Three Tips to Help You Life a Happy, Positive Life

Positivity is positively positive. 

Life is busy these days. I am the first one to admit that I struggle some days to get everything done. I often long for more hours in the day only to realize adding more time to my day probably won’t help. It really is all about working more efficiently and effectively with the time I have. It is about my state of mind. Thinking and acting positively makes life a lot more livable than thinking negatively. Being positive makes me feel better, happier really, and it makes me more effective, efficient and productive.  You know what else it does? It helps me spread the wealth and send out a positive vibe to others. You see I truly believe positivity is contagious, just like laughing or yawning.

I am the first one to also admit that it can be hard to stay positive. It is something I have been working on. It isn’t work really but it is all about improving my mind and spirit. I am always reading and listening for ways to grow and gain knowledge about living a better, happier, more abundant life.  So I am always looking for ways to be more positive.  Here are a few things I find help me stay positive and spread positivity. These are easy, simple things everyone can do, especially your children!

    1.Smile

“Peace begins with a smile.” — Mother Teresa

Smiling is so simple. It is one of those small but mighty things you can do. When you smile it just makes you feel happier (I think).  Research shows there are many benefits to smiling, including  helping to reduce the level of stress-enhancing hormones like cortisol, adrenaline, and dopamine and helping to increase the level of mood-enhancing hormones like endorphin (among other things). Let’s face it smiling just feels good and when you smile at others it makes them feel good too! I make it a point to smile at as many people as I can, making sure to smile at everyone I see when I am at work. 

  

Action Step: I challenge you to smile. Let’s pick a number, say five. I challenge you to smile at five people every day and then every week add another five people a day and see how many you can actually smile at.  Keep increasing the number, often! 

  2. Say Hello!
 

This really goes along with smiling. I try to smile and then say hello to anyone I walk past in my neighbourhood or when I am walking through the parking garage tunnel at my work. It is a simple thing but means so much.  I always think it is nice because it is an acknowledgement of the other person; it is all about being friendly and throwing out my positivity to the Universe. 

Action step: I challenge you to say hello when you are smiling at people.  Pick a number of people to say hello to every day and see if you can meet that challenge.  It is all about spreading your wealth of positivity. 

     3. Get Grateful

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough."
-- Oprah Winfrey

Being grateful is so important to happiness and a positive attitude. I truly believe you need to be grateful for all the goodness in your life right now in order to welcome new goodness into your life.  There is a lot of research out there on the benefits of being grateful. It helps to activate the positive emotion centers in the brain for starters. Regular practice of gratitude can change the way your brain neurons fire into more positive automatic patterns.

Action Step: Keep a gratitude journal. Every day write down at least one thing that you are grateful for in your life. Keep it up for 21 days. Twenty one days is the length of time it takes most people to make something a routine/habit.  If you want to take it a step further share your gratitude with others. I like to post about what I am grateful on Facebook and Twitter because it helps me stay accountable and it also helps me truly see the blessings in my life.

Tell me about how you get positive? Share your tips and tricks to being positive and sharing your positivity with the world.

Are You Happy?

Are you happy?

I LOVE this song. It just makes me feel happy. Does it make you feel happy too? 

But does feeling happy really mean you are happy? 

I think being happy is a complex thing.... it is simple and yet not all at the same time.  I think that we sometimes fall into the trap of what should make us happy. I mean that many people think the big PERFECT house, the perfect yard, a car, vacations, the perfect child/children and well, perfection, are all the things that represent a happy life. Let's face it, go on to Facebook or Pinterest and you will see status updates and photos showing people living what appears to be a perfect life. Is it real? That is a good question. Does it mean these people are happy? I don't know. Maybe.

I really think being happy means finding what makes YOU happy. It isn't about what other people are doing. It isn't about what other people have but what really makes you happy. You can't compare yourself to anyone else. It has to be about you. As the title of James Alchuter's books says "Choose Yourself", you have to choose yourself and be happy with what you are and have in order to be truly happy in my opinion. 

And that is the key to happiness I believe. It is learning to be grateful for everything you have RIGHT NOW! The only way to move toward better and brighter things is to see how your life is truly filled with great things now and by doing that more great things will be drawn into your life.

Action For Happiness recently posted a piece on the 10 Keys to Happier Living. Among the ten keys is taking a positive approach to life. Positive emotions - like joy, gratitude, contentment, inspiration, and pride -  do more than just make you feel great at the time. Recent research shows that regularly experiencing them creates an 'upward spiral', helping to build our resources.

Am I happy? I am happy but there are still things I am not happy with. It isn't that I am unhappy. I love my family, my husband and my children. I love that I get to create content and write every single day. I am learning to be happy about the things that I want to change. It is a journey. The path to complete happiness is never ending in my opinion. You take steps every single day along the path. It isn't about perfection and I often have to remind myself of that. Happiness is being grateful for everything life hands you every single day. 

 
What makes you Happy? 



What are you grateful for today?

Daily Reminders

I am a firm believer in the power of thoughts. It is important to think positive thoughts. As I wrote in a previous post, thoughts have power, and you want to give your positive thoughts as much power as you can. Thoughts do become things.


It all comes down to the idea of what you are throwing out to the Universe. You want to be putting out positive thoughts and things out in the Universe so it can give you more of what you put out! BUT.... let's face it it can be hard to positive 100 percent of the time. Who can really be upbeat, happy and positive all day long, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year.

