Taking Charge Of Your Happiness

Have you ever found yourself alone crying, angry, sad and lonely? Do you find yourself in despair about one situation or another, wondering why you can’t be happy like everyone else around you? The reason for your unhappiness may be the pressure you put on yourself. It may also be constantly comparing yourself to others or waiting for something to happen in your life to make you happy. It is time that we stop looking to others or some external source for our happiness and start to make it happen ourselves.

Don't rely on others to make you happy

Here are some suggestions that will help you strengthen your resolve and take responsibility for your own happiness.

1. Introspection – Take some time to look inside and reflect on your life and what makes you happy. Don’t look at what others are doing to be happy. This reflection is about what will make you feel happy whether it is fulfilling a religious or professional purpose, spending time with family, taking part in social activities, exercise and fitness or spirituality. Once you have discovered what will make you happy, do that 100%! Pursue your interests passionately.

2. Set goals and objectives for your life professionally, personally and recreationally to make best use of your time with activities to fulfil these targets. You may find that if you set goals based on what will make you happy, the reward of working towards and achieving these targets will help you be a happier person.

3. Count your blessings – Many times our unhappiness is due to looking at others who we determine are “better off” than us. However, if we took the time to look at ourselves and what we do have in our lives, we may find a lot to be happy about.

4. Realise you are worthy of happiness – Stop handicapping your happiness, realise you are worthy of the happiness, and let it happen to you. Some of us are scared of the change that may have to happen in our lives in order for us to achieve the happiness that we long for. I say if our lives are improved and we achieve our goal, go for it because it is worth the risk.

It is normal to look to external aspects to help with our happiness but this lessens our chance of actually achieving this. The lack of control we often have on external situations going our way makes it more likely for us to be unhappy if we chose those to be the reasons for our contentment. Therefore, choose to be happy by being proactive in the creation of your own happiness.