I’ve been writing about happiness for the last 2 weeks. The happier you are, the more of a Low Density Lifestyle will you live, so it’s important to look at happiness and understand it better.
By dong this, we can all get to know better what it takes to be happier.
Actually, deep down in all of us lies a deep reservoir of happiness. It’s just that it gets buried so far down, and under so much internal stuff, that we lose sight of it.
One of the things that we need to know is that happiness shouldn’t depend on someone else – it should come from within, from that deep reservoir. It just has to be encouraged to express itself effortlessly.
It’s a matter of lightening the load, of feeling less dense and heavy, and of living a Low Density Lifestyle.
If you read yesterday’s article and saw the video about the people of Iceland, you will know that they know how to take unhappy situations and failure and turn it into happiness.
To do so, it’s a matter of cultivating your own ability to look at the situation and see it with a perspective that says, “Hey it’s only castles burning.”
So, in that spirit, I offer you 7 tips on how to feed and cultivate your innate happiness, so that it can blossom and bloom and come to the surface.
1. Don’t take yourself too seriously. At times of hardship, such as loss or illness, we can easily lose our humor, and even more easily get very involved with the negative aspects of what is happening. We become the center of our universe. Remembering not to take ourselves too seriously brings a lightness and ease to the weight of circumstance around us. Remember–angels can fly because they take themselves lightly!
2. Don’t identify with suffering, loss, or illness, as being who you are. Many people identify themselves as a cancer survivor / widow / recovering addict, or whatever it may be, but do not ask themselves who they are without that label or identity. When we do not identify with the negative label, then the positive sense of who we are has a chance to emerge and shine.
3. It’s OK to be you, just as you are, warts and all. We may think we are imperfect, a mess, falling apart, hopeless, or unable to cope. But true perfection is really just accepting our imperfections. It is honoring ourselves, complete with all the things we like and the things we don’t like. In this way we are not struggling with or rejecting any part of ourselves. Each one of us is unique, a one-time offer, but we cannot know it if we are facing away from ourselves.
4. Make friends with yourself. Our relationship with ourselves is the only one we will have for the whole of our lives, and we can be the greatest friend to ourselves. So it is very important not to put ourselves down or beat ourselves up.
5. Feel everything, whatever it may be. When we are suffering, our feelings get huge and can be overwhelming. It is easy to want to deny or repress them. But if we can really honor whatever we are feeling, then it will bring us closer to the happiness beneath the suffering or grief. Acknowledging our real feelings is the greatest gift.
6. Forgive yourself. Love yourself. Treasure yourself. These are big steps, but each one liberates the heart and sets us free. We need to forgive ourselves for feeling angry, for getting upset, for all things we think we have done wrong. They are in the past and we are not who we were then. We can then begin to embrace and love ourselves, for we are so worthy of that love. And then we can take any resistance or fear by the hand, invite it in, and open our heart to the universe.
7. Meditate. There is an overwhelming amount of research showing how meditation changes the circuits in the part of the brain associated with contentment and happiness and stimulates the ‘feel-good’ factor. Meditating on love and kindness makes us much, much happier! And the only way to know this is to try it!!
Ok? If you put this into action, you can cultivate your own innate happiness and feel lighter of body, mind and spirit.
You then won’t have to move to Bhutan and Iceland – the 2 happiest countries on earth – to feel more happier (unless of course you really like those 2 countries).
Instead you can just be where you are, at any time, at any place, and just be happy.
[…] I’ve talked about 2 of the happiest countries on earth – Bhutan and Iceland – and gave you 7 ways to cultivate your innate happiness, one thing I haven’t touched on yet is the place where most people spend many hours a […]