Happiness Guide A Step By Step Guide On How To Find Happiness

Looking for a happiness guide or manual that will give you a step by step approach to creating a life of happiness and personal gratification? I hope this post inspires you to upgrade your life a notch or two.

When I went to write this post, I realized that finding happiness is really the ultimate goal of this whole website. I wanted to offer advice to other guys about things that I have learned in my lifetime that I believe will increase a person’s level of happiness in life. I just wanted to share my knowledge with people who are seeking it. It is my hope that my readers will grab a nugget or two of ideas to apply to their own lives that will help them to become happier people.

Two most important prerequisites for finding happiness:

1) Realize that your mind, your thoughts and your opinions are all dynamic in nature. They change and you have the power to change or reshape them. You must first accept this as truth. You should learn how to change them to assist you in your happiness journey. No matter where you are in life right now, it is possible, not necessarily easy but possible, to erase the chalkboard and rewrite the things that you choose to believe in and choose to pursue.

If you aren’t fully and absolutely convinced that you have the power to do this, then this is the very first thing you should work on. Read some personal development books. They aren’t all B.S. There are some really useful skills you can acquire from reading them.

2) Learn about yourself by discovering your deepest desires. Those desires are the secrets to your happiness. You cannot feel supreme inner peace and contentment without first understanding what makes your soul tick. What worthy goal is going to flood your body with a great sense of accomplishment right down to your soul?

Imagine you are an invisible man sitting at your own funeral. What would you want to be said about you in your eulogy? What would they say about you right now? What do you wish they would say? What kind of man do you want people to remember you as having been? Make a list on a piece of paper or word processor. Spend 15 minutes or more (this exercise took me several hours) to really think about it. You will learn a few things about yourself and gain some new direction in life.

This exercise will tell you what is most important to you deep down inside. Once you learn what is important, you can set goals and make some changes in your life to become that person. As you read more on this subject of happiness, you will begin to realize that you need to spend more time on making changes in your life so that your deepest desires become a reality. Achieving those desires will fill you with the deep inner satisfaction that you crave.

As you begin to fulfill those deep desires, life seems to get easier and you find more joy and pleasure in your day to day life. You begin to gain more self esteem and love for yourself as a person. You will begin to be filled with an inner peace and satisfaction that few things in life can bring about. If you’ve done this exercise before, just do it again anyway. It will give you a kick in the pants.

Find happiness through these specific steps

1) Build a roadmap for yourself for the rest of your life. It is perfectly fine if that roadmap changes from time to time. As a matter of fact, it should change as you mature and your priorities in life change. Set goals for yourself. Spend the days, weeks or months of planning necessary to really think deeply about what you want to accomplish in the rest of your time here on earth. Forget about the past. Start from scratch as of today. Write it all down on paper or in your computer.

2) Become a long term thinker. Thinking long term will help improve your decision making immensely. It will help you when it comes time to buy a home, choose a spouse, make a career change, make a financial investment, make a business decision, etc…

3) Pay attention to your health. Eat well and become an active person. Choose some type of activity or sport to participate in that will provide good exercise for you while you are having fun. Otherwise, you my get caught up in life and find yourself over forty and fat. Then the doctors will start telling you about all of the health problems you are about to experience due to your neglect. Keep moving. Never stop getting your exercise. Success in other areas of life won’t be enjoyable if you don’t have your health.

4) Do whatever it takes to acquire a reasonably high paying job. The higher paying your job is, the more self esteem you will gain in most cases. A man with a poor paying job is a man with weak self esteem. He may not have had weak self esteem when he took the job. But, working there for any length without seeing a clear path to get back into a higher paying one will definitely wear down his self esteem. An unemployed man is a man without any self esteem.

A wise man would take any available position regardless of the job title or pay rather than remain unemployed. Any job is better than no job in the long run. Taking a lousy low paying position is still preferential to not working at all. He just needs to remain vigilant about finding himself a much better higher paying form of employment as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

5) If you aren’t married yet, spend whatever amount of time it takes to decide for yourself what the perfect spouse would look like. Go for one that is an intelligent and elegant woman in public, but a porn star in the bedroom. Paint a perfectly clear picture of her in your mind. Keep your hands out of your pants while doing this. Think about her often and one day you will meet her unexpectedly.

6) Educate yourself. Develop a thirst for knowledge and truth. Regardless of your level of formal education, you owe it to yourself to expand your knowledge and skills. Most valuable skills in life can be learned outside of a college or university. Choose one set of skills to become extremely proficient in. Learn everything you can about them from any means available to you. You can find a way to profit from just about any field of study.

