How To Be A Happy Person: 7 Steps To Be Happy With Yourself
Learn how to be a happy person by using these 7 simple steps to be happy with yourself.
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Is it possible to take these steps to be happy with yourself and actually be, you know, a happy person?
Doesn’t this sound like a pie-in-the-sky promise?
I personally don’t think so.
In a hurry but want to know how to be happy?
But then, you’re talking to the person whose friends keep teasing because she’s always laughing. And quite infectiously.
In fact, a close friend once asked me why I’m always smiling. She then ended in exaggerated shock: “You can’t possibly be happy all the time!”
That really made me think. Am I happy all the time? Is it possible for anyone to always be happy? Or do I just know – intuitively – how to be a happy person?
Well, I think that if you ask someone like the Dalai Lama, he’ll come up with something simple and profound that would explain true happiness far better than I could (although we did make a passable attempt at defining bliss, don’t you agree?).
Oh wait, someone did ask him!
And according to the Dalai Lama, “True happiness comes from having a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved by cultivating altruism, love and compassion, and by eliminating anger, selfishness and greed.“
Erm. Oh-kay.
So, full disclosure: Whilst I’d love to think that I’ve eliminated selfishness and greed (or that at least I’m well on my way to getting there), I definitely have not eliminated anger.
Like, at all.
I’m nowhere near it.
In fact, it’s not even a goal. I sort of gave up on that around the time I was diagnosed with postnatal depression that manifested as…rage. Yep.
I wasn’t in any fit state to tackle that particular pink (red?) elephant.
So Rage hangs around like a faithful shadow most days.
Although, in all fairness, he doesn’t ask for as much attention as he used to so all my inner work must be…well, working.
That said, I am actively cultivating altruism, love and compassion although (and this is another disclosure), I’ve not achieved the level of enlightenment that allows me to feel inner peace and contentment in the face of blatant discrimination and hypocrisy.
Yeah, those things send me (and my faithful shadow, Rage) into a tailspin.
So, if that’s the case, how is it that I’m always smiling?
Okay. First, I’m not always smiling. That makes me sound like a Looney Tunes character.
But you will usually find me smiling or laughing.
Why is that?
Lean closer and I’ll tell you.
It’s because *super dramatic stage-whisper* I’ve discovered how to be a happy person by following seven steps to be happy with yourself.
Seriously.
In only seven steps, you can find the answer to the questions everybody is asking: How can I make myself a happier person? How can I be happy with who I am? How can I be completely happy?
Want to know what those seven steps are?
Keep reading! 🙂
Disclaimer: The information contained in this post in particular and in this blog, in general, is not intended to replace medical advice. If you have or believe that you have mental health conditions, then please see a medical professional.
7 steps to be happy with yourself and become a happy person
Are you dying to find out how to be a happy person and enjoy your life?
Don’t know how to make yourself happy when you are alone? Do you think you need a special someone to really make you feel like you’ve won at life?
Can a person choose to be happy or are we just supposed to allow ourselves to be swept away by every emotion we feel?
All these important questions have a simple answer.
The truth is, you are in charge of your happiness.
You don’t need someone else to turn your light on.
They can’t anyway.
Yes, they can do it temporarily.
Anyone who’s ever been swept away by the fiery passion of new love will probably agree with me when I say that nothing can change a person faster than their newly found “soulmate”.
Side Note: I’m putting that in quotes because most of the time, that other person isn’t really our soulmate. Or if they are, they don’t really want us to change ourselves.
Happiness, the kind that lasts, comes from within.
It comes from knowing who you are and loving all that you are. Once you’ve found that wellspring of self-worth – of knowing your own value – nothing anyone else says or does, can impact your happiness.
They won’t be able to because you won’t allow it.
You will choose happiness above all else. It will be a daily decision that you make gladly because you finally realise that happiness is a value that you create for yourself.
And this isn’t you being selfish at all.
This is you finally realising that the cornerstone of all love is self-love.
You are your first experience with true love.
What will you teach yourself about love? And what will you teach other people about how best to love you? And themselves?
If you’re new to the concept of self-love, please read the following posts:
RESOURCES:
The Ultimate Guide to Self-Love – Discover why self love is the cornerstone of all love.
