Ways to be Happy More Often?

Everyday life can drain our physical energy, leaving us fatigued. But emotional energy is rather different. It is more a sense of happiness and hopefulness. This week I want to look at 3 different ways to be happy more often and boost your emotional energy.

Emotional energy drains look like fear, anger, and worry. Any of those emotions sound familiar? Just like not eating right or getting enough sleep can leave you depleted physically, constantly living in those emotions will leave you tapped out emotionally. But steering clear of those emotions is a lot easier said than done. So what are our options?

Ways to be Happy Tip #1

Fear has a lot to do with what other people think of us. If you’re constantly focused on whether you’re measuring up, fear will run your life. “Will I be found out?” “Everything will fall apart if they really knew!” That’s a lot of wasted energy. Instead, energy is renewed when you come to accept who you are – warts and all!

Living your life as the person you were created to be and playing to your strengths will add energy to your every moment. For example: I’m not very spatially inclined. Whenever I try to do a task that calls on these skills, I feel lousy about myself and get frustrated. But, I’m a very empathetic person. I feel energized when I’m able to help someone in this way. Rather than beat myself up over my weaknesses, I let someone else handle the spatial tasks. I focus time and energy on tasks that require me to be empathetic.

Ways to be Happy Tip #2

Anger usually comes from a place of feeling as if your needs have not been met. How much time have you wasted replaying a scenario and thinking of ways you wish you’d responded? If your needs aren’t being met, then it’s your responsibility to fix, not someone else’s. You need to be very clear on what your needs are and then communicate them.

Getting your needs met helps you feel validated and secure. For example, if you have a co-worker who continually does a project wrong and you have to go back and correct it, it’s not the co-worker’s fault that you’re angry. It’s yours! You need to communicate the error and maybe re-train him/her on the project so it will be done right the next time around.

Ways to be Happy Tip #3

Worry is wasted energy concerned with something that might or might not happen. A lot of times, the worry is over something you don’t even have control over! The present is the only truth you have. And it’s fleeting. If you spend all your time worrying about the future, you’ll miss out on all the blessings of the present and never be satisfied.

Keep yourself grounded in the here and now by taking care of the details you can manage now and trust that what you need will be provided to you when you need it. For example, you can worry about how you’re going to pay for college, or you can focus on the present by putting a dollar a day in a jar. Now you probably just jumped to “$1 a day won’t pay for anything!!” But you don’t KNOW that!!! What if your child gets a scholarship. What if it’s just a $1 a day for a year and suddenly your situation changes and you can start putting more in? The truth is you don’t know and worrying doesn’t solve anything. It just depletes your energy.

Your Vibrantly Live Challenge: I’ve shown you 3 different ways to be happy and increase your emotional energy today: accept who you were created to be – rather than fear, clearly communicate your needs rather than be angry, and keep yourself focused on what you can accomplish in the here and now – rather than worry. Choose the one that spoke the most to you and begin outlining a plan to make that a reality in your everyday life.

Be sure to share your plan below. Until next time – get out there and vibrantly live! Bye!