7) Become a highly structured spontaneous person. Is that an oxymoron? Certain areas of your life are better off if they are well structured; things like your workplace and your home life. Yet, having total structure in every area of life takes some of the fun out of it. You need to learn where to be structured and where to be spontaneous. You want to be spontaneous when it comes to having a social life. Be the guy who always comes up with the great creative and off the wall ideas for fun things to do. When it comes to having fun with your girlfriend or spouse, be spontaneous. When it comes to paying your bills or mowing your lawn, be structured. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Go get everything you want in life regardless of your age.

8) Plan for starting your own family and for having children. Decide at what point in your life you want to have children, if at all. You need to do this before you decide to get married. Having children is a major responsibility and also a major cause of marriage problems.

Don’t rush into having kids. Make sure you are ready to accept the responsibility that comes with raising children. Think about the time needed to devote to them throughout the various stages of their youth and the financial obligations. Make sure you get some term life insurance once you decide to start having children. It is many people’s opinion that the best part of life is having babies.

9) Enjoy the fruits of last year’s labor while sowing the seeds for next year’s crop. Mystics will tell you to live in the present. I say you should learn from and forgive the past, live and enjoy the present and prepare diligently for the future. All three are important and beneficial in my opinion. I think you need all three for maximum enjoyment now and in the future. When something bad happens to you one day, let it go at the end of the day. Tomorrow is a new day.

10) Become a saver. Pay yourself first. Start saving for your retirement and other major future financial obligations as early as you possibly can regardless of what age you are right now. If you still don’t understand the power of compound interest then I suggest you read my post about how compound interest can make you rich. It doesn’t matter if the stock market is going up or going down or what interest rates are, you need to save today.

11) Be grateful for all the wonderful things already in your life. Look at all of the blessings you already have and appreciate all you’ve got. Cherish your friends, your family and your dreams. Give thanks and appreciation for them. No matter how bad things might be, someone else has it worse off than you do. Everyone has something to be thankful for. If you believe in god, take a few minutes right now to thank him for your wonderful life.

12) Get in touch with your spirituality. I don’t care what religion you prescribe to. It is immaterial to me. Find a secluded place outdoors where you can be all alone by yourself surrounded by nature. Get as relaxed as you possibly can and forget about work and your family for a while. Sit quietly for a couple of hours pondering whether or not there is a spirit within you. You will undoubtedly find out that there is. Then you can do whatever you choose to do with that knowledge. Believe whatever you choose to believe about it. The choice is all yours.

13) Discover that the anticipation of purchasing material goods is usually more fun than actually owning them. This is a major point. If you aspire to own something, you can dream about it. The process of dreaming about it will probably be more enjoyable than the reality of owning it. Once you own it, you’re going to have to find something new to look forward to. The novelty will wear off. Use this line of thinking to your advantage. It is okay to set lofty yet realistic goals that you can look forward to for many years to come.

Once you realize this is in fact true, it makes sense to set goals. Realistic achievable goals invigorate you. They invigorate you because they provide you with motivation from the anticipation of achieving them. You look forward to accomplishing them. If you have enough achievable goals to continuously look forward to, you’ll have plenty of reasons to remain optimistic each and every day. You’ll bounce back quicker from the inevitable setbacks everyone encounters throughout life.

14) There is some hidden truth behind the law of attraction. Good things happen to happy people. Bad things happen to miserable people more often. Choose to be a happy person mentally. Read all you can about the subject and acquire the skill of being a positive thinker. Read the book titled As A Man Thinketh. It is on my recommended reading list for personal development books. Then choose to become an optimist. Be optimistic and believe in your own success.

15) Develop your own effective plan for replacing bad habits with good permanent ones. Making something a permanent habit is the surest way to avoid slipping back into the old way of doing it.

16) Don’t compete with friends and family over material possessions. Keeping up with the Jones and living like a yuppie is not going to make you happy. At some point hopefully you will mature enough to realize that competing with other people on a materialistic level is a total waste of your money. It will not bring about even the slightest amount of real happiness into your life. If you are making a luxury purchase, it should be because you really want that luxury for yourself or your family, not because it will make someone else jealous. When I see people competing for things like that I just feel sad for them because they haven’t discovered one of the most basic truths in life.

17) Learn to be truly happy for your friends and family when they experience more success than you. Congratulate them. Don’t feel jealous. Help your friends and family in any way that you can to achieve even more success on every level in life. You will find that the love they reciprocate cannot be bought with any amount of money. Nothing in life is more precious than the love you share between your family and closest friends. Your most precious gift to your loved ones is helping them realize their full potential and helping them become better happier people by bringing out the best in them.

