How to Be Happy

Scrolling your social media feed for long periods of time increases jealousy, suspicion, comparison, and other negative emotions. Clean up your feed by hiding people or posts that annoy you. Spend time with family, friends, and pets. Strike up conversations with strangers, even. Who knows? The guy behind you in line could be a teacher of a hobby you've always wanted to try or maybe the lady on the bus will tell you a hilarious story of romance!

Yes, that sounds terrible, but wait - having too much money has been shown to lead to unhappiness. Volunteering and philanthropy have been shown to greatly increase happiness. When you do for others you create a better sense of self-worth. Also, too much money may mean that you're doing too much work. Think about what would be the least amount of money you could make and still be comfortable and then strive for that so you can have more leisure time and less work time.

Have you ever really explored your OWN values? We tend to adopt the values of our family or our peer group even when we might disagree with the foundations of those values. When you really know your own values and live them truly, you increase your sense of self and of self-worth and that leads to greater satisfaction in life.

If there is a lot of indecision in your life you might need to reduce your choices. Studies have shown that the more choices we have, the harder it is to find what we want. Pick areas of your life that you would feel comfortable making choice boundaries in. Shop locally for groceries and books. Make a list of your top five favorite restaurants. Whatever. Just narrow your choices in some way and give yourself some breathing room so you aren't daunted when making more important life choices!

You don't have to totally throw junk food out the window, but studies do show that junk food is linked to unhappiness. The more fast food and packaged food a person eats, the more likely they are to be unhappy. A lot of people don't have tons of time to bake everything from scratch, but you could learn how to make your top three favorite foods or the foods you reach for when you want comfort. Making them yourself just a couple of times a week will increase your happiness!

It is difficult for the human brain to differentiate between what we imagine and what is real. So, if that's true, what we imagine can make us happy or it can make us unhappy. Consider the things that make you happy or would make you happy and start building a path to those things in your imagination. You'll increase your chances of making your happy dreams come true!