Learning how to be happy is the most important thing.
Or how to live peacefully if you prefer.
We all want to be and feel good and today I will teach you 6 steps that will make you happy, forever.
Possible? Yup! Here's what I propose:
- Learn how to experience happy emotions.
- Understanding how work affects your happiness.
- Remove the slices of ham from your eyes.
- How to deal with problems the right way.
- Which rule determines if you are happy or not.
- What escapes you but could make you happy forever.
Ready, or ready for this journey?
How to be happy by learning to experience positive emotions
Before we start I want you to take a test for measure your ability to live a happy life. It will also be useful as a starting point to test the advice I am offering you.
It will allow you to understand if today you are capable of living a deeply happy life.
Start quiz Continue Complete the form below to see the results Leave your name and email to subscribe to my newsletter and receive the test results. Your name: Your email: I consent to the processing of my data in compliance with the privacy regulations. Show results
You can't try, at the same time, opposite emotions such as anger and joy.
You may feel anger and two seconds later joy, and maybe three seconds later anger again.
But you can't feel two opposite emotions at the same time.
This means that as long as you feel a negative emotion inside you, you will not be happy.
If you think about it, this is obvious: Could you feel happy while experiencing despair, boredom, sadness, or anxiety?
No, you couldn't.
The first step towards happiness is therefore learn to experience positive emotions.
You must be able to transform the negative ones you may be experiencing into positive ones, freeing your heart to make room for happiness.
This is the first step on the ladder that allows you to reach happiness.
And it also seems obvious to me 😉
If I wanted to explain how to do it, though, I certainly could have written another guide even longer than this one. And that's what I did!
It's called Emotional Independence, and I recommend that you read it as soon as we finish.
Being happy is easier if you don't work ...
When I say work, you think of fatigue, imposition, time, boredom, tiredness, getting up early in the morning, holidays, stress, problems, misunderstandings, crisis.
Are they positive things? Or are they things that create negative emotions in you, at least to a large extent?
We could make work something beautiful, exciting, wonderful, exciting. And it would be a real revolution.
If you want to live a happy life, you have to transform your work into a passion, in something that has a meaning, a purpose.
Forget anyone who tells you you can do what you like after your hours are done, or on weekends.
If you loved someone madly, would it be okay for you to spend most of your time with others and a few hours with them?
I say no.
Each of us has passions, dreams, something that we feel inside as a gift. You too feel you can fulfill yourself by doing something you love.
If you want to be happy, you have to give a purpose to everything you do.
Try to answer these questions:
- Does the work you do serve to improve the lives of others?
- Will your daily work make this world better, even in your little one?
- Will what commits your time have a positive impact, will it make a difference?
- Do you get up every day with enthusiasm for the work you have to do?
- Are you waiting for retirement or don't you care because you like what you do today too much?
- Do you love your job?
These are fundamental questions, don't think you can be happy if you spend most of your time doing something that you find boring, useless, which to you means just a salary.
Consider that the same applies both if you are studying, because this takes up many hours of your life, and if you have nothing to do.
Maybe you don't work or study, but the hours of the day are 24 for you too. How do you use them?
Take up the questions I just asked you and ask them, not referring to a job, but to your day, your interests, the commitments with which you use your time.
If you want to be happy, after turning your emotions into positive, you have to make your passions work. You have to live off the things you love. It will also be the surest way to succeed!
Obviously this is a very large chapter, but I have dedicated it a special service, and free, precisely for this second step towards happiness: how to find work and change your life.
I invite you to find out what it is because if you waste a lot of your time away from the joy of doing what you love, you will never be truly happy.
Does it make sense to continue your relationship as a couple?
Answer my test questions to find out.
It will allow you to understand if your relationship has the characteristics to last or not.
To be happy you have to see happiness
The main reason people aren't happy is that they cannot see happiness.
Almost everyone who writes to me asking me to help them improve their life has this problem.
They see troubles, physical ailments, problems, little money, difficulties at work, a disastrous society, disappointed people around them, crises, reasons for anxiety and fear in every corner.
Does it happen to you too?
If you want to be happy, you have to open your eyes and always look for the positive side in every situation.
There is always the downside, and for every negative event there is always something positive, useful, constructive to be grasped.
In the news of a car accident in which some people were seriously injured, we think it's impossible.
Injuries and blood are the thing that attracts attention, along with the culprits of the misfortune.
But why don't you consider the readiness of the rescuers? Or the determination and the commitment of doctors trying to save the life of the wounded?
And the courage Whose stopped to give first aid and call for help?
These are positive things that we almost never consider, but there are.
The first step towards happiness is knowing how to experience positive emotions.
I assure you that if you fill your mind with problems, diseases, disasters, disappointments, betrayals and cruelty, it will be difficult not to have negative emotions instead.
