The 10 Best Tips On how to be happy within yourself

Odds are, if you are a person, you want to know how to be happy within yourself. Many people spend their entire lives chasing an ideal version of happiness. After all, nobody wants to spend their lives being miserable!

Since everyone is different, happiness looks different for every person. Because there isn’t always a clear definition for happiness, we often look to others to tell us what happiness is, rather than exploring how to be happy within yourself. Other people, social media, and corporations are all willing to rise to the occasion and try to convince us of what happiness is.

However, chasing down an idea of happiness that others have constructed is not how to be happy within yourself. Who is anyone to tell you what happiness should look like in your life? The only person who can decide what happiness looks like for you and in your life is you.

Having said that, here I will share 10 tips on how to find happiness with yourself. Using these 10 tips will help you discover what happiness means to you, while filtering out all of the noise!

What is Happiness?

If you’re wondering how to be happy within yourself, we should first explore what happiness is. Happiness is the feeling you get when you feel content, joyful, and satisfied with your life.

In our quest for happiness, people are usually interested in long-lasting happiness. We all know of a few ways to temporarily put us in a better mood. But instead, we want to be able to wake up every day feeling permanently happy.

There is this idea that a magic key to happiness held by special key holders is the only way to find true happiness. People see these happiness key holders as people who are successful, have the perfect job, the perfect family, lots of money, and lots of stuff. But where did this idea come from? And why is it so common?

How to Find Happiness Within

Another belief is that true happiness comes from within. There is the idea that you can learn how to be happy within yourself without the need for a definition that tells you what happiness is.

In order to learn how to find happiness within, you need to understand that finding happiness within means being truly content with yourself and who you are. This means not relying on other people or things to find happiness.

There are things we can buy that make us feel happy in the moment. But if you want more permanent, long-lasting happiness, you won’t find it at the bottom of a bag of chips or in a movie.

Let’s explore 10 different ways for how to find happiness with yourself. As you read these tips, remember that you are the only one who can identify and find happiness within yourself. As such, make sure that you think about what these ideas look like in your life.

#1. Find a Job That You Love

If you listen to the average adult conversation long enough, at some point the topic of work will almost certainly come up. More specifically, complaints about work.

Since we spend a massive percentage of our lives at our jobs, it should be no surprise that the work we do directly impacts our happiness. If you are looking at how to be happy within yourself, it can be tricky to understand how your job fits into this. Especially if you have a job that you don’t like!

If you spend most of your day at a place you don’t like, surrounded by people who don’t bring you joy, doing things you can’t stand, you are obviously not going to be happy!

The thing that many people overlook is that we actually have a choice in the work we do! If you hate your job, you have the power to change that by pursuing other work!

Sure, quitting your job will require you to adjust your lifestyle a bit. But if you find a job that brings you joy, isn’t a little bit of temporary discomfort worth it?

Consider checking out our guide for finding your ikigai to find a job that applies what you love, what you are good at, and what the world needs. The Japanese believe that finding your ikigai is the path to take for a life that is long and full of happiness. Find your ikigai today!

#2. Develop Healthy Habits By Prioritizing Yourself

Our bodies feel better when we are healthy and practice healthy habits. When our bodies feel better, our minds feel better, and when our minds feel better, our bodies feel better. Just think about how you feel when you wake up from 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep compared to if you stay up too late and get up too early.

We tend to make less informed (and less healthy) decisions on less sleep, and that directly impacts our happiness. For example, we might decide to eat fast food over preparing a nice healthy veggie wrap because we just don’t have the energy to cut the carrots and wash the lettuce.

While it is of course okay to eat out once in a while, if you don’t prioritize healthy habits such as getting enough sleep, it is easy to fall into a routine of unhealthy habits. Less sleep means less energy and focus, more coffee consumption, and more stress. This leads to less feelings of content, joy, and satisfaction with your life. You will feel unhappy, and it will become a more permanent feeling of unhappiness.

To break this cycle, consider developing a good self-care routine using different ideas for self-care. Your routine can include simple things like:

• getting enough sleep
• eating a healthy and well-balanced diet
• drinking enough water
• exercising daily (it’s as easy as going for a 15 minute walk!)
• getting outside to appreciate the beauty of nature
• doing something simple for yourself

This list may sound easier said than done, but it is often the little things that make the biggest difference! Notice that none of these things cost money. Each of these self-care ideas are things you can do by yourself and for yourself to practice self-love and help you find happiness. As such, this is a great place to start if you are wanting to learn how to be happy within yourself.

