How To Be Happy

Eight Steps to Feeling Better in Your Life

No-one can accuse me of ducking the big questions. This week - how can I be happier in my life?

The good news is, being happier is not something that requires an expensive online program. You won’t need wealth, success, 2.3 children, or a gift for investing in real estate.

Being happier is a choice you can make right now. And this week, I’m outlining eight key steps (each with a recommended expert interview from The Meaningful Life podcast, if you’d like to go deeper).

1. Learn the art of living now

Many of us are bogged down in thinking about the future. The classic example: I’ll be happy when I go on that diet and lose ten pounds. Instead, reframe your thinking to the “right now”. It may go something like, “I don’t feel happy in my body right now, so this evening I’m going to take a really long walk with the dog”.

Conversely, others are stuck firmly in the past. We haven’t learned the tools we need to let go of the past, or to integrate our suffering and discover our resilience. First, we need to name and recognise this “stuckness”.

Don't immediately try to solve the problem, instead, name the feelings, and ask yourself where they are in your body. Be curious about the stuckness. Try and think of a question to ask yourself about it. For example, why am I thinking about this problem now? What do I need to learn about this stuckness? Write the question down. Give yourself a few days to ponder on it. You will be surprised at what you will discover. In this way, you will begin to access and trust the strength within.

Recommended listen: Dr James Hollis on How to Be Resilient.

2. Be nicer to yourself

We live in a culture that’s relentlessly focused on getting ahead. It’s all about doing, achieving and having. Escape this mindset by cultivating compassion towards yourself and others.

Ask yourself, “Would I speak to my best friend the way I speak to myself?” Many of us are guilty of incessant negative self-talk, which serves us poorly in the short term and the long term. Compassion isn’t a weakness, it is a route to the emotional health you’ll need to achieve the things you ACTUALLY want.

Recommended listen: Professor Paul Gilbert on How to Develop Self-Acceptance.

3. Be more like children and dogs.

A playground or a dog park are ideal places to study happiness in action. Young children are spontaneous, loud, and physical. They laugh often, and show profound joy in each other’s company. When they’re upset or angry, they don’t stifle their feelings - everyone hears about it, in a glorious release of emotion.

Dogs revel in the physicality of their bodies and the world, and there’s really no better teacher of mindfulness than the dog absorbed in a thousand scents on her daily walk.

So, if YOU get the chance to lie in the sun after lunch, take it (don’t catch up on emails). Book in time to meet up with old friends and share cake and coffee. If you need a nap, take one. Be outside rather than inside, and try to choose light-hearted over serious more often.

Recommended listen: therapist William Pullen on How to Run or Walk Your Way to Better Mental Health.

4. Be less preoccupied with yourself

Working on growth and self-development is wonderful, but it is only a part of the picture. Recent studies suggest that the ways we give back to the world are highly significant in determining our level of happiness. Volunteering, helping out friends, making the time to really listen to our children - these can all be a better boost to our levels of happiness than reading the latest self-help manual.

Recommended listening: Conroy Harris on Rites of Passage and Mentoring: How to Become an Adult; Chester Elton on How Gratitude Can Change Your Life.

5. Go with the flow

Our partners age, our workplace changes, our children grow up, loved ones die. Nothing can stop the pace of change. Trying to stand in its way, or pretending it isn’t happening are sure routes to unhappiness.

New chapters are always hard, but they also bring new adventures. If you can learn to accept what you can’t control (and focus on what you can) you can build up your capacity to recognise and enjoy those new adventures.

Our aging bodies, for example, mean that we may not be able to enjoy the same sex in our fifties and sixties that we did in our twenties, thirties and forties. Yet, we can choose to see this as a chance to redefine intimacy in a way that works for us right now.

Recommended listening: Alan Lessik on How to Deal with Change, Tracey Cox on Great Sex After 50.

6. Listen to yourself

Is your head still cluttered up by your parents’ voices? Do you still live according to other people’s definitions of success? It’s crucial to listen to that inner voice we all have that ALWAYS speaks the truth.

Recommended listen: Linda Berman on Seven Ways to Become Your Authentic Self.

7. Abandon bad habits

Short cuts to happiness are often also short cuts to pain. If alcohol, overspending, gambling or emotional affairs are keeping you going, deep down you are fully aware you need to take action.

It will never be the “right time” to stop doing these things. Reach out for some of the support you need now.

Recommended listening: Veronica Valli on Does Your Relationship with Alcohol Make Sense? and Kate Daigle on A Healthier Relationship with Food.

8. Make the commitment to happiness

If we’re going to be happy, we have to want to be! No-one has ever been born who has made it through life without suffering. This makes it all the more important to make the choice to be happy - it isn’t what happens to us in life that makes us unhappy, it is how we respond.

Recommended listening: Richard Nicholls on How to be Happier.

Thank you for reading - I wish you much happiness!

As always, if it feels like the right time to start marital therapy, send an email to Tricia (tricia@andrewgmarshall.com) for a virtual or in-person appointment with one of my team of therapists in London, or with me here in Berlin.

With love,
Andrew