Learning how to be happy is the most important thing . Or how to live peacefully if you prefer. We all want to be and feel good and today I will teach you 6 steps that will make you happy, forever .
Possible? Yup! Here’s what I propose: Ready, or ready for this journey?
How to be happy by learning to experience positive emotions
Before starting I want you to take a test to measure your ability to live a happy life. It will also be useful as a starting point to test the advice I am offering you.
You cannot experience opposite emotions such as anger and joy at the same time .
You may feel anger and two seconds later joy, and maybe three seconds later anger again.
But you can’t feel two opposite emotions at the same time .
This means that as long as you feel a negative emotion inside you, you will not be happy.
If you think about it, this is obvious: Could you feel happy while experiencing despair, boredom, sadness, or anxiety?
No, you couldn’t.
The first step towards happiness is therefore to learn to experience positive emotions .
You must be able to transform the negative ones you may be experiencing into positive ones, freeing your heart to make room for happiness.
This is the first step on the ladder that allows you to reach happiness.
And it also seems obvious to me
If I wanted to explain how to do it, though, I certainly could have written another guide even longer than this one. And that’s what I did!
It is called Emotional Independence, and I recommend that you read it as soon as we finish.
Being happy is easier if you don’t work …
When I say work, you think of fatigue, imposition, time, boredom, tiredness, getting up early in the morning, holidays, stress, problems, misunderstandings, crisis.
Are they positive things? Or are they things that create negative emotions in you, at least to a large extent?
We could make work something beautiful, exciting, wonderful, exciting. And it would be a real revolution.
If you want to live a happy life, you have to turn your job into a passion , into something that has a meaning, a purpose.
Forget those who tell you you can do what you like after your hours are done, or on weekends.
If you loved someone madly, would it be okay for you to spend most of your time with others and a few hours with them?
I say no.
Each of us has passions, dreams, something that we feel inside as a gift. You too feel you can fulfill yourself by doing something you love.
If you want to be happy, you have to give a purpose to everything you do .
Try to answer these questions:
- Does the work you do serve to improve the lives of others?
- Will your daily work make this world better, even in your little one?
- Will what takes your time have a positive impact, will it make a difference?
- Do you get up every day with enthusiasm for the work you have to do?
- Are you waiting for retirement or don’t you care because you like what you do today too much?
- Do you love your job?
These are fundamental questions, don’t think you can be happy if you spend most of your time doing something that you think is boring, useless, which means only a salary to you.
Consider that the same applies both if you are studying, because this takes many hours of your life, and if you have nothing to do.
Maybe you don’t work or study, but the hours of the day are 24 for you too. How do you use them?
Take up the questions I just asked you and ask them, not referring to a job, but to your day, your interests, the commitments with which you use your time.
If you want to be happy, after turning your emotions into positive, you have to make your passions work. You have to live off the things you love . It will also be the surest way to succeed!
Obviously this is a very large chapter, but I have dedicated a special and free service to this second step towards happiness: how to find a job and change your life.
I invite you to find out what it is because if you waste a lot of your time away from the joy of doing what you love, you will never be truly happy.
To be happy you have to see happiness
The main reason people aren’t happy is that they can’t see happiness .
Almost everyone who writes to me asking me to help them improve their life has this problem.
They see troubles, physical ailments, problems, little money, difficulties at work, a disastrous society, disappointed people around them, crises, reasons for anxiety and fear in every corner.
Does it happen to you too?
If you want to be happy, you need to open your eyes and always look for the bright side in any situation .
There is always the downside, and for every negative event there is always something positive, useful, constructive to be grasped.
In the news of a car accident in which some people were seriously injured, we think it’s impossible.
Injuries and blood are the thing that attracts attention, along with the culprits of the misfortune.
But why don’t you consider the readiness of the rescuers? Or the determination and commitment of doctors who try to save the lives of the wounded?
And the courage of those who stopped to give first aid and call for help?
These are positive things that we almost never consider, but they are there .
The first step towards happiness is knowing how to experience positive emotions.
I assure you that if you fill your mind with problems, diseases, disasters, disappointments, betrayals and cruelty, it will be difficult not to have negative emotions instead.
You have to learn to look for positive work in any situation .
An exercise that I really like is this:
- Stop and write down all the positive things you see around you on a piece of paper .
- Sounds, smells, objects, people, behaviors, even trivial details are fine.
- They don’t have to be wonderful things, but simply nice, useful, beautiful, pleasant .
