For more than a decade, I’ve been exploring the best ways that people can live happily. Over the last year, I even wrote a book on happiness: Outsmart Your Smartphone: Conscious Tech Habits for Finding Happiness, Balance, and Connection IRL.
Even though there are tons of things you can do to be happier, here are 18 of my favorites:
1. Find out what is likely to increase happiness, for you.
How are you supposed to build the right happiness skills if you don’t know which ones you are struggling with in the first place? This is why it’s helpful to take the well-being quiz to explore your happiness strengths and weaknesses. Get a better understanding of what these skills are all about, and learn how to improve upon your weaknesses and build your “happiness strengths.”
2. Build meaningful connections.
Did you know we enjoy just about everything more when we do it with others? This is why one of the best things you can do for your happiness is to build meaningful relationships and social connections. To strengthen these relationships, practice kindness and gratitude towards the people you care about.
3. Get off the hedonic treadmill.
The “hedonic treadmill” refers to the tendency for us to return to our original happiness level over time. To boost your level of happiness in the long-term, you have to get out of your comfort zone and keep adding variety to your happiness plan. (I provide an entire chapter on how to do this in my new book.)
4. Hold yourself accountable for being happier.
We are more likely to do the things we say we’re going to do if we schedule time in our calendars to do them. We can also more easily stay on track if we get accountability from others. So if you really want to be happier, don’t let yourself get away with being unhappy.
5. Practice self-kindness.
In difficult moments, it’s essential to practice self-kindness. Blaming ourselves when we feel lonely is not helpful. So limit your hurtful self-talk, engage in some self-care, and just generally give yourself a break. Perhaps a walk in nature or a day at the spa may be helpful for getting yourself into a self-kindness mood.
6. Connect in real life for more durable happiness.
Connecting in real life may not be as easy as it once was. We often default to using our smartphones — it’s easier, and now it’s culturally accepted. But we can decrease our loneliness and increase happiness if we build stronger in-person connections. We do this by looking people in the eyes, listening, being mindful, and choosing not be distracted by our technologies.
7. Fuel your happiness by learning how to feel better about yourself.
You wouldn’t practice math to get better at cooking. And you wouldn’t learn another language to lose weight. To be happier, you’ll likely make more progress by focusing on the skills that are most closely linked to happiness. In my research, the skill that usually turns out to be most closely linked to happiness is: positive self-views. Learning how to feel better about yourself — for example, by imagining your best possible self, noting your positive qualities, or identifying your strengths — can go a long way to increasing your happiness.
8. Make positive memories.
It might seem silly, but if you’re new to positive thinking, it can help to memorize positive words. This act of memorizing positive words forces your brain to activate the regions of your brain associated with these words (i.e., the positive brain regions). When any region of the brain is activated, it gets stronger. So this practice can make positive concepts, memories, and ideas more accessible and easily activated in your brain. So when you try to think positive about something in your real life, your brain will likely have an easier time.
Not sure which words are positive? Psychologists have painstakingly measured the emotional content of thousands of words to determine how positive and negative they are. You can do some googling to create your own list or use my positive word flashcard book.
There are lots of fun ways to build strong positive neural networks using positive words. For example, you could memorize five positive words and set an alarm that reminds you to recall these words, in reverse order, later that evening.
Or, you could print out positive words on strips of paper (or use or flashcard book), cut each word into 2 pieces, shuffle them all together and then match them back up. For example, the word “laughter” would be cut into “laug” and “hter”. To match the word pieces, your brain has to not only retrieve the word laughter, but it also has to search through lots of other positive information to find the word it’s looking for.
If you’re struggling to think positive, these positive memory activities are a great place to start because they are easy, fun, simple, fast, and they can help develop your brain in ways that may make it easier to think positive in other ways.
9. Find those silver linings to make each moment a bit happier.
Everything we experience can be a bummer if we choose to see it that way. But when you search for the benefits or silver linings in your life, you may be surprised to discover a lot of good. Keep practicing to increase the positive and decrease the negative to cultivate happiness. Also, this skill has been linked to a better ability to cope with stress and be more resilient.
10. Take breaks from social media (which may harm happiness).
Facebook tends to have a negative effect on our happiness. By choosing to take breaks from Facebook —or changing the way we use social media — we can boost our happiness.
11. Rewire your negative patterns of thinking.
Let’s face it: Sometimes we are what’s making us miserable. We just can’t stop thinking about how so-and-so wronged us, or how our life didn’t turn out as we hoped. Negative thought processes — like worrying, ruminating, self-judgment, and fearing rejection — just keep us miserable and unable to move forward. When you find yourself thinking negatively, pause and refocus your thoughts. In time, your brain will be able to do this more easily on its own.
12. Find clarity for more happiness.
How are you supposed to move your life forward when you don’t even know what you feel or why you feel it? To become happier, try to gain clarity on your emotions; find out what you’re feeling and what caused those feelings.
13. Live your values.
When you start to explore yourself and your values, you may discover that you’ve known all along what would make you happy, but you’re just not doing it. To be happier, get clear on your values, so that you can live your life autonomously, according to your own principles and values.
14. Speak up and be yourself.
When we let people walk all over us, we’re unhappy. But when we advocate for our own needs assertively and express ourselves, we feel more in control of our lives. Learning how to express yourself can help you overcome interpersonal challenges, which can make you unhappy.
15. Find your purpose to live a happier life.
We all want to feel like we made some sort of positive impact in this world, but sometimes we are uncertain of the type of impact we want to make. Explore exactly what gives you a sense of purpose and how you want to pursue this purpose to give your life a greater sense of meaning.
16. Rethink how you spend your time.
When we feel bad, sometimes we just want to retreat into a corner and hide. Other times, our endless to-do list may leave us too exhausted to go out and be social. But opting to stay alone every night with our phones, watching Netflix, or playing on Facebook can really get us stuck in unhappiness. We’ve created a life for ourselves that deprives of us of meaningful social connection, and the only way to get out of it is to start living differently.
17. Do more things that make you happy with other people.
Engaging in face-to-face social interactions tends to improve our mood and reduce depression. Activities that involve other people — such as attending religious services or engaging in sports — are also likely to have positive effects on our mental health. So find ways to be around people more.
18. Generate a sense of awe.
Awe (like when we witness the birth of new baby, or a majestic mountain) makes time seem like it’s standing still and helps us be more open to connecting. Something about feeling small in the context of a big world appears to help us see ourselves as part of a whole, which may help us feel less alone. So expose yourself to something that creates awe — like landscapes, new experiences, or new foods.
If you need more help building happiness in the digital age, go to: berkeleywellbeing.com or check out my book: Outsmart Your Smartphone: Conscious Tech Habits for Finding Happiness, Balance, and Connection IRL.