How to get Happier

I like reading things about happiness as happiness is always one thing that we pursue in our whole life. Sometimes, I think what the meaning of life is. That’s big and complicated question that people rarely get the answer. Many philosophies spent their whole life to explore this secret but ended with nothing. But I guess one of the reasonable answer to this question is pursuing happiness.

I have read several books about how to make us happier. One of them is very helpful, called Happier, by Tal Ben-Shahar. He is a lecturer at Harvard University. He also has an open course that is available online, called positive psychology.  I finished his book and his video class; both are talking about the same thing: How to get happier！

Yeah，that’s what I want to know. In his book and classes, there are a few things worth paying attention to.

Firstly, you need to learn what kind of person you really are. Four types of people are listed in this book, “ Rat Racer”, “Hedonist”， “Nihilist” and the “really happy one”. It tells you many things that you probably didn’t realized until you read the book.  That’s interesting.

Secondly, our life has a lot to do with education, work, and relationships. If we can handle these, we can handle almost everything in our life. He taught me to maintain a good relationship and have a right attitude towards success. That’s really useful.

I like the ‘Happy booster’ part in this book. According to another book-Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, we are happy when we are in flow.

In terms of talking about the benefits of being in flow, these two books have the same view. When we are doing things that we really enjoy, then we are in flow. That means we feel good. It doesn’t matter what kind of things we are doing-it could be writing, reading, singing, cooking, cleaning or anything else. The most important thing is that you do like doing that thing. It will make us happier and productive in many aspects.

Another thing that I like is balance. The balance we should pursue in our whole life. How much time should we spend on learning , working, playing or maintaining our relationship? That’s the question. How do we weigh each of these? There is no right or wrong way to live. You need to choose some general rules to think about and finally make your own plan how to live.

The book also tells us life is good! We used to pursue things that we cannot get or we have already lost but often forget to cherish the things that we have now. That is a bad thinking habit. This habit will stop you from getting happier. So give this attitude up and try to live at present.

Live at present is a powerful phrase. Try to do meditation sometimes, try to forget past and future and feel present temporarily. That is a workable way to me.  It will help you to release a lot of pressure in your current life. Keep this attitude: if there is nothing we can do about it, then just accept it and try to do something else.

Here is a funny joke I have heard before. Hope it helps with whatever bothers you. Whoever made this joke is brilliant but we don’t know who this person is.

Why worry?

In this life there are only two things to worry about.
Either you will be rich or poor.
If you are rich, there is nothing to worry about.
But if you are poor, there are only two things to worry about.
Either you will be healthy or sick.
If you are healthy, there is nothing to worry about.
But if you are sick, there are two things to worry about.
Either you will live or you will die.
If you live, there is nothing to worry about.
If you die there are only two things to worry about.
You will either go to heaven or to hell.
If you go to heaven, there will be nothing to worry about.
If you go to hell, you'll be so darn busy shaking hands with all your friends,
 you won't have time to worry!
SO WHY WORRY?


My Website: We live a healthy life!