“How can I be happier?”
Honestly, this is a bit of a tricky question because I actually don’t think happiness, per se, is the goal. Not of therapy or of any personal growth work.
Sure, it’s lovely to feel happy, yes, but the goal of life isn’t to remain in a static state of happiness.
Rather, I personally and professionally believe that the goal, that our personal growth work goal, is to increase our capacity to tolerate more and more of life’s broad range of emotions – the highs as well as the lows – increasing our ability to more fully show up and engage with the richness of life.
And that said, there are actually some paradoxical tips that I would argue can actually “boost our happiness” as we work towards this other goal of increasing our engagement with all of life’s emotional experiences.
5 Surprising Tips To Boost Your Happiness + Free Resources
1) Lower your standards.
So many of us expect that we should be consistently happy most of the time that we set a fairly impossible bar for ourselves and are often disappointed when we find ourselves unhappy and “falling short.”
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t continue to strive towards happiness. Recognize it’s only one part of the emotional experience you’re going to face during your days and weeks.
By lowering our standards, our expectation that we “should” be happy all of the time, paradoxically we can increase our sense of overall well-being and contentment by reducing the disappointment in ourselves when we feel something other than “happy.”
2) Invest the time, inquiry, energy, and even finances into cultivating work that truly fulfills you.
The reality is that most of us will spend our lives working to make our way in the world.
Investing all the necessary time, inquiry, energy, and even finances into making sure it’s work that fits you well, harnesses your strengths, and fulfills you, is one of the most worthwhile investments you can ever make as since you’ll be spending a vast majority of your waking hours doing it.
Check out the bottom of this article for some great career-clarifying resources I highly recommend!
3) Decrease or eliminate contact with those who drain, criticize, dislike or don’t support you.
This may sound obvious, but the people we spend time with impact our well-being and happiness enormously. And yet many of us think we’re stuck. Especially if we happen to have family or in-laws or old friends who don’t make us feel good.
You’re never stuck and you always get to choose who you want contact with! Even if this is family.
I’m not saying you have to estrange yourself from them. (Though if you choose to do this if it’s right for you that’s totally valid!)