One thing to remember here is that there is a really easy way to make sure that you are thinking positive thoughts. It has to do with your feelings. If you are feeling happy then you are thinking happy, positive thoughts. If you are not feeling good then you are not thinking positive, happy thoughts. Pretty simple right?

We all have bad days. We all have days when we don't feel great and we might not be thinking the most positive thoughts we possibly can. So, how do you handle that? What is a person to do if they are not perfectly positive all the time?

Well, that is where the idea of daily reminders comes in.  We all need to do a little check in with ourselves. Ask yourself at least once a day how you are feeling? Take a few moments to stop what you are doing, think about how you feel and if there is anything you could be doing or saying to yourself that could change how you are feeling at that very moment.

One thing I like to do is write down little reminders. I like to post it and believe it . I like to write down inspirational quotes, sayings that are uplifting or positive and keep them on pieces of paper. If you place these notes where you can see them, then when you need a little pick-me-up then all you need to do is pull out one of those notes! Read it and believe it.

It is important to keep working towards a positive, healthy mindset. I believe it is key to life's success. It can be difficult at first, especially if you are like me and struggle with worry and self doubt. It is always a work in progress for me. I don't want to say it is hard because it really isn't hard to be positive. You just have to gather the tools and put the systems, routines and tips and tricks in place so that when you start to doubt yourself, think badly of yourself or fall back on negative thoughts then you are able to put a stop to it quickly and reverse gears!


What do you do to stay positive? Do you have any tips or tricks that you use to keep positive thoughts top of mind??

TedTalk Love - Think About Happy

Every once in a while a video comes a long to really get me thinking. This did just that. I have been doing a lot of reading, thinking and writing about happiness and finding bliss in life every day over the past few years and I love the ideas that Shawn Achor speaks about here. I think we do often have the idea of happiness backwards. Just something to think about as you move through your day today

Find What Makes You Happy ... Just Dance

This year for me is all about shifting my attitude. I am working toward shifting my attitude to one of gratitude. I want to live a blissful life now and every day tomorrow. I recognize there will still be days that are not perfect, there will be days when I might be sad or down but I am learning there are ways to shift my thoughts to a happier place. Every one should have a list of things that make them happy just by thinking about them, looking at them or touching them. This will be the first of several posts about the things that can help you shift your thinking when you are down, and put you in a happy frame of mind. Because really, doesn't everyone want to be happy? I know I do.

Just Dance

Put on music that you really love or a song that you can really dance and cut a rug. There is nothing better to help you change your mood. I love it when a great classic R&B song comes on the radio, it just makes me want to move. I am that crazy woman in the car singing loudly and dancing behind the wheel on the highway. And you know what, I love it. It makes me feel great!

Songs like this one....

Music can really lift you soul. You know what I mean if you have heard a song that really strikes a cord with you, makes you happy, makes you want to dance your feet off. So I say DANCE. Connect to the music and live a life that is full of the music of your life, dance and love. It will bring you bliss!

Just Laugh...It's Free

Here is something funny, laughter is just another one of those amazing things that can be added to the best-things-in-life-are-free list.

Laughter can be the best medicine if you are not feeling happy. Just think about it. Think about all those times when you were feeling down and you came across a picture that made you laugh, or someone told a really funny joke that made you laugh until you cried, or what about all those YouTube videos of laughing babies; all those things made you laugh until your gut hurts. Something that does that for me is the website www.damnyouautocorrect.com (check it out. You will laugh too but just wait until you finish reading my post, please!)  Let's face it,you feel better after laughing. I know I do.

I wrote about the benefits of laughter here and also here and there is no doubt there are great benefits to laughter. It benefits mind, body and spirit. Research shows laughter has far reaching benefits, including strengthening the immune system, reducing food cravings, and even increasing a person's threshold for pain. Laughter can reduce levels of stress hormones.  Laughter has also shown to increase the level of health enhancing hormones like endorphins and neurotransmitters.
And don't forget the physical benefits of laughter, especially when you have a hearty belly laugh. It exercises the diaphragm, contracts the abs and even works out the shoulders, leaving muscles more relaxed. Not bad eh? It gives you a full body work out. But don't just go by what the research says, do it and you will see.

There is a growing movement in laughter yoga. Yes, I said Laughter Yoga! Or there are also laughter clubs. Wendy Woods of Watershed Training Solutions is a laughter yoga instructor. She says laughter is just another tool that allows us to approach life a little lighter. She says laughter is intuitive. We just know how to laugh, the youngest of babies know how to do it and they do it exceptionally well too. Woods says laughter yoga teachers us to use laughter as a tool. She says it is based on the concept of laughing for no reason. "You start out faking the laughter and because it is in a group and laughter is contagious, real laughter kicks in."

Kids are great teachers when it comes to laughing. Children laugh on average 400 times a day. Compare that to an adults average 15 laughs a day. We should look to children for inspiration, they know how to let loose and really laugh, they aren't worried about looking silly, or that someone will judge them. Kids laugh because they can, they laugh because something is funny.

The beauty of laughter is that you can do it by yourself, with a group, with loved ones and even with complete strangers. It doesn't matter where you are, laughter has positive effects. It will make you feel better no matter where you are, no matter who you are with, and no matter when you do it. Can it get any better than that?  Oh ya and it is FREE.