It doesn’t require a 5 AM cold plunge, ayahuasca retreat, or doing pep talks in front of the mirror.
We’ve believed the hype about finding happiness through external means, and because many of us are so desperate to find it, we’ll try anything.
But the hype is wrong. Happiness is not found externally. It’s innate and deeply part of who we are as humans. We are born with it baked in. At some point in our conditioning, we just forget how to access it.
Where is it?
As children, we start our lives by exploring the world with curiosity, freedom, belonging, and joy.
If you think back to your fondest memory as a child, what were you doing? What was the main feeling you had during that activity? It was likely joy.
My core memories are spending time outside, learning new things, and getting lost in creative projects. These have remained my motivators throughout my adult life. They help me live in the moment and bring me joy almost immediately.
Tension, trauma, pain, stress, joy, and happiness all produce hormone floods throughout our body when we experience them. These hormones impact the way our cells function.
Cortisol, from chronic stress, can significantly impact our physical well-being. It can cause inflammation, changes in energy production, and other issues.
Oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin are the “happy hormones” released during pleasurable activities. They are also neurotransmitters, facilitating communication between nerve cells.
When we reconnect with ourselves and care for ourselves, we give our cells something better to work with. Proper nutrition, exercise, and stress management can contribute to healthier cellular function, improving our overall health and well-being.
Taking care of ourselves through healthy habits is the first step toward happiness. But happiness is a holistic experience when all parts of the physical, emotional, and spiritual self are balanced. It’s not a just state of mind.
Bringing it out
At the height of my personal burnout, everything on the outside looked perfect, but on the inside, I was empty. I remember being asked, “Are you even capable of happiness?” Ouch. I still feel the sting of that. The truth is, at the time, I was asking myself that very same question.
Now, I know better. Of course, I am! But back then, I felt shame because, according to everyone else, I “should have been happy” given how my life looked on the outside.
I was capable of it; I’d just muddied my connection to it because I had been reacting to the challenges of the world around me with stress and anxiety, letting go of enjoyable activities and completely abandoning my body’s needs.
It wasn’t exactly my fault I got burnt out. I didn’t yet have the tools to help me avoid or recover from it. I had to learn those along the way.
We are all conditioned to respond to stress in different ways. Some were given the model of calmness and clear thinking, others were given a model of avoidance, and some learned to react with anxiety and panic. These patterns either work for or against our happiness. This is why some of us are more susceptible to burnout. I was one of those people, but I changed that. You can, too.
You can rewrite your response to stress. It doesn’t have to be reactive. It can be intentional, authentically aligned, clear, and calm.
If you’re not a water-off-the-duck’s-back person, you can certainly train yourself to be more tolerant and less affected by stress. This trait holds a superpower: being so in tune with who you are and what you need to be at peace and happy that very little in the outside environment can shake you.
How to be happy
There is something called The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or The Frequency Illusion. This is when you learn of a new word, concept, or idea, and then you come across it frequently in a very quick succession afterward. Think about the last time you bought a new car, and then you started to see the same make and model everywhere you went.
This natural cognitive bias forms when we recognize and focus on something in our environment. Our brains automatically start to scan for similar things. We can use this bias in our favor to bring more good things into our lives, like happiness. We start to seek it out and find more opportunities for it.
If you’ve ever heard the saying, “Where you focus, you grow,” this is absolutely true. We bring energy and effort to the areas that we concentrate on. Stress and happiness alike.
So, if you start thinking about happiness, you’ll see opportunities to bring it into your life more. The more you focus on it, the more you see it, the more you feel it, the more it grows. It’s that easy.
You’ve Been Overcomplicating Happiness
This one thing will help you feel it instantly.
5 Core steps to bringing more happiness into your life:
Identify the things/activities/experiences that bring you joy and peace
Seek out those activities
Add those activities to your day
Do more of those activities
Expand on these and repeat
The guidebook to bringing more happiness into your life is not complicated. It just takes focus and dedication.
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