How to get Happy?

While not all of my posts are happy ones, yet the name of my blog is 'Rebecca's Happy Blog', I will strive to make it happy when I can. So how do we achieve being happy? I know I've strived for 'it' in all the wrong ways, but, have learned from those experiences, so that's positive. An American psychologist and author, Dan Baker, wrote a book called 'What Happy People Know' and he claims he's found the 6 key tools for people to use to find their own 'happy'. Because if there's one thing I've learned, only you can make yourself happy. You can't rely on others. It's up to you.

These 6 tools to happiness are tools which can help us avoid what he calls the four ‘happiness traps’. The traps are: the ‘Trying-to-Buy-Happiness Trap’, the ‘Trying-to-find-Happiness-Through-Pleasure Trap’, the ‘Trying-to-Find-Happiness-by-overcoming Weaknesses Trap’, and the ‘Trying-to-Force-Happiness Trap’. Yep, I've visited those traps before. They seem pretty self-explanatory and one can understand how one can get caught, but what are the 6 tools to avoid them and find authentic happiness? How do we achieve being happy? Well, here we go...according to Dan Baker:

- Appreciation: The outward-bound kind of love which gives everything and asks for nothing, making it pure and strong.
- Choice: Having no choices leads inexorably towards depression and anxiety. Baker says that “anyone can choose the course of their lives, but only happy people do it”.
- Personal Power: A proactive force which gives the individual power over their feelings and their fate. It is made up of two constitutent parts: taking action and taking responsibility.
- Leading with your strengths: Focusing on strengths, rather than retreating into focusing on weaknesses, enables a swifter solving (and resolving) of situations.
- The power of language: Language can be used in a healthy or horrible way, and words have immense power to constrain or to liberate.
- Multidimensional Living: Putting equal energy into the three main components of life (relationships, health, and purpose) is the final key to living a truly happy life.

These are all pretty straight forward, no big surprise, but totally make sense and are worth remembering. Nobody said life would be easy...here's hoping it is most of the time, but we are the creators of our own destiny and we do have the capability of being really happy, so if you're not quite there, hopefully these 6 tools will help. Here's to happiness!