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hey this is leo for actualized.org and we are going to talk about how to feel happy all right it's going to be a practical quick self-help segment where i tell you in about 8 or 10 points what you really need to know to get sustainable happiness in your life and here's the challenge is that most of us do not really understand what it takes to be happy not on a deep level most of us are out there chasing the wrong things because happiness is a counterintuitive concept so let's get into it i'm going to give you some key points by doing a lot of research i've discovered these points i think you're going to really like them all right so number one is gratitude studies have actually been done on this and gratitude is a really great technique for creating sustainable happiness and the most practical way to practice gratitude is to actually have a gratitude journal and spend five minutes every morning doing this consistently every morning just for five minutes jotting down the five or ten things that you are grateful for in your life and this could be something that you're grateful for that happened to you years ago like your parents or your college education or something you are grateful for just that happened to you today or the other day small things so it can be big things and small things because here's the thing is that human beings have this tendency called hedonic adaptation which means that it's hard for us to become happy because any external change in our life like let's say you find a thousand dollars tomorrow in your car right just randomly showed up a thousand dollars well you're gonna feel thrilled in the moment but then after a while a week from from there a month from there from that point you're not really going to feel that happiness anymore because you've kind of adapted to that difference human beings are really good at adapting to either positive changes in circumstances or even negative ones so there have been many studies done on this from water from with lottery winners to paraplegics and they've actually done studies and they compared happiness levels between people that have won millions of dollars for free and people that have become crippled and they've compared and what they've discovered is that after about a year the happiness level returns to about where it was so gratitude is a great great way to turn this tide is thinking about the things that you are really appreciative of being more appreciative of all the good things in your life and happiness is really kind of a mind game you want to start shifting your focus from all the negative things that you're thinking about to all the positive things that are in your life right are you grateful for the country you live in how often do you think about that are you grateful for the city that you're in are you grateful for the family that you were raised in are you grateful for the friends you have are you grateful for the fact that you can pay your bills are you grateful for the fact that you have food are you grateful for the fact that you have your boyfriend or girlfriend what are you grateful for take stock of those things if you've never done this exercise you'll discover some amazing things when you actually sit down and do it and force your mind to go back and think about this stuff consciously and articulate it so that's a really good strategy okay the next one is optimism be more optimistic and here this is not an abstract concept there's actually a practical way to be more optimistic by optimism what i found one of the best exercises to do is to do a little bit of journaling again you can do a five minute exercise in the morning is sit down and ask yourself what am i doing in the next year that i can be excited about what am i doing over the next week that i can get excited about what am i doing over the next five years that i can get excited about so it can happen on the micro scale from what are you doing today to what are you doing in a week to the macro scale of what are you doing in five years what are you doing in 10 years it's about setting a positive expectation for your future when you feel good about your future you're going to get engaged you're going to feel happy and you can do this in the morning with your journal or you can do it when you're in the shower or throughout your day when you're sitting sitting in traffic or standing in a line waiting for your starbucks uh frappuccino you know just think about what are you excited about and as you're doing that you're actually going to be setting some goals too because setting goals is actually a point lower down a list that i'm going to get to in a second so building that level of optimism is a great way to feel happier the next point stop overthinking so many of us are just always always always thinking some of us more than others but if you tend to be the kind of person whose mind is always spinning always running you got to really watch out for that sometimes you're going to over analyze situations way too much you get too much in your head and you're not gonna be connected with your body you're not gonna be in the present moment you're gonna be either worrying about the past or you're gonna be worrying about the future and happiness is all about being in the present so you gotta calm your mind down you gotta stop that because chances are if you're thinking about something and you're thinking a lot you're not thinking about it in a positive way chances are you're thinking about in a negative way you're having these automatic negative thoughts and you're having just these storms of negative thoughts and negative debates and arguments in your mind and does that does not make you fulfilled you've got to cut that out and good ways to cut that out is through various techniques from journaling to visualizations to doing therapy to doing meditation so there's many different ways that you can try to stop overthinking okay the next point is eliminate addictions i find that addictions really rob you of any chance of happiness in life because what an addiction does and i'll define addiction in a second because it's a larger uh definition than than you would initially think but addictions are like band-aids over over the unhappiness in life so it's like a quick little patch that covers up the unhappiness in your life with a little hit of pleasure but it's not a sustainable type of happiness and ultimately it leaves you feeling very hollow and guilty so by addictions i mean things like obvious forms of addiction like drugs and alcohol and smoking but then other more subtle forms of addictions addictions like television compulsive shopping you've got gambling you've got sex you've got you've got gossip you've got addictions to negative thinking you've got addictions to the internet so these things these are like compulsive behaviors that you're doing they are destroying your life and if you have an addiction then you know the that up and down like guilt cycle that rollercoaster that you're on it's not ultimately fulfilling it's not pleasant at all even though that food for example which i forgot to mention food is a huge huge point of addiction and one that i personally had to get over is when you're addicted to food for example what happens is that you've got a negative day at work and then you come back home from work and you just want to splurge on some food because that food gives you a head of pleasure to mask the crappy day they had at work and so even though it masks it it doesn't really give you happiness so what you want to do is you gotta unhook yourself from these addictions and to do that you need to do some work first of all identify what your addictions are be honest about them and then start to wean yourself off of them and the best way i found to get yourself off an addiction is first of all create a very strong and reason for why you're doing that and for me the reason would be that i don't want to have any monkeys on my back and i want to live a really powerful