3 tips for optimizing your happiness - Part 1

Happiness - or the frequent experience of positive emotions and well-being - is something nearly everyone wants more of. We may not feel it often enough, strong enough, or, it may feel as though it slips through our fingers far too easily. Many happiness seekers have read dozens of articles, trying to figure out what practices increase happiness, yet they feel no closer (or only slightly closer) to creating the happiness they desire in their lives. If this sounds like you, don’t worry; learning about the practices that increase happiness is a great first step. But the secret that no one has told you yet is:

To increase your happiness, you need a plan!

Making a plan for how to optimize happiness is more important than most people realize. Think about it. Would you bake a cake without a recipe? Would you fix your transmission without the car manual? Would you go on a journey into the wilderness without a map? We know, intuitively, that a plan, or guide, or map - some kind of tool - makes it much easier to effectively navigate new territory. If long-term happiness is new territory for you, then you need some kind of plan.

In this 4-part series, I will show you how to create a plan to optimize happiness. In this series, you will learn:

1. How to create a customized plan for optimizing happiness

Without a customized plan for optimizing happiness, your efforts will not be applied as effectively as they could be. By focusing on the right happiness skills for you, you can make greater progress.

Here is an example. Let’s say you are great at addition but not so good at multiplication. It is unlikely that practicing addition will make you better at multiplication. Similarly, you could be great at “seeing the benefits” in even the most difficult situations, but if you can’t be assertive about getting your needs met, you will never reach your happiness potential. If you know your happiness strengths and weaknesses, you can create a customized plan for happiness and save yourself a lot of time and effort.

2. How to set happiness goals

By breaking big goals into small achievable chunks, you make it easier to achieve them. Let’s say you have a goal to run from San Francisco to NYC. You wouldn’t expect your body to be able to continue running day-in-day-out until you get to NYC. You wouldn’t be surprised if you encountered setbacks that prevented you from sticking to your plan exactly. You would take breaks, you would stop to refuel, and you would adjust your plan accordingly. Achieving big goals requires accomplishing many small ones and making adjustments as you go.

Although happiness is a goal too, most people don’t apply the same strategies to their happiness goal. For some reason, we think it is reasonable for our minds to continuously work on being happier without having a plan, needing breaks, or having setbacks. It is unfair to expect that our minds can do what our bodies can’t. By creating reasonable, small, achievable goals, you will be able to steadily progress towards experiencing more happiness.

3. How to use motivational tricks

You could do everything right and still fail to stick to your happiness plan. This is why it is so important to put systems in place that keep you on track. As our lives continue to get busier and busier, we simply do not have the head-space to remember everything we need to do. We are not, nor will we ever be, motivated to work on our happiness every moment or even every day. But, by using motivational tricks, you can make it just a bit easier to stick to your happiness plan and finally start seeing the rewards of your efforts.

In the next 3 parts of this series (to be released this week), I will go into more detail about each of these steps for happiness planning. Read Part 2.

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For step-by-step instructions on building happiness a happiness plan, download my ebook: Happiness Skills eWorkbook: How to develop, grow, and maintain your personal well-being.

For customized happiness activities, pre-register for my online happiness course. Get started for free!

And for more on how to improve your well-being, please visit berkeleywellbeing.com or Join my mailing list.