I’m a big believer that your life is basically a sum of all the choices you make. The better your choices, the better opportunity to lead a happy life. – Karen Salmansohn
Even though there are tons of things you can do to live a happier life, I’ve narrowed our focus down to the 10 skills you can build that I believe are the most important to increase happiness. By building these skills, you can start to live a happy life.
Before learning how to build these skills to live a happy life, you may want to take this happiness quiz, which tells you your scores, so that you know which skills are more likely to help you live a happier life.
1. Live a happy life by creating a plan for your happiness.
You wouldn’t bake a cake without a recipe. You wouldn’t go to a place you’ve never been without a map. And you shouldn’t try to build happiness without a plan either. Creating a good happiness plan is what takes you from where you are now to the happy life you envision.
To create a happiness plan, follow these steps:
- Clarify why you want a happy life.
- Clarify when you’ll build the skills that lead to a happy life.
- Decide which happiness skills to build.
- Decide in what order you will build the skills that lead to a happy life.
- Commit to your goal to create a happier life.
- Learn how you will build your happiness skills.
2. Develop yourself to live a happy life.
Remember when something you wanted to do seemed impossible? Maybe it was that first time you rode a bike, or drove a car, or asked someone out on a date. Then you did it and realized you had it in you all along. Creating a happy life is the same way — the first step is believing in yourself and your ability to live happily. Then you’ll see that you had it in you all along. This is why engaging in personal development is key to living a happy life.
Here’s how to build your personal development skills:
- Develop a growth mindset that focuses on your belief in your ability to create a happy life.
- Identify your values.
- Define a happy life in your own words.
- Record your progress towards personal development.
- Get some help developing yourself to build a happy life.
3. Think positive to create a happy life.
We all know someone who will find the one bad thing in every situation. Maybe this person is us. If we learn to think positive instead, we can make even the most obnoxious situations more enjoyable, creating a happier life from the one we have now. Every moment of every day is a little better, because we can find the silver linings. This is why positive thinking is key to a happier life.
Here are just some of the ways to think positive:
- Help your brain get used to thinking positive.
- Start your day by imagining the way it looks in your happy life.
- Savor positive moments.
- Capitalize on positive moments.
- Pay attention to the positive things.
- Create a collection of positive images or positive quotes.
- Think positive, but think negative when you need to.
- Practice gratitude.
- Stop minimizing your successes.
4. Boost your self-confidence to create a happy life.
If we don’t have self-confidence, it’s easy to think that there’s something fundamentally wrong with us — that there’s nothing we can do to change ourselves and create the happy life we desire. But self-confidence is actually a skill. When we learn how to think, feel, and act in ways that make us a person we really love, we can be more self-confident and, as a result, live happily more easily.
Here are a few ways to build self-confidence to create a happier life:
- Practice self-compassion.
- Imagine your best self.
- Know your strengths.
- Celebrate your successes.
5. Create work-life balance for a happy life.
Are you exhausted, demotivated, and in desperate need of a break? By learning how to create better work-life balance, you can make better use of the limited time you do have in your life. As a result, you end up enjoying all parts of your life a bit more.