The Top Self Love Resources Everyone Needs To Read – Top books to read if you want to fall in love with yourself.
The Ultimate Guide To Getting To Know Yourself – Getting to know yourself is an important part of self love. This in-depth post will show you how.
A Guided Meditation Script For Self Love by Lisa Nichols – Meditate on it or just play it in the background – however you use it, it will change your life.
How to be a happy person step 1: Know your purpose
The first step to being a happy person is knowing your purpose.
It’s the philosophical question of all time – the one that makes people uncomfortable whenever it’s asked.
Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? What’s the point of all this?
If you find yourself wandering through life with little to no direction, then it’s time to stop and take a long look.
If, like most people, you’re dissatisfied with your life and want something better, then I have a question for you.
Why haven’t you done anything yet to improve your situation or find whatever you’re looking for – maybe happiness, health or abundance?
Shall I take a stab at it?
Could it be that the reason you can’t seem to move forward is that you don’t actually know where you’re going?
You don’t know why you’re here, what your life means, what the point of all this is.
Luckily, life has no purpose, save the one you give it.
That is both simple and profound and very true.
You are in charge of your own life so you get to choose what you want your life to be about. Another way of asking that question is, how would you like to be remembered by the people you leave behind?
Identify your life purpose or mission statement, create your own personal manifesto and then allow it to be your compass.
Do that and I can guarantee you that you will be happy.
That’s great, Jade. Now, how the heck am I supposed to know what my life purpose is? I’m so-and-so years old and I’ve always thought that no one knows the real answer to that question.
Luckily for us, success leaves clues.
To define your purpose, I highly recommend Jack Canfield’s The Life Purpose Exercise as published in The Success Principles (2015, p. 27). I’ve listed the steps below along with examples from when I did the exercise (yes, that’s my life purpose down there):
Step One: List two of your unique personal qualities (e.g.: single-minded determination and unshakable faith in the inherent goodness of life).
Step Two: List one or two ways you enjoy expressing those qualities when interacting with others (e.g.: to inspire and instil hope).
Step Three: Assume the world is perfect right now. What does it look and feel like? Write your answer as a statement, using the present tense and describing the ultimate, perfect condition of a perfect world – seen through your eyes and felt through your heart (e.g.: all dreams, no matter how big or small, are achievable).
Step Four: Combine steps one to three into a single statement: My purpose is to use my single-minded determination and unshakable faith in the inherent goodness of life to inspire others and instil hope that all dreams, no matter how big or small, are achievable.
If you want to know more about how knowing your life purpose plays into the grand design of creating the blissful life you’ve always wanted for yourself, check out the resource below:
RESOURCE:
How To Live A Blissful Life – The ultimate guide to living the life you deserve.
How to be a happy person step 2: Know your values
Knowing what you value most is essential to becoming a happy person because your values are a very important part of you.
Like the North Star, they guide your behaviour, providing you with a personal code of conduct that you must honour if you want to be fulfilled (and ignore, if you wish to be miserable).
So, make a list of what you value most.
This can be anything you want – security, freedom, family, spiritual development, happiness, learning. Scott Jeffrey of CEOsage, recommends looking back at both your positive and negative experiences and draw your list of values from there.
Once you have that list, you can then check anything you do against it. Are the things you spend time doing just now aligned with the values you consider important?
If yes, then keep on doing what you’ve been doing.
But if not (and if you’re not happy, then they probably aren’t), then you may want to reconsider, revise or altogether stop spending so much of your time and therefore, your energy on it.
Want to get a headstart?
How to be a happy person step 3: Know your needs
The third step to becoming a happy person requires you to closely examine exactly what you need and start asking yourself if you are actually meeting them.
Is this important?
If you wish to be a happy person, then yes. Unmet needs can keep you from living authentically and make you lose your way.
Take care of yourself. You are your first advocate and you show others how to treat you when you put yourself first.
In other words, you need to treat yourself the way you wish other people to treat you.
If you’re like most people, you have a need to be acknowledged, to be valued but most of all, to be loved. Showering yourself with the love you deserve is a key ingredient to being a happy person.
