November 2019
Adapting healthy habits, reducing or eliminating unhelpful behaviors and formulating more rational and helpful thoughts will improve your well-being. This exercise is an example of what you can do to boost happiness and contentment in your life.
‘Happiness depends upon ourselves’ – Aristotle
You can start by finding a deeper meaning and purpose–follow your passions, mission and find deeper meaning in all that occurs.
Living purposeful and intentional life empowers and fills us with more happiness. You can, for example choose to volunteer. Making others happy, helping and making a difference in others’ lives makes us feel happy and fulfilled. Seeing the impact that it has on others also makes us feel appreciated and valued. Volunteering gives us a sense of meaning, purpose and belonging, which adds to our happiness, pride and joy. Acts of kindness can function as a positive distraction or as a way of emotionally coping with our struggles, as well as, it can provide another perspective on our own lives. Research findings even show physical health benefits to 2-3 hours per week of volunteering.
Make a list of things that fulfil these criteria, prioritize your list, seek info and set goals. After that, create an action plan on how you will implement these activities in your life. Observe and get insights from the results of your actions and see how you feel afterwards. Does this activity indeed enrich your life? Makes you happy? Ignites your enthusiasm? Gives you a sense of contentment and mastery? Does it reduce your negative thoughts about yourself?
Adjust your choices and change your behaviors accordingly.