- Write down everything you see, make a very long list and set an alarm on your phone in a couple of hours.
- When the alarm goes off, repeat the exercise , wherever you are, set the alarm again and go on like this all day.
- Repeat this exercise every day, from when you get up to when you go to sleep, at least for a week.
I assure you that the positive effect on your mood will be incredible . This must become your vision, be spontaneous for you to grasp the good things around you.
Do you think it is deceptive and ignores reality?
Take the example of the accident again. Focusing on the positive doesn’t erase what happened, it changes your perception.
The problems are there: I’m not telling you to ignore them, but to solve them .
Difficult situations exist: you don’t have to pretend nothing has happened, but change them .
Now, with the next step, you will see better how, but remember that the positive aspects exist, surround you and are always more numerous than the negative ones .
If you want to be happy, you have to observe reality, all of it, not just the worst part that, television in the front row, they want you to see.
How to live calm and happy by solving every problem
Your happiness doesn’t depend on the number of problems you have.
It is not by eliminating problems that you will be happy, but by learning to live with them first and solve them later .
The right way to do this is to accept reality.
Accepting it does not, however, mean undergoing it . They are two very different things.
Let’s take the example of a person who has lost the use of his legs.
To suffer reality means to live it passively. He resigns himself to her condition, but rejects it and therefore suffers from it every day.
He does not do anything because everything is tiring and uncomfortable, he drags on perhaps leaving the house a little because everything would remind him of his life as before, when he could walk.
He complains about everything, sometimes he thinks that life was unfair, that God was bad. It seems that he no longer even makes sense to live and goes through his life waiting .
Accepting reality means living it actively . He accepts his condition because he knows he cannot change it, and begins to think about how to best live in the new situation .
It is not what he wanted, but he accepts it and does not suffer from it anymore . She does everything she can do , goes out and works anyway, strives to find new ways of doing the things she did before.
He is enthusiastic because he knows he can do a lot anyway, and he focuses on what he can do and not on the things he can’t do well.
If what I wrote seems simplistic to you, think of how many people work in difficult conditions , how many even become sportsmen without legs , or who does the same thing as all of us without half of our physical abilities.
Accepting reality means understanding that it is a fact and that problems should not be rejected, but solved .
Here are some questions that will help you with this:
- What can I do despite everything?
- How can I improve the situation?
- How can I have fun despite this situation?
- What opportunity do I have despite the problems?
- How could I solve them?
- If something fails me, what could I change to make it through?
- What’s good about this situation?
Remember what I said in the previous step: there is always good in every situation , it is only up to us to look for it and make something valuable with it.
Some will see a pond, others a fertile ground to create food if they just reclaim that land.
If you accept reality and stop fighting it, you can change it and be happy. Not at the end, but immediately, as you modify it, while you work every day to give your best .
If you refuse it, you will not change anything: reality really cares little about your tastes, but you will be sick and you will never be happy.
You have discovered that you can eliminate negative emotions, that you have to turn your passions into a job, that there is always good and that if you accept reality you will be happy and you will do great things.
Now I reveal the rule that determines whether you will live a happy life or not.
How to be happy in life: just love
Your happiness is directly proportional to the love you give.
First consideration: loving does not mean having a couple relationship . In fact I wrote love that you give and it does not matter if you receive it.
Wait, I repeat: to be happy it doesn’t matter if people love you .
Clear?
Have you read the guide on how to manage negative emotions?
If you notice, I’ll explain that your emotions depend on you . There is a video in that guide explaining to you that no one can make you happy.
If you want to be, you don’t have to ask for love, you have to love instead .
Second clarification: loving is a way of acting, thinking, living, behaving, choosing, talking .
I am not simply referring to a feeling. Loving is action .
When I say that to be happy you must love, it means acting with love.
I clarify it better when I explain what it means to love, an in-depth study of vital importance (otherwise I would have written it!) To live a happy life.
But that’s not enough if you really want to understand how to be happy.
Third clarification: love does not have to ask for anything , it does not even pretend to be appreciated or reciprocated.
Also in this case it is essential that you understand what unconditional love is, and coincidentally I wrote an in-depth study on this too
Read them both right away, because otherwise you don’t fully understand what I’m talking about.
If you want to be happy you have to love. You must act with love unconditionally .
Someone, at this point, tells me: but with those who do not deserve it?
Let’s put it this way: you have a big problem that makes you feel bad, you don’t sleep at night, you constantly feel anxiety, a real disaster and you can’t take it anymore.
