Nowadays we tend to confuse that having fun is happiness. When we party with friends or play games, we do feel happy. Those fun moments provides us with temporary happiness. However, once the day is over, when we come back to our bed, our stress and heaviness comes back to us.

I have come across days in my life when I do not know how to be constantly happy. I tried many things and came to the conclusion that true happiness should come from WITHIN ourself.

Secret about that inside-out true happiness is purely based on how we feel about ourself — Content, Confident, loved, recognized. When we feel disconnected, restless, heavily loaded, we can not be truly happy.

Can we completely eliminate the pressure of work, family, expenses to feel truly happy? No. We can not. However there are ways to take our state of mind to next level of happiness by integrating few simple steps in our day-to-day life.

Here are those steps for you to become a truly happy person

1. Keep a journal

First you need to offload the stress to on-board the happiness.

Journalling is the best way to offload stress and unnecessary emotions from your mind. By writing a journal everyday, you can remove bothering thoughts and empty the mind to make space for more happiness.

2. Recognize to be recognized

I feel truly happy when I connect with people and get recognized. I am not talking about the award or reward for a big achievement. Receive a smile from another person is itself an achievement.

Make it your habit to connect with everyday people — Office security, cleaning staff, cab driver, neighbour. Give yourself permission to smile and initiate a casual conversation with others, get to know their names, Greet them, compliment them, smile at them.

From next day onwards, when you step out of house, you will find at least 5 people to recognize you with a smile. Smile more, make this world a better place :-)

3. Learn new things

Learning is the best source of happiness.

In this demanding world, we focus more on delivery and Our learning became limited to our own domain. But When we learn new things from other domains, we upgrade our image to the new level which will give us more happiness and confidence.

Make learning your new habit:

• Read atleast 5 pages everyday
• Talk to people from different background
• Schedule to learn atleast two skills in a year — Swimming, Driving, a new language, painting, photography. Don’t forget to have fun with it.
• Spend time with kids and elders

4. Get into shape

We feel happy when we are fit and look good. Not everyone likes to workout everyday. But integrating an active sport in our life is more fun way of getting into fitness.

Benefit of fitness, we can wear anything we like :-)

Take time to dress up for every occasion the way you want to look and celebrate yourself. When you look good, you feel good.

5. Powerful you!!!

It is not the power over others. It is Your own power over YOU that will make you truly happy.

When we do not complete a task or procrastinate it, we feel powerless and disappointed with our own self. On the other hand, When we accomplish something, we feel powerful.

We do not need to plan big projects to feel accomplished. Let us do it with everyday activities,

List down at least 3 simple goals everyday and make sure to achieve them by end of the day. You will feel accomplished and content while checking out the list at night. If you can consistently do it over an year, it will be 3x365=1095 goals you will achieve in an year. Isn’t it something?

6. Laugh more

Research says that, we can make ourself happy just by laughing. So create moments to laugh everyday — have fun with friends, watch funny videos, surround yourself with happy faces.

7. Help people before they ask

We feel better and happy to be of service when we do something for others without expecting anything in return.

Volunteer to help people before they ask. Simple help like giving your neighbour a ride, buying food for a needy, helping kids to cross the road — be ready to do something without anyone asking for it. And do it with big smile!!!!

8. Don’t be idle — Keep moving

Never sit idle in one place if you are not doing any productive work. Sitting idle will make you feel lazy. Also seeing same images again and again will tire your brain and in turn affect your happiness. Brain needs new images to get refreshed and be happy. Don’t be idle. Keep moving.

9. Dance Dance Dance

Dance naturally boosts happiness. Schedule to dance at least once in a week, even if you have never danced in your life before and terrible at it. Dance alone for loud songs, dance with your loved ones, friends or family. Generate excitement and fun

Conclusion:

Happiness should be the constant state of your mind. When you feel you are losing the happiness, it is your responsibility to take action to be happy.

Understand that you are an insignificant dot in this universe with no mission to save this world. What could be your important mission than treating yourself with happiness all the time?

