Are you one of those people who was born happy? Do you just sail through life naturally feeling happy and blessed? If so, this blog post is not for you. You don’t really need it.
If, on the other hand, you have longed to feel happy but all too often find yourself struggling to do so, read on.
You see, I’m not one of those born happy and cheery people. Quite the opposite. For much of my life, I would experience cyclical bouts of depression and/or anxiety.
And although I definitely experienced many times of joy during my life, it was not until late into my 30’s after some years of being on this healing path that I can say I became more consistently content and experienced a higher baseline of happiness.
There are two things that have helped me increase my overall sense of joy: 1) releasing trauma, pain, and suffering through the healing work I have done 2) cultivating thought patterns and behaviors that enhance my state of well-being and happiness.
These practices and the awareness I gained through the process took time to learn. They feel natural and effortless much of the time, but there are still (and always will be) times I need to pick myself up from a low mood and put greater focus and attention on cultivating a higher frequency, better feeling state of being.
Because I am not alone in this, I wanted to share one of the resources I find helpful on this quest. It’s a hilarious and helpful talk by Shawn Achor (watch below). In the talk, he shares 5 simple ways we can train our brains for greater happiness.
The techniques are simple and make sense. But for them to be effective, it’s important to actually do them and not simply know about them. He recommends trying them out for 21 days.
If you decide to give the practices a go, be honest and gentle with yourself. You know yourself better than anyone, so explore the techniques in the way that is likely to be most effective for you.
You know if you’re more likely to sustain something for the long-haul by going full force and doing it all at once or whether it would be more effective to integrate one small change at a time. So, do what works best for you and let me know how it goes by emailing me.
I hope you enjoy the video and practices. Big hugs and blessings to you, :)
Parminder