How to be a happy person step 4: Know your passions
The next step to being happy with yourself and becoming a happy person is to follow your bliss. In other words, know your passions. Jim Rohn asked, “What turns you on…to wake up early, stay up late and hit it all day?“
Is it true that you know who you are and what you truly enjoy in life?
Not all the time, unfortunately.
As children, we keep getting told that we need to grow up or that the things we want, we cannot have.
We can’t study art or music because they don’t pay us enough money.
You can’t become an astronaut because no one from your country ever gets to go to space.
You can’t do martial arts because you’re a girl.
You can’t wear pink or like unicorns because you’re a boy.
And on and on it goes – society suppressing the things that bring us joy.
So, I completely understand if you have no idea what your passion could be.
But guess what?
You can take The Passion Test to help you find out.
And once you know the answer to the question, “What is your passion?” the next step is to make sure that the things you do align with it.
How to be a happy person step 5: Live from within
When you start discovering the things that are truly important to you – your purpose, your values, your needs, your passions, your love for yourself – and are able to live according to this purpose, you will naturally feel a lightening within.
You will become the happy person you’ve always wanted to be.
Spiritualists keep saying that what is going on in your outside world is a reflection of your inner world.
In other words, if what you see happening in your life is not what you want, then go deep within and find out why.
Increase your awareness of your inner wisdom by regularly reflecting in silence.
Start meditating if you haven’t already. The benefits are profound, well known and scientifically proven. If you don’t know how to meditate, I recommend this no-fluff course to start off.
Take the time to go out and commune with nature – even if it’s just a wee wander at the local park.
Breathe deeply to quiet your distracted mind.
Feel your feelings, accept that all of them are valid – no matter how negative they seem – and then let them go.
How to be a happy person step 6: Honour your strengths and embrace your weakness
In the book, Be Excellent At Anything, the authors take the time to highlight the importance of both honouring your strength and embracing your weakness.
We have a negativity bias and tend to look at all the things that we find are terribly wrong about us.
Maybe we think we’re not smart enough, fast enough, patient enough, kind enough, wealthy enough, connected enough to be happy. And we worry about all these.
For example, I definitely know that I could be more forgiving and more patient with myself and others.
In response, almost every self-help expert end up encouraging us to just focus on our strengths – forgetting somehow, that strengths and weaknesses are actually just two sides of the same coin.
After all, even our strengths can become a weakness if we don’t use them correctly. The philosopher Gregory Bateson was once quoted as saying that, “there is always an optimal value beyond which anything is toxic, no matter what: oxygen, sleep, psychotherapy, philosophy.”
Antakolouthia, the Stoics called it – the mutual entailment of virtues. In other words, no virtue is limitless – each has a threshold beyond which it crosses from strength and transforms into weakness.
Struggling with that explanation?
I’ll let the book give you some examples: “Honesty in the absence of compassion becomes cruelty. Tenacity unmediated by flexibility congeals into rigidity. Confidence untempered by humility is arrogance. Courage without prudence is recklessness. Because all virtues are connected to others, any strengths overused ultimately becomes a liability.”
So on day 6, I invite you to list your strengths and then below them describe how you act when you over-rely on them. What do you do, for example, when you’re too self-reliant, too focussed on your job or too determined to win?
If you get stuck, ask those closest to you to help identify these. Or you can watch the video above and follow along.
Once you have this list, you might want to put it somewhere you can see it to remind yourself that you need to embrace both negative and positive aspects of yourself in order to be happy with yourself and become a happy person.
How to be a happy person step 7: Serve others
When you live authentically, when you are true to who you are, when you live your purpose, you might find yourself overflowing with so much happiness that you want to share all of it with the people around you.
You can do this in a number of ways, all of which are based on either volunteering your time or your money.
Go to a local charity and volunteer your time once or twice a week.
Or you can choose a cause you believe in and donate some money to help.
Do what feels right to you.
It doesn’t matter what it is exactly. All that matters is that you do something selfless – for someone who can’t return the favour – and that you do it from the heart.