Be a go-getter of happiness to make your world a better place

Hope this article is helpful to you in some way. Please feel free to share your inputs on how you bring happiness in your everyday life and to this world

I have met such failures in life — personally and professionally. Based on my experience after such failures, I follow the below listed 8-step formula to get back “My power after any failure”. It helped restore my life better than ever before. And helped me create a better version of myself every single time. Here I would like to share my personal learnings with you.

1. Accept that you failed

The first and foremost step is to accept that you have failed.

Failure gives a sense of an open end. We, as human tend to close an open loop. So, we always try to go back and fix our failures by different means. But in most cases, we will end up damaging ourselves more than fixing failure. Only when we accept our failure, we will close the loop by stopping to run behind the old thing and start considering newer opportunities in life.

So, accept the fact that you failed, put a full stop to the sufferings, realize that it is time to move on and get an urge to improve your life.

To know more about “When” to give up in any situation, please read my blog post, “#6 questions to decide “WHEN” to give up on ANYTHING”

#6 Question formula to decide “WHEN” to give-up on ANYTHING

2. Accept your failure as failures

Most people are bogged down in life after a failure, believing that “I am a failure”. But a person cannot be defined by one or two failures or even success, for that matter.

Failures are just events that happen in your life. A failure can be a big life altering event, which might cause a loss of a loved one or a huge financial lose or failure in pursuing your dream. But in any case, it is JUST an event which highly depends on the situation, environment and resources.

Realize that these failure events DO NOT define the person who you are. Most importantly, it can NEVER determine the person who you can be in future. Only you hold the power to define who you can be at any point in life. Do not give away that power to any events in life — failure or success.

3. Silence your inner critic

After accepting the failure, next step is to learn the lessons from it. Of course, no one wants to repeat the same mistakes in their life. As they say “Fail differently next time”. At this lesson-learning juncture, you have to face a huge challenge — your inner critic.

While you list down your lessons from the failure, by default you will awaken your inner critic, who will scream out thoughts like — you messed it up by doing things or not doing things, you should have not said those words or behaved like that, you are not good enough to handle it, you are naïve to not know even the basics… SHUT IT OFF!!!!

This inner critic of yours will find reasons to make you feel guilty or rekindle the regrets. This voice will not let you forgive yourself to move on. You do not want any negative thoughts to pull you down, while you build your future with hope. Just silence this inner critic without any mercy, learn the lessons with a neutral mindset, most importantly forgive yourself and move on!!!

4. Work on your self-image

First thing getting damaged after a failure is your self-image. In turn it will damage your self-confidence & self-esteem. If you don’t fix your self-image, you will end-up damaging it more and more.

After a failure, one major damage I did to my self-image was to say “YES” in the places where I should have said “NO”. Particularly when it comes to relationships, we always end up saying “YES” to avoid fights or please people, when our inner voice was clearly shouting a big “NO” inside our head. By not listening to our own feelings, we damage our self-image consciously.

Now you have to work on building a better version of yourself. You could go into minute details like how you want to walk, how you want to talk, how you want to carry yourself. It will play a huge part in lifting your spirit and self-confidence to the next level.

Create a strong “WHY” behind this image, then create an image you love and adore. Stick to that image, no matter what.

5. Do something new & productive

The positive feeling and deep satisfaction one gets after a learning experience is enormous. When you do something new and productive, it will shift your focus to a different level. So, do something you have never done before in your life to boost your spirit.

For example,

• Enroll into a dance class
• Write down your small goals every day, achieve them and appreciate yourself
• Challenge yourself with picking a new habit or learning
• Workout everyday

These new habits will get you new focus, new friends and new perspective in yourself. Go ahead and indulge in new things & enrich your experience.

6. Be kinder to everyone including you

The way you treat other people is how they treat you in return. Always be kind to everyone. Take time to listen to people when they vent, help someone with their career, smile at people, hold the door open for the next person. When we are kind, we create a more positive image about our self with increased self-respect.

