How to Be Happy

Tips on How to be Happy

 

Buddhist Master, Sogyal Rinpoche, believes Stillness is happiness.

Professor Tal Ben Shahar, lecturer in positive psychology at Harvard University, who I recently interviewed at the Mind and Its Potential conference in Sydney, believes happiness can be created in the brain by sustained reframing. He keeps a gratitude diary listing the good things that happen to him each day; including his “blessings” such as a healthy family. His diary gives him a sense of meaning and lessons learned. He believes lasting happiness comes from realising the positives in the negatives and accepting our failures with grace. “Babies don’t just walk. They need to keep falling down, then they walk.”

“Babies don’t just walk. They need to keep falling down, then they walk.”

American psychiatrist Dr Stuart Brown was recently in Australia talking about the importance of play in mental health and happiness with father of social neuroscience UCLA’s Dr Matt Lieberman. Dr Brown said he saved a couple’s marriages by duck taping the together and making them roll on the floor to a destination. The role of play in getting us through life can never be underestimated, he says. Dr Lieberman says that “social connection” is the foundation to happiness and wellbeing in the human species. He agrees play is a crucial component in human survival and stimulates neurons to grow.

Master of Mindfulness and professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Jon Kabat Zinn, offers these words: Stay in the moment, hear the birds, see the colors, chew slowly and with awareness. To leave the moment is to leave any potential for contentment.

My advice from the couch I’ve struggled with clinical depression my whole life. It’s been a lifelong quest for me to trying to find happiness. I’ve stood on my head in yoga poses trying to trigger the thyroid gland, found my bliss, lost it, medicated, meditated, and been a workaholic to busy myself enough to escape. My hard earned view is this. Happiness is understanding the word enough; good enough; hot enough; sweet enough, beautiful enough. Enough.

Happiness is understanding the word enough; good enough; hot enough; sweet enough, beautiful enough. Enough.

Tips for creating Happiness I’ve gathered from experts over the years

Please note the slide show is my record of travelling in the Third World; and in New Orleans after Katrina. It proves there is no link between happiness and wealth. Copyright RUTH OSTROW

What is Happiness?

1. Practice Gratitude
2. Stay Mindful, and in the moment
3. Practice random acts of kindness
4. Reframe, put a positive spin on things
5. Go back to Slow and basic pleasures
6. Come from Love, not Fear
7. Don’t listen to negative self-talk. Turn down the volume
8. Write lists of positive things
9. Stay busy and creative
10. Be of service
11. Have lots of sex and/or physical exercise
12. Be in Nature and with animals/pets
13. Play and dance like a child
14. Be social, have lots of friends
15. Understand death. No time to lose.