The Internet is awash with blogs, vlogs, journals, and videos about inner peace, happiness, and contentment. But what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear these words?
They can mean different things to different people. For some, peace, happiness, and contentment may come from more—for lack of a better word—external sources, which can include anything from seeking validation from strangers on the web to going on a shopping spree in an attempt to make themselves feel good. Since this type of happiness is derived from outside sources, however, it is rather fleeting.
Your true happiness can only come from you. Fortunately, finding happiness from within yourself is not an arduous task. Here are six ways you can accomplish this:
1. Meditate
Your mind can become a hub of unfulfilled desires and intrusive feelings at times. These feelings can continue to haunt you, keeping you from being happy from the inside. It is for this reason you must learn to control your mind, rather than allowing it to control you. And what better way is there to do so than by practicing meditation and mindfulness?
By incorporating meditation into your daily routine, you can learn to let go of negative thoughts and emotions. It can help you train your mind to be content with what you have. When you can do that, you will stop comparing yourself to others, and feelings of jealousy and envy will fade away from your life. Then, and only then, can you find true peace and happiness.
2. Eat a healthy diet
It has long since been established that your dietary habits directly affect your mental health and well-being. While meditation can help you detox your mind, eating a healthy diet can help you to detox your gut. And, since your gut is like your “second brain,” keeping it free of toxins will allow you to feel happier from within.
Eating right has other (more obvious) benefits, such as keeping you physically fit and boosting your immune response. With a robust immune system, you’ll have no problem fending off bacteria and viruses. As you will be free from disease, you will be happy in your everyday life—if you didn’t already know, diseases can lead to a great deal of pain and sorrow.
3. Analyze your company
Who you choose to spend your time with can also have a pretty big effect on your state of mind. You will never be happy if you surround yourself with people who drain your energy, making you feel mentally and physically exhausted. In fact, such people will make you cynical, disgruntled, and miserable all the time.
Surrounding yourself with positive and inspiring people, on the other hand, will make you feel calm and motivated. They will always encourage you to put your best foot forward and accomplish your goals, and they will always be willing to teach you something new and useful. If you have people like these in your life, cherish your time with them, because it will surely make you a happy person!
4. Do not forget your values
If you act based on peer pressure and betray your beliefs or morals, you’re more likely to be an unhappy person. When we act against our own ideas and beliefs, doing something we know we shouldn’t have, we always end up questioning ourselves. We engage in a never-ending discourse with ourselves, continually regretting what we did.
These thoughts make us worry about the potential negative repercussions of what we do. As a result, we experience inner turmoil, denying ourselves happiness. What’s the bottom line? Keep your ideas and principles close to your heart and honor them. This will lift your spirits and bring you inner peace.
5. Find your life’s purpose
If your only life goal is to get a big house or make millions of dollars, you’ll never be able to find true happiness because your insatiable appetite for worldly things will never allow you to be satisfied with what you have. It is not a bad idea to dream big, but, if materialistic things begin to define you and make you greedy, that’s a problem.
It is not ideal to begin your day by thinking about earthly possessions and end your night obsessing about making more money. Your life is much more than a mansion or your dollar value. Please think about life’s bigger picture and find a purpose that gives you a sense of fulfillment, such as contributing to the well-being of your community. This is what will make you happy from within.
6. Bask in the simple pleasures
We spend an enormous amount of our precious time on things that cause us pain and suffering, wasting endless hours beating ourselves up over bad choices and mistakes we cannot undo. We must, without a doubt, learn from the past, but we must never allow our “mistakes” to haunt us and steal our happiness. You must realize that life is way too short to waste time dwelling on a few unpleasant moments.
If you want your slice of happiness, reflect on the little things and enjoy the simple(r) moments of life; warm and sunny days, starry nights, silly jokes, and old photos are all little things that will make you feel happier from within.
Why is it so hard to be happy?
We are born with no preconceived notions or set goals—a blank canvas, so to speak. At birth, our minds are free of all judgments of what’s good or bad. As we get older, however, our minds become more conscious of the world in which we live, and we begin to let our experiences shape what we like and don’t like. When we like something, we want more of it, and, when we do not like something, we try to avoid it.
When we understand how the world functions, we eventually grow strong desires. For example, when we realize that money is necessary—not only to succeed, but also to survive—we strive to make as much money as possible. When we grow old enough to understand the importance of knowledge and wisdom, we seek it from many sources. Similarly, those consumed by the need for a soulmate spend the better part of their lives looking for “the one.”
But, as we progress through life, we experience setbacks and realize that we cannot have everything we desire. We also suffer a great deal when we want to change our present upsetting circumstances, rather than embracing them.
And therein lies the key to happiness…
The key to happiness is acceptance
The secret to receiving the everlasting gift of inner happiness is recognizing the thoughts that make us want more of what we want and those that drive away what we do not want. In other words, you must remind yourself that your desires and fears are simply behaviors that you have carried with you since childhood. You must also recognize that the fulfilling experiences you desire are one of the primary sources of your suffering. These experiences, as fulfilling as they may be, leave you wanting just a little bit more (and then some). But you still feel as though you haven’t had enough. Furthermore, there is always the looming fear that good experiences will come to a halt.
So, to get back to our main point, true happiness can only be achieved when you’re able to overcome all of your childhood desires and fears. If you can do this, you will find your inner peace, happiness, and contentment, regardless of how much money you have in your bank account. You’ll also avoid comparing yourself to others, learning to be comfortable in your own skin and fulfilled with what you have. This also means that, if you don’t get what you want, you won’t be heartbroken, because you would have control of your emotions to influence how you feel. In other words, you will be a happy person from within.
What’s the takeaway?
True happiness always comes from within because, once you have trained your mind and understood that happiness is a by-product of the mind, outside circumstances will never be able to affect your feelings and emotions. Hopefully, this blog has given you a deeper insight into “true” happiness and how you can achieve it.
