Make a commitment for Happiness and you will start seeing changes.
Make A Commitment To Cultivating Happiness
What does it mean to be totally committed to something? It often means that you set a goal and then dedicate yourself to do what it takes to reach that goal. We commit to having friendships, we commit to a relationship especially when we get married, we commit to a job or a career, and we may be committed to a hobby, and/or volunteering. Today we want to focus on committing to cultivating more happiness.
Yesterday’s article illustrated the facts that “you see the world as you are,” and part of how happy you are is related to the decision you make. We discussed making a conscious decision to be happier and to create a new habit of having a more positive outlook on life. When we look at any event that happens in our life with this changed outlook, it really will take on a more positive spin. So yesterday was about becoming aware and choosing to be happier, and today is about really committing to that decision.
Make a commitment to Achieve More Happiness
The first step to make this happen is to declare and make a commitment to achieving more happiness. This holds true for any new habit you want to make permanent for yourself. The first step is always to commit to it. From there, it’s a matter of daily practice until the new behavior or action has become a true habit. A habit by definition is something you do without any conscious thought or effort.
Our journey toward a happier version of ourselves is no different. We have to commit to happiness. Of course it isn’t as easy as saying to yourself that you will be happier from here on out. While that’s certainly helpful, it isn’t quite as simple as that. Before we can truly commit to happiness we have to define what makes us happy.
Think About What Makes You Happy
Spend some time today to think about what really makes you happy. Then spend some time thinking about what doesn’t make you happy. Take your time and really dig deep. I Love being outside in nature, sitting on a lawn and looking at beautiful flowers. It gives me a lot of pleasure to do that. I also love to curl up on the couch with a good book and read. For me it’s like taking a mini-vacation. If you love to read as well, think about why you love to read. Perhaps it’s because it gives you a chance to escape and forget about your own life for a while. If so, try to pin-point what you’re hiding from when you dive into a book and what you can do about that.
If getting up at 6am to go to work makes you unhappy, and changing to a later schedule isn’t an option, think about the positive things about getting up early. You get to see the sun rise, you get to come home at a decent hour and have time to relax before bedtime. Something as simple as implementing a relaxing bed-time routine and going to bed a little earlier may make it much easier to get up at 6am and improve your whole outlook on workday mornings. See how we just turned a negative into a positive? More will be coming on this later.
Dig a Little Deeper
We will keep digging a little deeper into what makes us happy and how we can go about cultivating more happiness over the next 28 days. Today’s exercise is to come up with your own personal definition of happiness, and make a list of at least 10 different things and people that make you happy. Declare and commit to using the coming days and weeks to work on becoming happier. This will make it easier for you and you’ll be glad you did.
Making a list of all the things that do make you happy should have you smiling!
Have you joined our 30 Days to Happiness yet? Click here to join our Movement and be sure to introduce it to friends and family who would benefit from a Daily Dose of Happiness each and every day.