8 STEPS TO HAPPINESS

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” 

― Dalai Lama XIV

The relationship of happiness to well being to connected-ness are all fascinating. Professor Anthony Grant has worked with the crew which develop a simple 8 step program which people can apply in their daily life. Here I am sharing some idea about that program.

1. Linking Goals And Values: One of the biggest mistake which people do is they don't connect them to their values, what really resonates for you as an individual. It is important for us to differentiate between what are the things that we value in our life with the things that society or other people say that we should value.
2. Do Things For Other People: The act of kindness is a powerful way to kind a feel a bit more connected to people and world. For Example; you are driving through city traffic and people are cutting in front of you, take a moment and let them get in front of your car. It only counts as an act of kindness if you don't expect a thank-you.
3. Mindfulness Or Mindful Living: When we talk about mindfulness the first thing which comes in our mind is meditation and that is an important part of mindfulness but that doesn't mean sitting at a place and meditate in order to engage mindful living. Mindfulness is about being here and now. For Example; As we go around our daily life instead of having our head all over the place. Think about what we need to do next, bring your attention back to now, focus on your breathing and feel your self settle into your body.  
4. Focusing On Strength And The Solutions: Thinking about how you can get to where you want to go is actually a lot more helpful than listening to the negative self talk and focusing on the problem analysis and things that might go wrong.
5. Engage Gratitude Exercises: Taking time to actually express gratitude, taking time to savor the moment and appreciate what we have, really helps us boost our well being. It allows us to appreciate what really matters in our life.
6. Forgiveness: Take some to write, sit down and write out a letter that you forgive that you can see from their point of view. Now that is very hard to do, you don't have to post the letter. but somehow expressing your forgiveness actually externalizes it again.
7. Notion Social Networks: So if we live in a world where there is limited social networks, I would encourage you to see how you can expand them. It means enriching the connections with the people that you do have.
8. Reflect, Review And Renew: What we really need to do very often is to stop, and reflect and review where we are. What are my values? how have they changed?what am I doing? what is working for me? what is not? This is actually very powerful stuff, through this we can renew ourselves.

These are the simple 8 steps. but always remember it is very rare for somebody to go from extremely depressed to brilliantly happy, or to become from very introvert or reflected person to a huge extroverted person. Change take work and repetition, we need to be satisfied with small steps. It is useful to have a big goal, but focus on the small steps and be satisfied with the small steps, because actually that's the only change we can really make. Take time to review and reflect on what you have done.