5 Ways to Increase Your Happiness

Please see more about joy despite the odds in my book, Accept No Trash Talk: Overcoming the Odds.

Many people want to identify the key to cheerfulness. After all, who does not want to be happy? Cultures and lifestyles vary across the globe, but our main goal remains the same: contentment.

How does this cherished state come about? Nurturing people? A complete lack of trials? Those ideal occurrences are not always present for most of us. That’s why we have to look beyond our circumstances for true contentment.

This is rarely easy.  Cultivating a crucial attitude of gratitude, hope, and positivity is difficult in the middle of trials. What’s currently going on in our lives usually saps all our time and energy. In order to survive, we have to concentrate our attention on the trees in front of us rather than the forest behind those trees.

Joyce Meyer

This Bible teacher is known throughout the world. In a recent Enjoying Everyday Life episode, she touched on five methods of increasing happiness:

1. Believe the right stuff.

You don’t have to live by how you feel. Don’t say anything bad about yourself. Instead, use positive affirmations.

2. Live one day at a time and enjoy it.

“Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”—Philippians 4:11

We have to make a decision to be happy—now. If we wait until we get a manifestation of what we want, we will waste today.

In Hebrews 13:5, we are counseled to be content with what we have because God will never leave us or forsake us.

3. Stay in peace.

Peace = Power

4.     Decide to be happy in spite of your circumstances.

Satan can mess with your circumstances, but not with your hope and faith. Come to peace with yourself.

5. Give your life away.

Selfish people are not happy. It’s impossible to be content if we don’t give ourselves away. That’s why we cannot live for just us. We have to live and give. That way, God works through us. We are His hands.

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”—John 12:24

Unless we are willing to let our selfish nature be buried, we’ll never be anything other than we are now. Individuals must be planted and break open like a seed in order to bring forth abundant fruit. Otherwise, we will remain the tiny seed buried in the darkness helping nobody—including ourselves.

My Conclusion

We need to retire from self-care because that is not the road to happiness. If we constantly concern ourselves with circumstances we cannot control, we will only make ourselves miserable. We must trust that God is molding us into a new, improved person. Individuals have to believe that the day of their blossoming will spring forth out of the buried seed.

Can you envision the fruit tree that you will become?