Happiness is hereditary, at least in part. Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh and the Queensland Institute for Medical Research in Australia have found that happiness is partly determined by personality traits that are largely hereditary. Words like these are enough to make you give up and decide that happiness is beyond your control or reach. However, the good news is that the genetic part is less than 50%. The rest is up to you. It is all a matter of what you do and how you do it.
Here are a few tips that will assist with experiencing an increase in your joy & happiness:
1. Live in the moment – When we are constantly focusing on what happened in the past or worrying about what might occur in the future, we do not even leave a space for happiness to enter.
2. Commit acts of kindness – It turns out helping others also helps ourselves. People who donate time or money to charity, or who altruistically assist people in need, report improvements in their own happiness.
3. Practice less judgment and more acceptance – Recall that we are reflections of one another. When we judge another, we also judge our self. When we are in a place of judgment, we have difficulty accepting what is occurring in our own lives and thus we resist the only opportunity for transformation (acceptance, forgiveness of self/others & creating anew from a place of empowerment).
4. Be Grateful – When we focus on the positive in our life, our world, our body, our relationships, we create an opening for more positively, joy, love and happiness in our lives. When we live from a perception of lack and futility, we can only see more lack and futility on a daily basis. We limit our own experiences.
5. Choose which emotions to feed – We are a victim of no one and no thing. Nobody truly makes us angry, afraid, guilty, or sad. We choose to become angry (or whatever) because of what we believe it means about us that someone did or said whatever they did. What will you choose to propel the creations in your life with? Anger? Fear? Love? Compassion? Happiness? Choose wisely!
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