters around a specific target, that can be measured, balanced and quantified.
Success, in the sense of fulfilling cherished dreams can provide the basis to a much happier life. Such success doesn’t always happen overnight. Nevertheless, having a plan and setting goals for the future can instil purpose and produce rewards along the way as incentives, as one strives to achieve goals that could well lead to happiness within.
You may have heard this many times before, but it’s true, successful people always focus on the end goal, setting structure, allowing for any adjustments along the way. But it is their commitment to the goal that gives them the energy, willpower, and ability to stay the course. Inner strength and focus come from your willpower, your inner voice that wills you on to succeed and achieve happiness over everything else.
Having your eyes firmly focused on the end goal, front and center of your mind every day, is what will drive you forward, with the ability to create your dreams and give you the inner happiness you are looking for.
You need to lay down clear ground rules about how you are going to achieve your dream of finding true happiness.
If your aim is to be a much happier person, one goal might be to get to know happy people and make new friends. Or your goal might be losing weight, getting fit, finishing your uni course. Or perhaps your ultimate goal is to start your own business. Whatever it might be, being genuinely happy will take effort, persistence and constantly working towards your goal each and every day.
You need to set achievable goals that you know are realistic and that will produce the true happiness that you are looking for. Write down your goals and work out a time frame for achieving those goals. Have small rewards or incentives along the way for crucial achievements. Use a diary or notebook to record your milestones along the way.
Regularly write down happy thoughts or happy words of encouragement for yourself. Remember that making other people happy is a great way to experience happiness within yourself. Think of things to make people happy, demonstrate happy emotions to others, and genuinely try to be a much happier person.
2 VISUALISE YOUR DREAMS
Happy People Visualise their Dreams
Many successful and happy people spend time regularly visualising their dreams for the future. This creates more self-motivation. Their imaginative happy thoughts spur them on to achieve their goals and realise their dreams.
Create mental pictures in your mind and don’t limit yourself. Use your visualisations to create mental pictures. Imagine the impossible… this is your chance to create big dreams to become happier along the way to success.
Visualise what your path to happiness might look like. Cut out pictures and place them on your vision board. When you focus on your vision board daily, weekly or monthly, you will soon be able to see your dream being fulfilled. If it’s front of mind every day, happy things will come your way. If you are keeping your mind happy with positive, self-praising happy emotions and thoughts, many more opportunities will present themselves to you. This is because you are focused on the end result and not being distracted in any way by moments of diversion. Visualisation of the end goal every day helps you to identify any pitfalls more easily, the everyday distractions and blocking mechanisms that inhibit your focus.
By continually focusing on your path to happiness, you have the power to create what may now seem impossible. When you realise that commitment is crucial to leading you forward to that one big happy life you’re creating for yourself, your inner happiness is inevitable. Visualise your future self and how your future might look. Happiness comes from within, so throw off the negative thought processes. Be committed and change to a positive mindset. This is where the road to genuine happiness begins.
3 STEP OUT FROM THE COMFORT ZONE
Happy people step out of their comfort zone
Many people balk at the thought of change, because they are safely ensconced in very familiar surroundings and changing in any way would greatly upset the status quo. However, setting goals makes change inevitable. Setting definite goals allows the once solid goal posts to be moved to a far better position. This allows for new creative activities to develop and flourish, bringing new joy, meaning, happiness and the building of new dreams
Shifting from your comfort zone takes courage, determination, planning, goal setting and commitment to change. However, successful people discover what’s possible in their lives when they take that giant leap of faith and shift the goal posts of their comfort zone. Happy things happen to those who dare to dream. Creating your own dream is one of the things that make people happy.
Settings goals for change leads to a happier person. Opportunities are created when you shift from the old ways of doing things, that stunted growth. Shifting from your cosy comfort zone, whilst scary, will suddenly make possible a world of happiness where dreams become possible. But it means moving out of your comfort zone.
4 DEVELOP STRATEGIES
Happy People Create Strategies
Shifting from your comfort zone means setting clear, constructive goals for the future. It means writing down your plans for success, exactly how you are going to achieve your dreams and what your time frame will be. You must monitor your progress on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis to ascertain how long your goals will realistically take to achieve.
By setting out clear strategies that are manageable and achievable and allowing for changes, true happiness will not elude you. You need to be clearly defining how you are going to manage any setbacks, challenges or frustrations so that you will stay motivated and focused to stay the course.
You cannot change others, but you surely can change yourself. You need to monitor your feelings around mood, respect, your values, your spoken words, the way your think and those you mix with. Ask yourself how you see the world around you?… the people you mix with, your work situation, what occupies your mind, what do you take for granted, how many people follow your lead, are others respectful to you, do you have respect for others? Are you in the happiest place on earth?… if not, why not?
