What Makes You Happy
What makes you happy?
New job, a nice vacation, big house, spending more time with our closest?
Most of us are slowly beginning to unravel the truth, masked quite efficiently behind work, education, and consumption systems, that a job raise or a bigger home do not contribute much to our true happiness.
Other, more subtle factors contribute significantly to our levels of happiness. Spending more time outside, commuting less, exercising more, and meditating are all actions to discover new parts of ourselves, that are shelved well into the background, overtaken by our daily habits, habits so well established that they mask the potential to allow ourselves to discover activities that can help make us happier.
One of the regrets that many have on their deathbeds is the regret of spending more time with loved ones. George Vaillant, a researcher doing a 72 year research on the lives of 200+ people has found out through his studies “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
Here is the full list of the ten simple things that can make us happier:
Sleep more, go outside more, spend more time with friends and family, commute less, exercise more, help others, practice smiling, plan a trip, meditate
And sure, making a list or reading someone else’s list is easy to do. Thinking about a list however does not help realise what’s on that list.
So, what are the activities that make you happier? Are you doing them? If not, how are you stopping yourself from doing them?
Be authentic, be yourself, commit to your own happiness and kick your age-old habits that prevent you from being the person that you were born to be, no matter which tools you decide to help you become your dream self. As Steven Pressfield says in his book, the War of Art, if you get closer to your own goals, your own beliefs, your own flow of creative output, then we all benefit from it.
Full artice on the 10 Simple Things You Can Do Today That Will Make You Happier, Backed By Science: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belle-beth-cooper/10-simple-things-to-be-happy_b_4241824.html
