Around the world, happiness is often shared through greeting cards. Kind words express affection, gratitude and sympathy to the beloved ones. Greeting cards are given on special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, promotions, Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Diwali, etc.
Some common greetings: “Happy Birthday to you! Happy Wedding Anniversary! Happy Company Anniversary! Happy graduation day! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!”
A happy wish is always very welcome since at the end of the day we are all seeking … happiness. Everyone across our planet has the same goal – it’s to achieve happiness. So… do we need a list of steps necessary to achieve it?
Since childhood, our modern Society has ingrained in our minds a series of stereotypes to pursue: success, wealth, power, style, love. But are these the keys to happiness?
The reality is that all these externalities can make you happy for a short time but not in the long term. Life situations such as getting an incredible hairstyle, a new car, being promoted in a global company … will of course make you feel great. You will feel genuinely good, proud, excited, relieved or satisfied and your life will change to some extent. However, you will feel happiness only for a short time until you get used to these changes.
For example: in 2010, some studies about lottery winners showed that after a relatively short period of time, these winners are no happier than they were before their win. What happens to their emotional life after winning the lottery? The researchers analyzed the results of these studies and they found out that the recent winners reported gaining more satisfaction in everyday pleasures like receiving a compliment, chatting with a friend over the phone, having lunch with a date, watching TV, eating their favorite breakfast foods, etc.
Remember: it’s great to be successful and be able to buy whatever things you desire but being successful or rich doesn’t mean being happy.
What is the real meaning of happiness? What is the key to happiness?
Happiness is a feeling of pleasure and positivity, it’s a positive emotion. It is an emotional state of mind characterized by feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment and fulfillment.
Happiness is from the mind, our mental health determines how happy we are in life. The best way to find happiness is to think positively, to practice gratitude and to cultivate positive seeds.
To find happiness you only need to look inside yourself and share it with others. Let’s train ourselves to be happier following these few and easy pieces of advice:
1. Train your brain to go positive instead of negative. Identify areas to change, be open to humor and focus on positive things that happen around you.
2. Think in a positive way: start thinking in a more positive and productive way. Be happy even when you have little. Be happy for someone else’s success. Having a positive vision of your business or of your life for the future, no matter how bad your current circumstances are right now.
3. Practice and Express Gratitude:
-Share smiles with the people you know and the ones you don’t know when crossing daily with them
-Give sincere thanks to others
-Keep a gratitude journal
-Send gratitude greeting cards to friends, workmates, family members
-Write gratitude messages on social media
-Transform a negative event into a positive one, you only need to think about what you learned during that event
-At the end of the day: pray or meditate and feel thankful for the positive things that happened to you through the day
-Feel thankful toward your loyal clients and let them know
4. Cultivate your relationships:
-Make an effort to attend a lunch, a conference, a birthday, etc. Attend whatever social event comes your way and get a chance to speak to other participants in a constructive way.
-Create a worthy network in different social media sites like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and communicate with them.
-Give sincere compliments: feel free to give real compliments to people you admire or like.
-Write letters or greeting cards to people you care about to show them your friendship, love, affection, sympathy, etc.
-Give a call to friends and make them smile, tell them a joke to make them laugh.
-Get on the phone with clients who desire to speak to you and explain in more detail an order or deal you are working on with them, using a friendly voice.
5. Meditate: meditation is considered a mind body technique that can produce a deep state of relaxation and a tranquil mind. During meditation, one focuses attention and awareness to achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.
Meditation is something everyone can do easily following these steps:
1) Look for a calm and quiet place for you. Take a seat on the floor with your legs crossed
2) Close your eyes and notice your body
3) Feel your breath. Take several deep breath and feel the air passing through your body
4) Focus on positive thoughts
5) Be kind with your mind and set goals to practice gratitude and kindness
6) Count from 5 to 1 and when you say 1 your eyes will be open, you will feel calmer and thankful
There are nine popular types of meditation practices that you can research and use:
-No1: Mindfulness meditation
-No2: Spiritual meditation
-No3: Focused meditation
-No4: Movement meditation
-No5: Mantra meditation
-No6: Transcendental meditation
-No7: Progressive relaxation
-No8: Loving-kindness meditation
-No9: Visualization meditation
6. Respect the green environment, feel that you continue to make a better place to live and create a positive feeling from it. Be conscious of the importance of recycling, of using more public transports, of acquiring an electric car, of creating more green areas.
As Chief Marketing Office and blogger at Ya-Hub Translations, I hope that you are becoming more spiritual and able to find a stable state of happiness. The following sentences re confirm that this blog is truly right about the ways to find happiness.
“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be”. -Abraham Lincoln.
“Happiness is not something readymade; it comes from your own actions.” -Dalai Lama.
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.” -Marcus Aurelius
Practice positivity and you will be happier. Thank you for reading this beautiful blog. Ya-Hub Translations feels so thankful for having supporters like you.