5 SET BOUNDARIES
Happy People Set Boundaries
Setting clear boundaries around how you think, what are your core values, is vital for change. How is your self-esteem, and do you say what you mean and mean what you say? Happiness will elude you if you are not true to your values and yourself. We can control what we think and who we mix with. Write down clear strategies and boundaries around the things that need to change and be specific about how you are going to succeed.
Thinking happy thoughts, speaking happy words, need to become the norm. You need to surround yourself with genuinely happy people who express real joy, meaning and gratitude in their lives. These will be the strategic flow-on effects when you set strict boundaries for achieving true happiness for yourself.
6 MOTIVATION
Happy People are Motivated
In your quest to find happiness, motivation is often a key contributor to success. You need strategies around how you are going to stay motivated and keep yourself on course.
Happy people generally know what it takes to recharge their batteries. They seem to know how to create happiness by spoiling themselves every now and then. They not only know how to recharge their batteries to keep their motivation level up, but regularly reward themselves for any achievements made. Happy people spoil themselves and others by booking a regular camping trip to their favourite spots or taking a well-deserved massage… or just having an enjoyable weekend away. These are the things that make people happy while they are on the way to fulfilling the dreams. Happier people create fun activities around how to reward themselves or pamper themselves.
So, what’s it going to take you to keep yourself motivated to reach that one big happy life you are craving? A good way to keep you focused each day is to collect “happiness within” quotes for keeping you motivated. This feeds your mind with positivity while creating attractive incentives. The end result will be that you too will be a much happier person. .
7 COMMITMENT
Happy People are Committed
Achieving goals requires commitment. The first step to commitment is to write down why you want to achieve those goals. The road to happiness will take both effort and will power. Success doesn’t usually happen overnight. It takes hard work, staying the course and committing yourself to the objective.
So often, folks get so bogged down with the day-to-day business of work, family or other demanding situations, that they fail to step back and take a closer look at where they are headed. Stress or anxiety can easily take hold of them. They are working so hard that happiness is eluding them.
However, when you make a commitment to yourself, you will be able to keep on track for true happiness. Successful people are not always the happiest people in the world, but they generally know what’s required to continually invest in their own personal happiness.
7 HAVE GOOD FRIENDS
Happy People have Good Friends
A strong supportive family and good social relationships are more likely to increase your longevity as well as improve your levels of happiness. Good friends enrich your happiness. People who have a network of good friends are much happier.
Choose your friends wisely because they can influence you. Seek out supportive, positive friends that you know will strengthen each other’s happiness, by encouraging each other.
The benefits of having good, happy people as your friends not only enriches your life, but also improves your overall health and wellbeing, as it reduces your stress levels. Having supportive friendships generally make you happier than those without good socially connected friendships.
Therefore, it’s important to build social relationships with several happy people, doing happy things together, laughing and having fun. This is what builds strong lifetime friendships. Engaging in strong social networks with local clubs and sporting activities is where lots of happy people gather and builds happier connective groups that can support each other. When times get tough it’s important to have good friends around you. This is when these strong connected friendships are important as they sustain happiness, knowing that there are others out there willing to assist in times of difficulty.
Doing things together is what makes people happy. It not only keeps your mind sharp but strengthens your cognitive ability, while it decreases feelings of loneliness. Staying connected with good friends is a great strategy for being a much happier person.
Mixing with happy people who make you laugh and speaking happy words of encouragement is a great way to experience greater happiness.
8 OVERCOME SELF-DOUBT
Happy people overcome their self-doubts and unlearn self-limiting beliefs.
Self-doubt is a huge “stopper” in people’s lives as it cripples their confidence, their ability to get motivated and stay focused, when trying to be in a much happier place than they are now. Learn to believe in yourself. Create an optimistic mindset where you can overcome your inner self-doubt. Change from having automatic pessimistic, negative thoughts to being a habitual optimist.
REMOVE ROADBLOCKS
Roadblocks congest and obstruct your vision and your ability to move forward and fulfil your aspirations and dreams of success and happiness. When you allow the negative invasion of doubt to take a strong grip on your thoughts, it cripples any notions of achieving what seems the impossible. Your doubting inner voice holds you back from achieving what is in fact possible. If you are frequently being bogged down with negative thoughts, positive affirmations can override your subconscious patterns of behaviour.
You need to talk to your inner voice, that doubting voice that lacks confidence… the voice within your head that holds you back for fear of things perhaps going wrong.
The best strategy is to CHANGE EVERY NEGATIVE THOUGHT TO A POSITIVE…
Fill your mind every day with happy thoughts and happy emotions and say out loud “I am going to be happier today than yesterday”.