7. Surround yourself with positive environment

“Your environment is stronger than your WILL POWER” — Siddharth Rajsekar

The people we spend our time with on a daily basis, the environment we live in, things we see and listen — everything has a huge impact on our mindset.

It is important to surround yourself with positive, supportive people, books, good music and inspiring quotes to keep you positive and motivated.

8. Love yourself unconditionally

Finally and most importantly, “Love yourself unconditionally”. One person who was with you from the beginning and will be with you till the end is YOU and ONLY YOU. So don’t be hard on yourself, be good with yourself and be your best friend.

We take unmeasured steps for our loved ones. Understand that you deserve more love from yourself than you give to others. Take unmeasured steps to please, impress & celebrate yourself. You deserve much more love from you than for you!!!!

Conclusion:

Emotions are “Energy in motion”. When you tend to feel more emotions — positive or negative, if you can channel it carefully, you can use it to create a big turning point in your life to rise up. Failures presents us with such emotions and good lessons to turn our life upside down in a positive way.

Love yourself enough to tirelessly reinvent yourself. Stay positive!!!

Hope this post adds some value to you. Please share with me your transformation after a failure in your life.

Particularly, when a job or a relationship or a project — is clearly not working for us or adding any value to us. We do give up on such things in our life. But do we give them up at the RIGHT time? Most often, the answer is No. Giving up on something at the right time might help in reducing the damage it causes and even help in saving time we spent suffering.

Recently I went through a painful experience on something, when I failed to give it up at right time. It was so personal and dear to me, I kept trying hard and very hard, even after the right time had gone by. Finally, I ended up failing miserably by damaging myself more than it originally did. What did I learnt from that experience is the lesson I would like to share with you today.

So here it is, the ultimate 6 questions you can ask yourself before deciding to give up on something or anything. Let me refer to it as “THING” in this article, since it is applicable for anyTHING and everyTHING,

1. Does it hurt you?

First ask yourself this simple question — Does it hurt you? — Physically or Mentally or Spiritually or Financially? Let it be your job or a relationship or even your shoe — Does it hurt you? If it has started hurting you in any form, it is time for you to ask yourself the next question…

2. Does it add or will add any value to you or your life?

Let us take a step back and see how you were before this “THING” happened in your life and how it changed you after. A simple comparison of your-current-self with your-old-self. What do you see there? A positive change or an improvement or a worthy transformation? Then this “THING” is not something to give up even if it hurts. Keep trying.

But on the other hand, has this “THING” brought negative changes in you, degradation of your value or passion? If yes, move on and ask the next question.

3. What will you lose by giving it up?

This is a very important question. It will prepare you for the loss you need to go through after you give up the “THING”. For example, if you decided to give up an uninspiring job, what will you lose? A stable income, financial security for you and your family, eligibility to take a loan, peace of mind etc.

List down everything you will lose by giving up the “THING” before moving on to next question.

4. What can you gain by giving it up?

You gain something by losing something. Many a times, giving up one THING may help you gain many other things. For example, in sales, if one sales proposal is not going through it is okay to give it up if it helps you retain the customer, who can become a potential client to your business.

List down everything you will gain by giving up the “THING”

5. What are the changes this can bring into your life?

Change is inevitable in life. Particularly when you give up on big things like marriage or job we need to ask yourself this question — What are the changes you need to face by giving it up? Are you ready for that change? Time to think deep.

6. Do you have a backup plan?

Any “planned” change must be followed by an action plan to face the change. Giving up on something without any preparation might put you in unrecoverable situations. So, ask yourself, Do I have a backup plan? If not, develop one.

Conclusion:

Life is short and it is meant to be lived happily. So, it is ok to give up uninspiring THINGs in your life to explore newer options and face better and newer challenges in life. Wish you more meaningful adventures ahead.

Have you ever given up anything at wrong time in your life?. If so, Please do share your thoughts.