How To Be Happier - The Broad Place

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How To Be Happier

The only people we can hold accountable for our happiness is ourselves. Annoying sometimes isn’t it. At times it’s just so much easier to whinge about not having enough time/money/love/the right body/enough travel. We think that if we can just shake a few kilos, find the right partner, go to that yoga retreat in Bali, find a bigger place to live and make more money, well THEN we will be happy. Well guess what, it’s not the case. We can agree everyone wants to be happier, yes?  So what do we do about it?

It can seem at times impossible to increase our happiness as we live in an incredibly busy age, and we’re all experiencing more stress and tension and fatigue. We are over-stimulating our stress hormones (adrenalin and cortisol) and in turn creating a lack of happy hormones (serotonin and dopamine). The key is every day ensuring you do something small that makes you happy, I call it Joyriding. Not huge things like going on holiday or getting a promotion. Seemingly small things, little activities that are unique to you. Like watching the sunrise instead of lying in, eating a cooked breakfast as opposed to a takeaway muffin, going to a new cafe for your coffee, drinking a cold pressed juice instead of a soft drink, or catching up with a girlfriend for dinner instead of taking that Spin class you hate but feel you need to do.  Every day you do at least one Joyride. Not only does it bathe your mind in happy hormones, it stems the tide of stress hormones. And every day you increase your happiness a little by little.

I highly recommend meditation as it increases your happy hormones also. People say to me all the time ‘oh I don’t have time to meditate or do little things that make me happy, my god I am SO BUSY as it is!’. If you don’t have time to ensure you are happy every day, even if just for 15-20 minutes, tell me, how are you finding the time to read this article?    

Photo by Jacqui Lewis