How to be happy with yourself quotes
✦ “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” – Jim Rohn
✦ “The only thing that will make you happy is being happy with who you are.” – Goldie Hawn
✦ “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi
✦ “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
✦ “Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy. No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you.” – Ralph Marston
✦ “Happiness is a mindset for your journey, not the result of your destination.” – Shawn Achor
✦ “You are without needs. There is nothing that you need in order to be perfectly happy. You only think that there is. Your deepest, most perfect happiness will be found within, and once you find it, nothing exterior to your Self can match it. Nor can anything destroy it.” – Neale Donald Walsch
✦ “Until you are happy with who you are, you’ll never be happy with what you have.” – Zig Ziglar
✦ “The first thing to do to become happier, paradoxically, is to accept painful emotions; to accept them as part and parcel of being alive.” – Tal Ben-Shahar
✦ “If you want others to be happy, practise compassion. If you want to be happy, practise compassion.” – Dalai Lama XIV
✦ “Happiness is an inside job. Don’t assign anyone else that much power over your life.” – Mandy Hale
✦ “If you want to be happy, be.” – Leo Tolstoy
✦ “Learn to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want.” – Jim Rohn
✦ “Happiness is a decision, not an experience. You can decide to be happy without what you thought you needed in order to be happy, and you will be. Your experience is the result of your decision, not the cause of it.” – Neale Donald Walsch
✦ “Happiness is not an accident; it’s an art. You don’t hope for happiness. You plan for happiness. You have to weave happiness like a tapestry.”
Final tips on how to be a happy person
These seven steps to be happy with yourself are what I recommend to anyone who wants to know how to be a happy person.
You can obviously adapt it to your own situation – add a couple of steps here and there – but in the end, these are all you really need to do.
They’re simple enough but are they easy?
Not always.
Actually, they are easy to do. How quick and easy is it to write something down on paper? But living them is something else entirely.
To live according to your purpose, your values, your passion – that’s not easy.
To love yourself completely that you can embrace your strengths and your weaknesses – that’s not easy.
To share yourself with the world as you move authentically through it – that’s not easy.
But then life isn’t always easy is it?
It’s both exhilarating and terrifying – like going on a rollercoaster ride.
As the rollercoaster gains momentum, you find yourself clinging for dear life.
Sometimes you’re screaming.
Sometimes you’re laughing.
And even if you’re terrified to your soul, you can’t get off until the ride is over.
But is it worth it?
Oh, yes!
What do you think? Are there any steps we haven’t covered? Drop them in the comments below.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in August 2019 and has been completely revamped and updated for relevance and comprehensiveness.
Thanks for this article. You have given a lot of great Reflections on being a happy person. There’s a couple things that I think helped me be happy. One of them is my workouts because I really like working out. Also I like to go into nature. I like doing wealthy affiliate because I feel like I’ll be able to have Financial Freedom one day and live life on my own terms as much as possible.
Thanks for popping by. Glad to know you liked our post. 🙂
I really enjoyed reading your article. Thank you for this; it was exactly what I needed to hear today. Frankly these steps would have benefited me long ago but better late than never right?
I always thought I was a decently rounded happy person, but as of late, I need a little help reminding myself of my good qualities and my reasons for “bliss.” Your article put me on the path to finding these within myself again. I found the Dalai Lama’s book about happiness very enlightening too.
I am going to check out some of the other books you recommend and bookmark your site so I can catch all your newest posts. So glad I found your blog! Thanks again!
Hi Shan, that’s excellent. We’re glad we were able to help in any way.
True, life is full of ups and downs and it is not a rollercoaster ride of all smiles. Sometimes tragedy strikes and that’s going to happen. I would ask you too how you can keep all smiles. Its something really hard for me. With these steps, those smiles should come easy. I see that you’re saying we should embrace our weakness. That’s something I find hard to do. I don’t even accept that I have a weakness. Thank you for this post. It was truly inspiring.
Thanks for commenting, Henderson. Glad you found the post helpful.
Life has no purpose, save the one you give it. Yep…..this is the one that hit home for me in your article. For many years, I walked around waiting for things to happen. It hasn’t been until about the last 3 years that I realized I am here to make young women stronger, especially my nieces and the students I teach. I can inspire them with my personal journey. And when I see them begin to blossom and trust my words and my actions, this is what makes me happy.
I wish more people would realize that it isn’t things that will make them happy.
Hi Kim, I love your purpose. Keep going! The world needs more people like you to inspire our women and help them see their worth.