As the dreary winter months start to come to an end and mornings begin to be dominated by bright sunshine and birds chirping it is now time to start getting out of the winter funk and focus on happiness.
Spring marks a return to sunny weather which goes a long way in helping people everywhere feel happier and more energetic. Unfortunately it is not always that easy, life events or stress can put a damper on the new weather. If you are feeling like the sunshine isn’t bringing you back to life this spring do not fear, there are steps you can take to achieve happiness in your everyday life.
Prioritize Being Joyful
In recent times people have started to really focus on and prioritize mental health. If you have found that you are having trouble being joyful this spring, prioritizing your mental health and actively focusing on being joyful is a great place to start.
While we know that everyone would love to prioritize happiness and mental health, social, family, and work demands can make it very difficult. If you find that you are often too busy to focus on yourself try adding just a 5 minute break into your evening where you put your phone down or otherwise isolate yourself just to take a deep breath. As you start making this a habit you will soon find yourself dedicating more and more time to relaxation.
Even relaxing for a short period of time will help your brain heal and help you find more joy in everyday life. If you find yourself motivated to find more time in your day to day life you can start heading to yoga classes, taking walks in the neighborhood, or even hiking in the mountains.
Essentially anything you can find that helps you escape everyday stress will help you find more happiness and joy in your life.
Maintain Perspective
Maintaining perspective is another topic that is simple on paper but extremely difficult in practice. Maintaining a view of your life and prioritizing things the correct amount for you is made difficult by emotions. You may only have planned on dedicating working hours to your job but the stress and workload has forced you to think about it or work in your down time.
This overwhelming amount of stress will make it difficult to maintain a positive perspective on life. To regain this perspective you should take a moment one morning to observe how the world is still in balance outside of you regardless of what you do. Winter turns to spring, flowers bloom, and everyone goes about their life. Reminding yourself where you fit into the world can help you relax, take pressure off of yourself, and regain perspective.
Rethink the Chase
If you are struggling with happiness in these warmer months you may be subconsciously saving your happiness for tomorrow or the weekend. It is important to start expressing any happiness you experience no matter how fleeting. By showing this happiness you will remind your brain how good it feels to express yourself and your happiness.
Remember to Smile
While usually someone telling you to smile is one of the least happy things that can happen to you, it is still important to remind yourself to smile. Remind yourself to smile when you wake up and then again throughout the day. It is actually proven that smiling can help eliminate stress and help you feel happier. This combination will help you fight bad moods and prevent yourself from slipping into a grumpy day.
While this sounds good it can be difficult to motivate yourself to smile, the best way to do this is to focus on the little things in life and see beauty. Luckily spring is a great time to see the beauty in things. Flowers blooming and birds chirping can always bring a smile to your face, as can the nice warm sun. Stopping, smiling, and taking a second when you see something pleasant will help you feel peaceful and happy all spring and into the summer.
Limit Comparisons
Life these days is full of people comparing themselves to others in person or on social media and it is leading to less happiness and plenty of stress. To fight back against this it is vital that you actively work on not comparing yourself to others.
When you compare yourself to others you are usually subconsciously comparing your shortcomings to someone else’s peak. No one posts their bad days on social media but you know about all of your own bad days. This leads to lower confidence and less happiness, making it harder to stay positive on a daily basis.
To fight back against this you can try taking a weekend off from social media or just remembering to stop comparing yourself to those around you when in a casual or professional setting.
Feeling Peaceful and Happy
The above rules are just a guideline and the same advice doesn’t work for everyone, but some combination of the following will help you feel peaceful and happy:
- Prioritize being joyful
- Maintain perspective
- Rethink the chase
- Remember to smile
- Limit comparisons
The key overlap between all of these themes is to focus on yourself and work to find the happiness in smaller things. Everyday is full of beautiful moments that you can choose to focus on instead of keeping your mind on stressful life events. While this is a vast oversimplification that won’t always work it is a great idea to keep your mind on the ideas above to promote the most happiness possible in your life.
