Improving Your Life – Be Happy
Sometimes when I feel like the world is just too heavy, I look around and find people who continued to live fascinating and wonderful lives. And then thoughts come popping into my mind like bubbles from nowhere – “How did their life become so adorably sweet? How come they still can manage to laugh and play around despite a busy stressful life?” Then I pause and observed for awhile… I figured out that maybe, they start to work on a place called ‘self’.
So, how does one become genuinely happy? Step one to improving your life is to love yourself.
My theology professor once said that “loving means accepting.” To love oneself means to accept that you are not a perfect being, but behind the imperfections must lie a great ounce of courage to be able to discover ways on how to improve your repertoire to recover from our mistakes.
Genuine happiness also pertains to contentment. When you are contented with the job you have, the way you look, with your family, your friends, the place you live in, your car, and all the things you now have – truly, you know the answer to the question “how to be genuinely happy.”
When we discover a small start somewhere from within, that small start will eventually lead to something else, and to something else. But if you keep questioning life lit it has never done you any good, you will never be able to find genuine happiness.
I believe that life is about finding out about right and wrong, trying and failing, wining and losing. These are things that happen as often as you inhale and exhale. Failure, in a person’s life has become as abundant and necessary as air. But this should not hinder us from becoming happy or prone to depression
How to be genuinely happy in spite all these? I tell you… every time you exert effort to improve the quality of life and your being, whether it is cleaning up your room, helping a friend, taking care of your sick dog, fail on board exams and trying again, life gives you equivalent points for that.
Imagine life as a big score board like those which are used in the NFLs. Every time you take a step forward, you make scoring points. Wouldn’t it be nice to look at that board at the end of each game and think to yourself “Whew! I got a point today. I’m glad I gave it a shot.”, instead of looking at it all blank and murmur “Geez, I didn’t even hit a score today. I wish I had the guts to try out. We could have won!” and then walk away.
Genuine happiness isn’t about driving the hottest Formula 1 car, nor getting the employee of the year award, earning the highest 13th month pay, or beating the sales quota. Sometimes, the most sought after prizes in life doesn’t always go to the fastest, the strongest, the bravest or not even the best. So, how do you become genuinely happy? Every one has his own definition of ‘happiness’. Happiness for a writer may mean launching as much best selling books as possible. Happiness for a basketball rookie may mean getting the rookie of the year award. Happiness for a beggar may mean a lot of money. Happiness for a business man may mean success. So, really now, how do we become genuinely happy? Simple. You don’t have to have the best things in this world. Its about doing and making the best out of every single thing. When you find yourself smiling at your own mistake and telling your self “Oh, I’ll do better next time”, you carry with you a flame of strong will power to persevere that may spread out like a brush fire. You possess a willingness to stand up again and try – that will make you a genuinely happy person.
When you learn to accept yourself and your own faults. You pass step 1 in the project “how to become genuinely happy”.For as long as you know how to accept others, you will also be accepted. For as long as you love and know how to love, you will receive love ten folds back.
Again, throw me that same question “how to become genuinely happy?”. I’ll refer you to a friend of mine who strongly quoted- “Most of us know that laughter is the best medicine to life’s aches and pain. But most of us don’t know that the best kind of laughter is laughter over self. Coz then you don’t just become happy… you become free.”
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6 Tips For Improving Your Life
In a tough environment it’s hard to maintain our self esteem. How do you stay calm if the face of these surroundings. When improving your life there will be times that outside forces will try to hammer away at you to destroy your self esteem. Don’t let them destroy you, or get the best of you. Here are some tips to help you stay focus on the big picture, YOU. Consider this a guide to self improvement.
#1 : Negative Work Environment
Be aware that in the work environment there are people who live by the “dog-eat-dog” mentality. It’s just the way it is. Your contributions will not be appreciated even if you miss lunch and dinner or stay up late. Most of the time you get to work too much without getting help from people concerned. Stay away from this, it will ruin your self-esteem. Yes, it’s competitive, be healthy enough to compete, but in a healthy competition that is.
#2: Other People’s Behavior
Bcakstabbers, gossipmongers, whiners, naggers and complainers and so many more of these types of people will ooze bad vibes towards your self esteem, avoid them as much as possible.
#3: Changing Environment
Changes make life difficult for awhile, at times cause you stress, but it will help you find ways to improve your life. Changes are forever happening, so be flexible.
#4: Past Experience
Our past experiences make us who we are today. How we handle those experiences will direct the future of our lives. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.
#5: Negative World View
If you watch the news on a regular basis, you most liekly noticed that it’s 99.99% negative. You need to limit how much negativity enters your life. Reducing the amount of negative karma that enters you lefe will increase the positive side.
#6: Determination Theory
The way you are and your behavioral traits is said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. Just because your father might have been a failure doesn’t mean that your destined to follow. Being positive is a choice, if you want to be positive, you have to make that choice.
You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes. Building self esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent.
You’ve heard the saying, “misery loves company”, well it true. No one wants to be miserable by themselves. Throughout live you will find that people will try to drag you down while you’re trying to lift your self-esteem and improving your life.
So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self esteem, your starter guide to self improvement.