type of life and i can't do that when i have addictions but then the other reason and health might be a very important reason too a lot of these addictions uh create bad health such as smoking and food but the other the other reason that you want to get rid of the addiction is so that you've got this happiness right this fulfillment that comes when you're not addicted to anything it's amazing and the other point that i wanted to make about how to wean yourself off addictions is create something positive to replace the addiction don't just stop overeating don't just stop smoking replace that with a positive habit so maybe now instead of smoking you do a little bit of jogging maybe now instead of overeating you do a little bit of writing replace it with something positive all right the next point is build relationships relationships because humans even the most introverted of us are very social creatures are a deep and fulfilling source of happiness in fact in cultures that are not very materially successful but that have a rich family connections and rich social connections people are very very happy so happiness levels in certain countries that you would think should be low because their poverty stricken are actually very high because they have a more interconnected society people are more plugged in especially in the west in america we tend to be disconnected we tend to have those more shallow facebook relationships rather those more personal face-to-face relationships so the key here is not quantity but quality develop a few maybe five at most really deep high quality relationships focus on those invest time and energy to those and avoid the shallow relationships would just tend to make you overwhelmed and distracted and don't really contribute much in terms of happiness to your life next is the point of savoring life's joys so this is a really interesting one and i found this one to be really powerful for me is that i'm always so rushed and all of us are so frantic and we're living this 24 uh this 24-hour a day life but we're living it as though we are on a 27-hour cycle right so we're always frantic and frazzled and running around and doing things like a chicken with its head cut off and so in doing that we forget to slow down and savor the good things that are already part of our lives and these are usually mundane things for me for example is just enjoying a meal a lot of times i'm so busy i'll just scoff down a meal i won't enjoy it but when i'm following this principle of savory life's joys i'll remember and i'll say you know what i'm just going to calm down give myself five minutes to really enjoy this nice nice meal i cooked for myself and when i do that i feel good it's happiness and then if i remember to do that every day and i have two or three meals a day that's two or three moments in my life very consistently that i'm feeling much much happier and this goes apply you know this concept applies not just to meals but it applies to all the people in your life that you love applies to your family to your spouse boyfriend girlfriend this applies to nature appreciate nature a little bit more when you're on your drive to work in the morning appreciate the sunset when you're on your drive from work back home appreciate i mean the sun rise when you're coming uh coming to work from uh from home and then the sunset when you're coming from from work to home so appreciate that appreciate nature appreciate all the little things appreciate all the marvels that we have in our life and just like savor that savor that enjoy it don't just rush through everything next is meditation meditation is a really effective technique if you develop a habit of it every day i like to meditate for at least 20 minutes every morning if you develop that habit then you're going to calm your mind you're going to quiet those automatic negative thoughts you're going to become peaceful you're going to stop worrying about the past stop worrying about the future and you're just going to become very calm and centered and grounded and that's going to spill over beyond those 20 minutes of meditation into your whole day and will improve your whole life so meditation is a very awesome habit to develop and i have other videos about exactly how to do that the next point is flow flow is the state of being in the moment in the zone being fully engaged and fully focused so absorbed in an activity that you're not thinking about anything else and you're not self-conscious anymore this type of state is entered into usually when you're doing something that is fairly challenging but that also matches your skill level so if your skill level is high and the thing you're doing is challenging then you're able to put your creative energy into it and you're able to reach a state of total absorption so this might happen when you're playing a musical instrument this might happen when you're playing a sport or this might happen when you're really pushing yourself at the gym might happen when you're at work when you're working on a project that you're really passionate about maybe it happens when you're writing maybe it happens when you're out there giving a speech or a presentation right you're totally in the zone and you want to create more of these flow state experiences how do you do that two points one is stop multitasking give yourself time to focus eliminate distractions give yourself at least one or two hours uh chunks of time of one or two hours where you can just totally be absorbed in something because every time you're interrupted you lose your state of flow so you want to be able to focus without interruptions and second is develop proficiency in something have something in your life that you're trying to master have a technical expertise that you're developing because as you develop technical expertise it becomes easier to get into flow if you try and you've never played the guitar and you try to go play the guitar right now you're not going to be in flow because you don't know how to play you don't have enough expertise once you get really good at playing the guitar in a couple of years then you're going to really enjoy it you're going to enter a flow state when you're playing even a complicated song because you've got the skill level to match so make sure there's something that you're mastering in your life and lastly the point is going to be goals and life purpose have some goals in your life set some big and ambitious goals the human organism the human mind is a goal seeking machine really we are designed to seek goals whether it's at work whether it's in a relationship whether it's a big goal that's going to only be accomplished a year down the road or a little goal that's going to be accomplished tomorrow we are goal-oriented creatures so have goals that you're constantly setting and revising for yourself and then even more importantly have a life purpose have something that your life is about that's outside yourself that you're having some sort of impact in this is probably going to be related to your career have a career that you're really passionate about and that you are doing something positive with something that's really meaningful to you ask yourself what is the most meaningful thing in life and then make sure that your career is aligned with that when you have that in place you're going to be very very happy all right i'm going to be signing off go ahead leave me your comments i'd love to hear from you guys and please like this and share this and of course if you like these ideas and you want more about how to feel happy because i really just glossed over all these points and there are many more points to feeling happy in your life check out actualize.org where i really cover the topic of happiness and success and human fulfillment and how to master your emotions in the psychology of all this stuff so you get this handled once and for all in your life all right so check that out we've got a lot of exclusive content there for free and also you can sign up to the newsletter you