But I have treated you very badly in the past and whenever I can I do everything to humiliate you, offend you or make your life impossible.
You sure wouldn’t come to just love me!
But what if the solution to your problem was to be nice to me despite my words and my behavior?
Imagine that if you started being nice to me, talking to me calmly, doing me favors and helping me, even if I continued to misbehave, your problem would be solved day by day .
I treat you badly, but if you treat me with love, your problems disappear. What do you do, do you keep your problems and continue to feel bad?
I really think not. Unless you enjoy being sick , tastes are tastes!
What am I trying to make you understand?
That if you want to be happy and solve your problems, you have to love and care deeply about what other people are doing.
You think about doing the best thing in the world: love.
If others like to complicate their lives and get sick, why should you let it ruin yours too?
Aren’t they kind, helpful, loving, understanding, fair, honest? It’s their problem .
If you do all the things that you don’t see in them, and you do them right to them, you will be happy .
Isn’t that what you want? Don’t you want to feel good?
And what do you care if they hurt themselves?
Do one smart thing, for real: love and be happy , you will see that it will also be the most useful thing you can ever do for them.
At this point I recommend a perfect practical guide for this fifth step. Learning to love: the art of being happy. A good title, don’t you think?
You are part of a wonderful design
What’s the point of everything you do? Why do you get up every morning, struggle, face problems, struggle, commit yourself?
What is all the daily work worth to improve your life, all the difficulties or misunderstandings, challenges or pains that are part of your life?
If you don’t have a meaning, if your life doesn’t have a deep , authentic meaning that goes beyond your very presence on this earth, you will never be happy.
Living positive emotions or becoming optimistic (step 3!) Requires a basic belief: there is good and it is worth fighting for it.
Love, then, as I have explained it to you, will at times even seem absurd and self-defeating, if we do not understand the most important thing: you are part of a wonderful design .
Which? That of God .
To be clear, I tell you right away that I will not start talking to you about religion, church, dogmas, rules, liturgies and the like. They don’t even interest me .
I am talking to you about God, about faith, about spirituality, about freedom, love and happiness. This interests me, and I think it interests you too.
Each of us must make sense . If you look for it in people (I live for you), or in things (I live for my work that I love), it will be a disaster.
It can’t make sense of something that you give it to. You think?
Reading a very beautiful book, The 7 rules to be successful , by Stephen R. Covey, I found a passage where he explains that to live a full and fulfilling life, I say happy, we must know the territory in which we live.
If you want to reach a street in Turin, for example, you need to know the city. If you want to live happily you have to understand life and the meaning of existence.
Obviously we all use maps, but what happens, the author points out, if I use the map of Milan in Rome?
That I will never reach my destination .
God’s plan is the territory . Jesus’ teaching is the map.
If you want to be happy, just do what Jesus indicates , and you will realize that what he advises you is very little : love God and love others .
The previous passage, at least in part.
To love God means to accept reality , which is always part of His plan, and to use your life to serve this plan .
How? Loving others, acting with love towards everyone.
Not only because this will make you feel good, but above all because God asks you to.
Do you know why he does it? Certainly not to punish you if you don’t listen to him. But to see you happy.
Happiness has its rules and who, better than the One who invented it, could know them?
For me, faith is never a rigid rule and condemnation or punishment. Never.
The rules that Jesus gave are nothing but the secret, the recipe, for a happy and wonderful life .
Do you want to be happy? God is the secret: understanding that you too are part of his plan is the secret .
As mentioned we all need to make sense of our life.
You can look for it anywhere, but if you persist in moving around Rome, holding the map of Milan in your hand, it will all be wasted effort and you will not reach your destination: live a happy life .
When I write that Spirituality is the way to be happy I am referring to this, to the fact that it is the most important aspect of our life.
Conclusions
We have reached the end of this very important guide.
I want to quickly recap all the steps that I have shown you so that they are clear to you and are well fixed in your mind.
Here’s how to be happy in spite of everything and everyone:
- Learn to experience positive emotions by eliminating the negative ones that paralyze you (this I call emotional independence).
- Turn your passions into a job, live doing what you love and that will make a difference (find your way).
- Learn to be optimistic by always discovering the positive things in life.
- Accept reality, take action to change it, and face it with confidence and enthusiasm.
- Love, without ifs and buts.
- Feel part of God’s plan and trust him (if you have doubts find out how and why to believe in God).
I assure you that this recipe is not subject to external conditioning.
If you follow all the steps, nothing and no one will ever be able to take away from you, or deny you, a happy life .