#3. Stop Chasing Others’ Ideas of Happiness

If you want to know how to be happy within yourself, you need to take a moment to think about where your idea of happiness is coming from. Is it your own idea, or is it someone else’s?

Happiness is a tricky concept to define. We know that different things make different people happy, but where do our ideas of happiness come from?

Finding happiness within means that you are choosing not to allow others to dictate what your happiness looks like. Because we rarely live our lives in complete isolation, it is common to want to look to others to help us understand what happiness is.

The easiest way to learn how to be happy within yourself is to recognize when friends and family are pushing too hard to get you to do something you don’t want to do. This isn’t always intentional. Some personalities are stronger than others, and at times, those closest to us apply too much pressure without even realizing it!

As is always the case, communication is important. Set boundaries in your relationships, communicate them to your loved ones, and then work hard to maintain them. Your happiness is important, so stand up for it and focus on your own ideas for how to be happy within yourself. It is worth a conversation with your loved ones!

#4. Take a Social Media Break

There is no one happier than the people on social media… right? Everyone is smiling and having a great time together! And they all seem to have lives that are so exciting and full of joy!

Social media is an easy escape from our own lives. It is so easy to pick up a device and just scroll through whatever pops up in front of us. This can make us feel more connected to others, and even ‘happy’. While using social media may feel like it makes us happier and more connected to others, it actually plays a huge role in making people feel unhappy.

When you look at another person’s social media posts, it tends to feel like watching a highlight reel. We see the exciting and flashy stuff, but we don’t usually see the hard stuff and the struggles people go through. People like to showcase all of the amazing things happening in their lives (whether they are true or not!).

However, only seeing the highlights can have a negative effect on our happiness. Our brains are wired for comparison. If we expose ourselves only to the exciting and the happy stuff, it is easy to feel as though we don’t measure up. After a while, we start to feel as though our lives aren’t as awesome as the lives of others. We start to feel unhappy.

Look at him! Look at her! They’ve got a million likes!

Happiness isn’t something you can measure. Having more likes, followers, or subscribers isn’t going to make you happier.

If you posted a photo of yourself having a great time with your family and nobody gave it the thumbs up, does this somehow lessen the experience you had with your family? Of course not! However, this is the mind game many people play with their social media content. There is this idea that if nobody engages in it, it isn’t worth doing.

This idea comes from seeking external validation rather than internal. If you want to learn how to be happy within yourself, your social media statistics are not going to do it for you! These numbers may give you an idea of how other people feel about you, but they cannot tell you how you feel about you!

If you want to learn how to be happy within yourself, consider taking a break from social media, or stop using it all together! This can be tricky, but cutting off the non-stop comparison game can be liberating! If you stop seeing the messages that tell you you aren’t doing enough or that you aren’t having as much fun as everyone else, you will be able to focus more on how to find happiness within.

Take the time that you spend each day scrolling through your feed and spend it intentionally looking for how to be happy within yourself. Instead of focusing on your screen, turn your eyes inward and use some of the ideas for self-care from above to connect with what happiness means to you.

#5. Stop Buying Stuff to Find Happiness

It should come as no surprise that finding happiness within is possible without buying stuff. Knowing how to be happy within yourself means that you can be happy without external assistance from products or services.

Having said that, corporations are really good at selling happiness. If you dig into it, every successful business out there is really good at convincing you that:

1. You have a lack or a void of some sort in your life
2. The only way to fill that void is by buying their product/service/etc.

Pretty much any commercial ever follows a basic yet highly effective formula. They always start with a ‘relatable’ problem of some sort, followed by an introduction to a product or service that solves that problem. This formula is designed to convince the viewer that they also have that problem in their lives, and that they need to make a purchase to make that problem go away.

You can find examples of this in pretty much any ad. As a viewer, you hear the message that you are missing out on something, and you start to feel anxious about what might happen if you don’t fix this problem. Before you know it, you are lining up to buy the latest elaborate chicken sandwich at McDonalds!

McDonalds is really good at convincing you their products make you happy. Their Happy Meal literally has the word happy in its name! This teaches our kids that Happy Meals make them happy. The food makes them happy, and the toy inside really makes them happy! This is brilliant marketing!

The key here is to remain secure in the belief that your happiness comes from within. I find that just being aware of the way advertisements are designed lessens the likelihood that I will be affected by the messaging in advertisements.

