How to Find Happiness in 5 Easy Steps

Happiness should be the easiest thing to attain as a human being. You are wired to want to be happy, to want to laugh, and to want to feel good.

Yet, that isn’t the case at all. Despite our conveniences, technology, and our overall ability to acquire basics such as food and shelter, it seems that we have forgotten how to find happiness.

You simply have to look at some statistics about our modern world to see that we’re probably the furthest from happiness that we’ve ever been as a species.

• Less than one-third of Americans consider themselves “happy” according to recent polls.
• Depression is the leading cause of disability in the US for both men and women according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
• The American Journal of Psychiatry found that in the last twenty years, depression in American adults has more than doubled.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) considers depression a worldwide epidemic.
• Sickness and depression go hand in hand. As our rates of disease climb, so do our levels of unhappiness.

While it might be easy to blame the current state of human unhappiness on inflation, crime rates, or overbearing in-laws, one of the world’s leading speakers about positivity disagrees.

Considered the father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman maintains that 60% of personal happiness is influenced by your environment and your genes. That other 40%, however, is on you.

“Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself. It is wrong to expect some final satisfaction to come from money or from a computer.”
-Dalai Lama

How to find happiness is so simple that you can put these five steps in place today and start reaping a more satisfied, happier life within days.

Here at Daily Superfood Love, we work hard to cultivate our personal happiness, which makes our professional happiness that much simpler to achieve. We use these steps as a company to boost the morale of our staff and they tell us it helps when they go home.

How to Find Happiness in 5 Simple Steps

1. Get rid of toxic relationships in your life. Many refer to this as “surrounding yourself with positive people” but you can have one hundred positive people around you but one truly negative, selfish person will ruin it for you. Toxic people bleed into every area of your life and they should not be allowed to remain.

You deserve to be happy and the first (most crucial) step is refusing to allow negativity in your life. Not in the form of people, jobs, or situations. Happiness is contagious…so is unhappiness. Raise your standards!

2. Take care of your physical body in every way possible. You might not this step is simple but it is! Getting “healthy” seems to have a negative connotation to it but it doesn’t have to. There are a couple of initial hurdles such as quitting smoking, cutting back on junk food, and getting up to exercise regularly. Once you conquer the bad habits that are holding you back, you’ll be hooked!

3. Take a moment every day to remember the good stuff. No matter how bad things can (and often do) get, there are good things happening simultaneously. The bad can outweigh the good because it is dark and loud, it makes itself known by being “big.” Put it in its place, deal with it, then focus on the things that are going right. You’ll see them, feel them, if you look.

Take a few minutes, practice simplistic meditation, and bring all those positive aspects of your life into the spotlight. If your day overwhelms you, take another few minutes if you need it. Always remember the amazing aspects of you and the life you live…you are filled with potential and unlimited possibilities!

4. Help others whenever you can. Whether it is helping a stranger change a tire in the snow, serving meals at a soup kitchen, or writing a regular check (even a small one) to your favorite charity…giving provides as much to you as it does to the receiver.

Challenge yourself to improve the lives of those in your community with a garden, a cleanup project, or a fundraiser for something desperately needed. Visits with the elderly or those who are homebound can make an incredible difference in their happiness. Tasks for others take you out of your head and any issues you might have in your life. The return on investment is several-fold.

5. Give yourself permission to STOP. Stop running, stop neglecting your sleep, stop refusing to take time off, stop being so hard on yourself, and stop thinking you are not important enough to give your total focus.

You deserve to rest and reflect. It’s okay to take vacations. You aren’t “lazy” if you sleep in sometimes. You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to care so much about the expectations of others. If you don’t make yourself a priority, no one else will.

Happiness may have something to do with what happens around you. Where you live, how you live, your financial situation, your relationship status, or the job you have may influence your happiness. At the end of the day, you are responsible for your happiness.

You have the power to change how you see your life, how you live your life, and how happy you are with your life.

You have the power. How to find happiness is in your hands. Don’t waste one more moment wishing you were happy…go out and get it!