You have to learn a look for positive work in every situation.
An exercise that I really like is this:
- Stop and write on a piece of paper all the positive things you see around you.
- Sounds, smells, objects, people, behaviors, even trivial details are fine.
- They don't have to be wonderful things, they just have to cute, useful, beautiful, pleasant.
- Write everything you see, make a very long list and sets an alarm on your cell phone in a couple of hours.
- When the alarm goes off, repeat the exercise, wherever you are, set the alarm again and go on like this all day.
- Repeat this exercise every day, from when you get up to when you go to sleep, at least for a week.
I assure you that the positive effect on your mood will be amazing. This must become your vision, be spontaneous for you to grasp the good things around you.
Do you think it is deceptive and ignores reality?
Take the example of the accident again. Focusing on the positive doesn't erase what happened, it changes your perception.
The problems are there: I'm not telling you to ignore them, but to fix them.
Difficult situations exist: you don't have to pretend nothing has happened, but change them.
Now, with the next step, you will better see how, but remember that the positive aspects exist, surround you and always are more numerous than the negative ones.
If you want to be happy, you have to observe reality, all of it, not just the worst part that, front row television, they want you to see.
How to live calm and happy by solving every problem
Your happiness doesn't depend on the number of problems you have.
It is not by eliminating the problems that you will be happy, but learning to live with them first and solve them later.
The right way to do this is to accept reality.
Accepting it does not, however, mean undergoing it. They are two very different things.
Let's take the example of a person who has lost the use of his legs.
To suffer reality means to live it passively. He resigns himself to his condition, but he rejects it and therefore suffers from it everyday.
It 'does not matter because everything is tiring and uncomfortable, drags on maybe leaving the house a little because everything would remind him of his old life, when he could walk.
He complains of everything, he sometimes thinks that life has been unfair, that God has been bad. It looks like it no longer has not even make sense to live and goes through his life waiting for.
Accepting reality means live it actively. Accept his condition because he knows he can't change it, and begins to think about how to best live in the new situation.
It's not what he wanted, but he accepts it and does not suffer from it anymore. It does everything it can do, he goes out and works anyway, he strives for find new ways of doing things he did before.
Ha enthusiasm because he knows he can do a lot anyway, e it focuses on what it can do and not about things that are not good for him.
If what I wrote seems simplistic to you, think about how many people they work in difficult conditions, to how many even become sports even without the legs, or who does the same thing as all of us without half of our physical capabilities.
Accepting reality means understanding that it's a fact and that problems should not be rejected, but solved.
Here are some questions that will help you with this:
- What can I do despite everything?
- How can I improve the situation?
- How can I have fun despite this situation?
- What opportunity do I have despite the problems?
- How could I fix them?
- If something fails me, what could I change to make it through?
- What's good about this situation?
Remember what I said in the previous step: there is always good in every situation, it is only up to us to look for it and make it something precious.
Some will see a pond, others a fertile ground to create food if they just reclaim that land.
If you accept reality and stop fighting it, you can change it and be happy. Not at the end, but immediately, while you modify it, you work every day to give your best.
If you refuse it, you will not change anything: reality really cares little about your tastes, but you will be sick and you will never be happy.
You have discovered that you can eliminate negative emotions, that you have to turn your passions into a job, that there is always good and that if you accept reality you will be happy and you will do great things.
Now I reveal the rule that determines whether you will live a happy life or not.
How to be happy in life: just love
Your happiness is directly proportional to the love you give.
First consideration: loving does not mean being in a relationship. In fact I wrote love that you give and it doesn't matter if you receive it.
Wait, I repeat: to be happy it doesn't matter if people love you.
Clear?
Have you read the guide on how to manage negative emotions?
If you notice, I'll explain that your emotions depend on you. There is a video in that guide explaining to you that no one can make you happy.
If you want to be, you don't have to ask for love, you have to love instead.
Second clarification: loving is a way of acting, thinking, living, behaving, choosing, speaking.
I am not referring simply to a feeling. Loving is action.
When I say that to be happy you must love, it means acting with love.
I clarify it better when I explain what it means to love, an in-depth study of vital importance (otherwise I would have written it!) To live a happy life.
But that's not enough if you really want to understand how to be happy.
Third clarification: love doesn't have to ask for anything, it doesn't even pretend to be appreciated or reciprocated.
Also in this case it is essential that you understand what unconditional love is, and coincidentally I wrote an in-depth study on this too 😉
Read them both right away, because otherwise you don't fully understand what I'm talking about.
If you want to be happy you have to love. You must act with love unconditionally.
Someone, at this point, tells me: but with those who don't deserve it?
Let's put it like this: you have a big problem that makes you feel bad, you don't sleep at night, you constantly feel anxiety, a real disaster and you can't take it anymore.
