What do you think the secret to happiness is? Is it the type of people you have in your life such as your friends and family? Is it the type of activities that you engage in such as going to see all the new movies when they come out, or family game night on the weekends? Or maybe it’s the kind of career you pursue, such as something you are genuinely passionate about versus something that just supports the lifestyle you live?
What if the secret to happiness is all of these or none of these at the same time?
While I don’t know what the secret to happiness is something that I do know can increase your happiness significantly is the way you care and nurture your life. I’m talking about the kind of energy you put out in the world, the kind of energy you allow in your life, and even the way you love and treat yourself. All of this is a part of wellness, or in a more familiar sense what most people will refer to as self-care.
Before adopting specific wellness practices to significantly increase the happiness that I felt in my life, I always thought that what made you happy in life was simply the way you chose to live your life. Much like what was stated above, I thought happiness came down to the people who were a part of your life, the kind of career you pursued, the kind of activities that you engaged in, and the things that made your life what it is.
Man was I wrong.
While all of these things do contribute to your personal level of happiness, they don’t essentially make you happy or unhappy. They’re just factors that play a part in that happiness or unhappiness. I spent years struggling to find that one thing that can always keep me in good spirits. Once I found it, it became the one thing that I value more than anything in this world.
That one thing is the wellness practices that I have adopted in my life in order to be as happy as I possibly can be each and every single day. Having these wellness practices and practicing them consistently has allowed me to be able to focus more on the positive and so much less on the negative. It is because of these practices that I can honestly say I spend more of my days being genuinely happy than I do being anything other than that.
Here are some wellness practices that will significantly increase your happiness.
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Acknowledging your emotions
Acknowledging your emotions, even the bad ones, is one wellness practice that I cannot live without. This not only teaches us how to correctly identify what it is that we are truly feeling, but it also allows for us to start the habit of not turning off our emotions.
For the longest time I use to just push all my negative emotions to the side. I figured if it wasn’t present or at the surface, then I wouldn’t have to confront it. This taught me to ignore what I may have truly been feeling in the moment and instead to focus on dealing with the emotions of others. I’m a positive person and I like to put out positive energy, so any negative emotions I felt were automatically turned off so that I would avoid putting out negative energy.
Now I not only acknowledge my emotions but I also allow myself to feel whatever I may be feeling. Whether that’s happiness, anger, sadness, or whatever emotion it may be, I no longer push it down and out of the way. In doing so I have found that I am happier because I don’t have all these negative emotions weighing me down. Instead, I’m able to express myself and feel how I feel in the moment, deal with the emotion, and move on once I feel relief from doing so.
What I have learned from being more accepting of my emotions is that we need the negative ones just as much as we need the positive ones. They balance each other out and really help us to appropriately regulate our thoughts and emotions.
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Being present
This is easier said than done. In order to be fully present means to live in the moment that is happening right now. For most of us this is hard because our brains are designed to constantly be thinking about the future. We’re always thinking ahead and are never really living in the moment, so being present is not something we are disciplined in doing.
However, I’m telling you now that being present is so life changing. Your awareness increases significantly and any traces of stress, worry, anxiety, and anticipation disappear for the most part. This is because you are only focusing on the things that are happening in the now, and not the things that have yet to come.
I’ll be honest, it takes a while to reach a point where you only operate in the present moment. Even though being present is something that I have been practicing doing for a while now, I still find it hard to be fully present in every moment that I am given. But it’s the little steps and the little things that you do to help you get to this point that matter.
This can be something as simple as not being on your phone when you are in the company of others, or learning how to talk less and listen more when others are talking. Or my personal favorite, learning how to be more aware by being able to hear everything that is alive in the environment you are surrounded in. Simple things like these can help you learn how to be more present not only with yourself, but with others as well.
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Living by personal values
Personal values are a big part of who we are as individuals. Think of living by personal values as a baseline for what you believe to be right or wrong about the way you live our life. For example, a personal value can be something as simple as donating to your favorite charity once a month. What this represents is that you believe in supporting foundations that are doing work that you stand behind, and that it holds meaningful value to you to spend a portion of your money in this manner.
While this isn’t anything huge or life changing, it does set the standard that you stand behind things you believe in. You have morals and values that you honor in order to live as happy of a life that you are able to. This may sound like such a small thing to do in order to increase your happiness, and that’s because it is.
The way I like to think about it is as our personal values being the foundation of who we are, and our actions are essentially what helps us authentically live as our true selves. Again, it’s so simple but so vital to your happiness, because when you live your life in a way that is satisfying to you, there’s no empty hole or space to fill up. Just a place of happiness to continue to nurture and pour from.
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Playing on your strengths
I was once told to know your strengths and know your weakness because these are essentially going to be the driving force in your life. Years ago, I would have told you that any weakness you have can become a strength, and while I still think this is true, I also understand that we never really “lose” any of our weaknesses. We just learn ways to not allow them to play against us.
Which is why it’s important to know what your strengths are and how to use them to your advantage. For example, if creativity is a strength of yours take advantage of opportunities that will allow you to be able to use your skills in a creative way. We naturally feel happier with our lives and with who we are when we use all our strengths to their full potential.
This is because you don’t experience any pressure to succeed or to be good, or even to really prove a point. Instead, you’re just having fun doing something that fills you with joy, and whether or not those opportunities you take advantage of lead to something great, you will feel a great sense of pride in just knowing that you did something that showcased the best version of who you are.
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Practicing gratitude
Waking up every morning and giving thanks for the life that I live, and everything I have been able to have in my life is a wellness practice that I never go a day without doing. I think it’s extremely important to practice gratitude because it can really humble you. All too often we focus on the areas of our life that could be better and not enough on the things that are just going right.
I think this is one of the easiest ways to rob yourself of happiness. While there are always greater heights you can strive to achieve, it’s also important to acknowledge and give thanks for the milestones you have been able to achieve in your life thus far. Much like learning how to be present, practicing gratitude is a great way to really live in the moment, and to learn how to appreciate those moments.
It’s also a great way to eliminate the habit of comparing yourself, your life, and your success to that of others. When you let go of habits like these you will find that focusing on yourself, your life, and your success to be all the more fulfilling. When we make ourselves a priority and we learn how to love, appreciate, and accept the life we have created for ourselves, genuinely being happy is something that just naturally occurs for us on a daily and moment-to-moment basis.
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Doing things that make you happy
Perhaps my favorite wellness practice among others, and the best piece of advice I could ever give anyone, is to live your life doing things that make you happy. While I don’t know what the secret to happiness is, I do know that when we live our life doing things that feed our soul, we don’t have to fight to be happy. Instead, it’s something that just happens naturally.
This is one wellness practice that can be implemented immediately. You don’t have to completely change career paths, or even change your lifestyle altogether. You just simply have to start doing things that you enjoy doing. So maybe that’s going to a yoga class once a week, or going to the movies every weekend, or something as simple as taking your kids to the park more often.
Whatever it is that feeds your soul do more of it and I promise you will spend more of your days being significantly happier than you would be if you didn’t.
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What wellness practices do you love to do? How have they increase the happiness that you experience in your life?
-Xo
Kimora