#6. Find Happiness in Beautiful Experiences

One way that you can find happiness without buying things is to spend your time on experiences. Experiences are different from products because it isn’t always possible to relive them. This makes them much more special than something you could just buy again.

This is one reason why taking a walk outside in the beautiful fall weather can help you feel happy. As a season, fall brings cooler weather and breathtaking color combinations in nature. The fact that it lasts only a few weeks makes it special. It has this fleeting beauty to it.

A few weeks ago, my wife and our two daughters took a walk through a park to take in the fall weather. There was a moment where the sun was peaking through the clouds and a gust of wind blew a colorful whirlwind of leaves up into the air. All three of my girls were smiling and giggling amongst the beauty of nature.

I felt true happiness within myself in this moment. It was a simple but incredible experience I got to share with the ones that I love, and I didn’t have to spend any money to enjoy it! The best I could do to hang onto it was to try to capture the moment with a picture.

If you are looking for how to be happy within yourself, it is important that you understand that no product or service that you can purchase is going to make you happy. Instead, seek out real and natural experiences that can’t be recreated. These will be the things that leave a lasting impression on you and will make you realize how to be happy within yourself.

#7. Be Happy With Who You Are

We know that other people, social media, and corporations like to tell us how to be happy. This can make us question who we are and what we are doing with our lives. However, part of learning how to be happy within yourself requires you to learn to be happy with who you are.

This can be difficult because we sometimes end up losing ourselves in all of the chaos of life. Our responsibilities to our families and our jobs can sometimes make us feel stuck as we forget about our goals and our passions.

How often do we have a moment to sit back and think about who we are and what brings us joy? When was the last time you asked yourself how the pressures of your life are affecting your relationship with yourself?

In order to be happy with yourself, you need to work hard to get in touch with what makes you the incredible person that you are. It is important to stop being a people pleaser and start developing confidence in yourself, your life, and your choices.

Doing so will help you feel happier about the experiences you have in your life. Knowing yourself and loving yourself means that you will know how to be happy within yourself.

#8. Get Inspired to Look Inwards and Build Your Self-Esteem

It can be difficult to look inward and see how to be happy within yourself. Whether you realize it or not, you are an amazing person that has many great qualities. It is just a matter of taking the time to look inwards.

Making positive affirmations for self-love part of your self-care routine will help you build up your self-esteem and make you feel happier about your good qualities.

There are also plenty of inspirational quotes that inspire change and motivational quotes about growth mindset that can help you focus on building yourself up when you are feeling down.

#9. Be Present

It can be difficult to stop and be present in the moment with all of the demands on our time. We spend so much of our time trying to keep busy while staring at screens that we often miss the small and beautiful moments life offers us.

Taking the time to have an intentionally present moment with ourselves and our loved ones is one way to find happiness within. So put the screens away, say no to things you don’t want to do, and focus your energy on just being present without letting your mind wander.

#10. Stop Complaining!

Whether we realize it or not, the way we react to struggle, conflict, and challenge is a choice that we make from within. When it comes to how to be happy within yourself choosing an approach that doesn’t involve negative expressions is a powerful way to take control of your happiness.

When we experience challenges, it is easy (and sometimes natural) to point out what is wrong, to complain, and to be judgemental. Often times, these sorts of responses to life seem to come easier than expressions of gratitude and joy.

However, when something is difficult, you have the choice of whether or not you look for the growth opportunities in the challenge. Having a growth mindset means that you chose to find ways that you can develop your skills in order to overcome obstacles. This is a much more efficient approach than just complaining about how hard the challenge is!

There are many reasons why people complain so much. If you are someone who complains often, consider taking the time to intentionally write down a few things you are grateful for in your life. Take responsibility for your failures and look for ways that you can improve for next time.

How to Find Happiness Within: It Starts with You

If you truly want to learn how to be happy within yourself, these 10 tips will help you get started looking inward.

The world works really hard to convince you that happiness isn’t found within yourself. Other people, social media, and corporations will try to sell you on other ideas of what happiness is. However, remember that happiness isn’t something anyone else can define for you. Happiness also isn’t a feeling you will get by buying something.

Remember that the purpose of these tips isn’t to tell you how to be happy, or what happiness is. Instead, these tips will help you understand how to focus your search for long-lasting happiness in the right place. And that place is within yourself.

If you are looking for more tips on finding happiness within, check out our collection of choose happiness quotes!

Don’t forget to share this post with your friends and family on social media! If you know someone who you think would benefit from finding happiness within, this could be what they need to complete their search!

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