But I have treated you very badly in the past and whenever I can I do everything to humiliate you, offend you or make your life impossible.
You sure wouldn't just come to love me!
But what if the solution to your problem was to be nice to me despite my words and my behavior?
Imagine that if you started being nice to me, talking to me calmly, doing me favors and helping me, even if I continued to misbehave, your problem it would resolve itself day after day.
I treat you badly, but if you treat me with love, your problems disappear. What do you do, do you keep your problems and continue to feel bad?
I really think not. Unless you enjoy being sick, to each his own!
What am I trying to make you understand?
That if you want to be happy and solve your problems, you have to love and care deeply about what other people do.
You think about doing the best thing in the world: love.
If others like to complicate their lives and get sick, why should you let it ruin yours too?
Aren't they kind, helpful, loving, understanding, fair, honest? It's their problem.
If you do all the things that you don't see in them, and you do them right to them, you'll be happy.
Isn't that what you want? Don't you want to feel good?
And what do you care if they hurt themselves?
Do one smart thing, for real: love and be happy, you will see that it will also be the most useful thing you can ever do for them.
At this point I recommend a perfect practical guide for this fifth step. Learning to love: the art of being happy. A good title, don't you think?
Are you a selfish person?
Answer the 7 questions in my selfishness test.
It will allow you to understand if (and to what extent) you are a selfish person.Start quiz Continue Complete the form below to see the results Leave your name and email to subscribe to my newsletter and receive the test result. Your name: Your email: I consent to the processing of my data in compliance with the privacy regulations. Show results
You are part of a wonderful design
What's the point of everything you do? Why do you get up every morning, struggle, face problems, struggle, commit yourself?
What is it worth all the daily work to improve your life, all the difficulties or misunderstandings, challenges or pains that are part of your life?
If you don't make sense, if your life doesn't have a deep meaning, authentic that goes beyond your own presence on this earth, you will never be happy.
Living positive emotions or becoming optimistic (step 3!) Requires a basic belief: there is good and it is worth fighting for it.
Love, then, as I have explained it to you, will sometimes seem even absurd and self-defeating, if we do not understand the most important thing: you are part of a wonderful design.
What? That of God.
To be clear, I tell you right away that I will not start talking to you about religion, church, dogmas, rules, liturgies and the like. They don't even interest me.
I am talking to you about God, about faith, about spirituality, about freedom, love and happiness. This interests me, and I believe interest you too.
Each of us must make sense. If you look for it in people (I live for you), or in things (I live for my work that I love), it will be a disaster.
It can't make sense of something that you give it to. You think?
Reading a very beautiful book, The 7 rules to be successful, by Stephen R. Covey, I found a passage where he explains that to live a full and fulfilling life, I say happy, we must know the territory in which we live.
If you want to reach a street in Turin, for example, you need to know the city. If you want to live happily you have to understand life and the meaning of existence.
Obviously we all use maps, but what happens, the author points out, if I use the map of Milan in Rome?
That I will never reach my destination.
God's plan is the territory. Jesus' teaching is the map.
If you want to be happy, just do what Jesus indicates, and you will realize that what he recommends is very little: love God and love others.
The previous passage, at least in part.
To love God means to accept reality, which is always part of your design, and use theto your life to serve this design.
How? Loving others, acting with love towards everyone.
Not only because this will make you feel good, but above all because God asks you to.
Do you know why he does it? Certainly not to punish you if you don't listen to him. But to see you happy.
Happiness has its rules and who, better than the One who invented it, could know them?
For me, faith is never a rigid rule and condemnation or punishment. Never.
The rules that Jesus gave are none other than the secret, the recipe, for a happy and wonderful life.
Do you want to be happy? God is the secret: understanding that you too are part of His plan is the secret.
As mentioned, we all need to make sense of our life.
You can look for it anywhere, but if you persist in moving around Rome, holding the map of Milan in your hand, it will all be wasted effort and you will not arrive at your destination: live a happy life.
When I write that Spirituality is the way to be happy I am referring to this, to the fact that it is the most important aspect of our life.
Conclusions
We have reached the end of this very important guide.
I want to quickly recap all the steps that I have shown you so that they are clear to you and are fixed in your mind.
Here how to be happy in spite of everything and everyone:
- Learn to experience positive emotions by eliminating the negative ones that paralyze you (this I call emotional independence).
- Turn your passions into a job, live doing what you love and that will make a difference (find your way).
- Learn to be optimistic by always discovering the positive things in life.
- Accept reality, take action to change it, and face it with confidence and enthusiasm.
- Love, without ifs and buts.
- Feel part of God's plan and trust him (if you have doubts find out how and why to believe in God).
I assure you that this recipe is not subject to external conditioning.
If you follow all the steps, nothing and no one will ever be able to take away from you, or deny you, a happy life.
Everything will always be in your hands, as it always has.
