“Do more of what makes your happy, not what others want you to do,” is a common idea in motivational and personal development circles.
The premise is simple: when you are happy, you are most likely to reach your highest potential. It is possible to follow a path of joy towards everything that you want…and feel amazing in the process.
In this post I’ll explore what it means to do more of what you love, why it’s important, and how you can go about it.
The True Meaning of Following Your Joy
In order to unpack this concept, the first thing you need to understand is that prioritizing your own happiness does NOT mean that you immediately drop everything to go watch tv or jet off to a tropical beach.
The happiness that I talk about is not the pursuit of physical and material pleasure, but rather a sense of joy that comes from within. It is the feeling of warmth, stillness, well-being, and unconditional love that many people experience during meditation.
While for many people meditation may provide the “first glimpse” of this joy, it is possible to bring this sensation forward with you into your daily life, and to start living from a place of inner happiness, every single day.
The key is start paying attention to your thoughts, and to gradually begin to shift your thoughts into more and more positive states. If you can feel just a little bit better, and just a little bit better, you will be on the path to living from joy.
(Get started with these videos from The Positive Thinking Playbook if you want to learn more.)
As you begin to raise your energy in this way, you tap into a feeling of resonance. Resonance is a connection between your thoughts and the way you feel. As you allow happy, joyful thoughts to expand, your resonance will guide you towards more of what you want to experience in your life.
Choosing to feel good is always in your best interest. Following this process – learning to feel happy, every day – has an incredible number of benefits, and will positively impact every area of your life.
Some of the many benefits include:
- Increased energy,
- Higher-level thinking, clarity, and creativity,
- Improved self-confidence,
- Better physical health and longevity,
- More restful sleep,
- Higher productivity, and
- Stronger relationships.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of happiness, check out this fun post on why you should smile more, or read The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, a Harvard-based positive psychologist.
How To Do What Makes You Happy
Once you understand why doing more of what makes you happy is important, the obvious question is: how?
This is where a lot of people get tripped up. Many think that they need to find their “one true calling” to be happy, or else need to hit certain goals, or meet certain conditions.
The reality is: happiness is not that difficult to attain, it is simply a choice you must learn to make for yourself.
There are only 3 simple steps to take to start implementing this in your life:
- Accept that Happiness is a Choice. So long as you believe that happiness comes from something in the world around you, it will continue to elude you. When you accept that joy originates from within, and that you have the ability, right now, to tune-in to that joy, you can begin to experience more of it in your day to day life.
- Shift Your Focus to The Way You Feel. Most of the time, we are not really aware of what we are thinking. Internalizing happiness begins with awareness, so gradually begin to connect what you are thinking in each moment, with how that thought makes you feel.
- Choose a Better Feeling Thought. Your mental and emotional state is made up of what you think, all day every day. Most of your beliefs and habits originate from repeated patterns of thought. As you begin to shift your thoughts into a better-feeling place, you start a new cycle of well-being and joy.
Once you understand this basic flow (prioritizing choosing happiness, increasing your awareness, and managing your thoughts), you open yourself to the practical strategies and techniques that will help you to master them.
These strategies include practices like:
- Meditation and Mindfulness,
- Gratitude,
- Stepping Back,
- Thought Exercises, and
- Tools to Shift your Mindset.
I teach how to apply these types of strategies in my Workshop on The Foundations of Prosperity.
In it, I teach how to overcome feelings of self-doubt, scarcity, and negativity by cultivating a habit of happiness and apply a few core principles. Click here to get started for free.