Strive to make someone happy each day by using positive affirmations so that they too can experience joy, meaning and happiness in their lives. There is an inner power in using happy words of positive affirmation. It’s a daily reminder that will improve your mental attitude and provide encouragement from within.
Affirming yourself helps you realise the positive mindset benefits to your happiness, health and wellbeing. Practice positive phrases every day and challenge any self-doubting thoughts as soon as they arrive. Regularly using positive affirmation not only improves self-esteem but encourages motivation.
“When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.”—Joe Namath
Believe in yourself. Shift your mindset and reward yourself with praise and acknowledgement of your self-worth. This strengthens your self-worth, building a much happier state of mind. Claiming self-worth affirmations everyday improves health and wellbeing. It not only lowers your stress levels but creates more energy for increased motivation and commitment for change and opens up the door to a much happier life. True happiness is worth fighting for, as what was once the impossible now becomes possible…
9 BE IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE
Happy People are in Control
Taking control of your life means being responsible for your thought processes. You will find happiness within yourself when you take complete control of your life, by taking responsibility for your choices and actions.
Choose your friends wisely, seek to take control of all aspects of your life. Dreams are realised by encouraging others with happy words and happy thoughts. Avoid, at all cost, rumourmongering because that can degenerate into obsessive, negative conversation. Such conversation, that denegrates others, can destroy relationships. Look beyond yourself, showing gratitude to others… being thankful and speaking meaningful, happy words of appreciation that show that you recognise others’ assistance.
10 CAPTURE THE POWER OF FOCUS
Happy People Focus
The power of focus is in constantly reminding yourself of your intentions and focusing on the goal of being a happier person.
Create a vision board and write down your goals. Write down affirmations such as… I want to be a happy person… I am going to only say encouraging happy words… I am going to think happy thoughts… I am going to strive to make other people happy… I am going to be a much happier person to be around. You should read your vision board every day to stay focused. Focusing will lead to you being the person you want to be.
When you set definite goals, you start the process of capturing the power of focus. This is where you leave all the distractions behind. On your quest for true happiness, setting intentions is often the first step to staying focused. This may mean eliminating time-wasting distraction that would jeopardise your happiness.
It’s hard sometimes to focus when the world around you would hamper your progress. Achieving happiness will no doubt take effort and old habits could creep back in. Focusing on your goal may mean changing your behaviour, seeking out new friends, or going on a diet and exercising more.
Live a purposeful life, full of intention, without self-limiting beliefs, to empower yourself, increase your feeling of self-worth and ultimately to lead to inner happiness. Being a happier person will also lead to you being influential in other people’s lives and make them much happier also.
11 EMPHASISE THE POSITIVE
Happy People Always Emphasise the Positive
To reach your goals, you need to constantly remind yourself why you have set your goals.
Change any negative thought process to a new positive belief system. Positive people don’t listen to their self-limiting thought processes. Positive, happy people emphasise the positives and eliminate any negatives. Their mindset is focused on positive outcomes and not on limiting beliefs that may hold them back in any way from achieving their goals and dreams. Happy people don’t focus on inner doubts or negative frameworks, but fill their minds with happy thoughts, seeking out other happy people they want to be around and learn from.
Our innate personalities and genetic traits are set from birth from our parents. But our environment also plays an important role in our level of happiness and how we behave. Our attitude towards other people often tends to develop according to how we ourselves were treated by others, or as we watched friends, neighbours, teachers, our parents. You may naturally be a fairly jovial person, but your environment plays a big part in how you perceive yourself in the world in which you live. Your environment also plays an important role in your immediate happiness and your future happiness.
12 HAPPINESS IS A MINDSET
Happy People have a Positive State of Mind
Some people seem naturally to know how to be happy. They have a genuinely happier outlook on life, to make them happier than others. They think happy thoughts, they speak happy words of affirmation to their friends and more importantly, to themselves.
It is, for them, perhaps a natural way of thinking, but for others it’s a definite decision and thought process that needs to be developed. You can easily change your thinking, despite hardships, setbacks, unfortunate circumstances or the lack of friends or family or even the lack of money, education or opportunities. We cannot blame the past for how things are in the present. The old saying “we have the future in the palm our our hands” is true. We shape our own destiny. Happy thoughts develop happy emotions which build happier people.
Happiness is a Choice
The happiest place on earth could well be where you are, curled up by the fireplace, reading a good book, or perhaps out with friends or family enjoying each other’s company. It may be while playing cricket, or with lots of other happy people at the beach or doing other happy things that you enjoy.
We all desire happiness and often we cannot get enough of it. However, despite our circumstances, happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy or you can choose not to be happy. The choice is in your hands.