18) Live within your means. You have the ability to do so no matter what your current level of income is. If you want to live a more lavish and luxurious lifestyle, you should prepare for it accordingly. Tame your greed or it will cause you great pain. Greed is an enemy of happiness. Subdue it or face the peril. There is nothing wrong with living a luxurious lifestyle. On the contrary, it should be encouraged. But, living beyond your means will eventually lead to misery.

19) Pursue a career or hobby that you truly enjoy. Of course, in a perfect world, everyone would be going to work at a job that they absolutely loved. They would want to go to work there even if they didn’t get paid for it. This just isn’t realistic for most people. Most people aren’t willing to risk leaving a stable job that pays the bills just for a shot at finding the perfect job. They are afraid of all the possibilities of bad things that could result from leaving their current position.

So, I think those people (maybe you’re one of them) should pursue something they are passionate about on a part time basis. Start doing it this week, maybe even today. Make a little time each week to devote to it. One day, you may find an opportunity to do it for a living. It is funny how often life presents great opportunities to us. But, it only does it when we are looking for them.

20) Spend more time outdoors and in nature. Being out in nature whether it is in a forest, near a lake or ocean, on a golf course or in a park will bring you a sense of peace. It has an uncanny ability to melt away anxiety and stress. It clears your mind and inspires creativity. It centers you and reminds you of what is really important in life. It helps you connect with the world and recharge your batteries.

21) Money can’t buy happiness, can it? Money by itself cannot buy you happiness. However, money that you have earned through hard work absolutely can buy happiness. It can’t buy you total serenity and peace. For that, there are many other things you really need to do. But, it can definitely increase your level of happiness on a material level and provide you with a powerful self esteem boost. Those two things will greatly contribute to your overall level of happiness and joy.

22) Establish a huge number of friendships and connect with other people. You will always be able to count your best true friends using one or two hands. You know how they are. That shouldn’t stop you from establishing a great network of other friends and acquaintances. Go out of your way to introduce yourself to others. Become more outgoing. Break the ice at a party by introducing yourself to that group of people that sits together quietly at the table in the corner. Everybody likes the guy who isn’t afraid to walk up and say hello. Just be cordial. You will be surprised how many new friends you make this way. It is an especially effective way to meet other people when you are single.

23) Find a way either through your work or through a personal pursuit to do something of signifigance. Develop the ability to do something better than most people. Deep down, everyone has a special need to feel important. We need to feel special in some way. You can accomplish this in the workplace by continuously trying to become better at your profession. As people notice your improved skills, you will start to become the go to person when there is a question about something related to your work. Being that go to person for one reason or another really gives you a sense of accomplishment and boost to your self esteem. If you already excel at your specific position, then learn some secondary skill like how to communicate better with other people. Take a business management course or read a book. Learn any beneficial skill you can that can be applied to your work environment.

24) Live your life by inspiring, encouraging and lifting the spirits of the people around you. You will become a magnet for other good people. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Set an example as a person who takes life by the horns and enjoys the ride. Make complete strangers feel good for no other reason than just to see them smile. Be passionate about being happy. Be a beacon of light in a dim world.

25) Learn to really appreciate the gift of giving. When it comes to exchanging gifts, I would much rather give a gift than receive one. Wouldn’t you? When you give a gift to someone it really feels good inside. It feels especially good when you know it was a great gift. Give generously to your friends and family. Give generously to your church or favorite charity. If you haven’t got the financial means to give generously then give generously of your time. Time and effort can be the best gift of all. Set a financial goal for yourself to create a charitable trust before you retire. Then you can spend your retirement like Bill Gates, deciding how and where you should donate.

26) Do something to make the world a better place. After you have experienced a reasonable amount of financial success in your life, you will develop this burning desire to make the world a better place. If you want to become a more rounded happy person, try to incorporate something in your life that contributes in ways that money alone cannot. Mentor a child that doesn’t have a father. Join your local big brothers program to help give a kid some positive influence in his life. Volunteer in a shelter of some sort for people or even animals. Partake in doing walks for charity like the March of Dimes, Alzheimers, Cancer or the many other worthy causes out there. These things pay you back in karma bigtime.

27) Promise yourself that you will never stop growing on all levels. If you stop learning new things or stop building stronger relationships or stop contributing to the world around you, you will begin to experience less happiness and personal satisfaction. It is vital that you commit to a life of never ending improvement. Don’t make a chore out of it. Just realize that in order to maintain a high level of personal satisfaction in life you are going to have to make sure you keep your eyes open for ways to improve on all levels. Look for ways to make your life more fulfilling and you will easily find them.

28) Learn to bounce back. Roger Crawford wrote about “How high can you bounce”. That is an inspiration to me. Life will hand you setbacks. That is guaranteed. How you view what happens to you will determine how you respond to it and ultimately how high you bounce back. Winners bounce back higher than they were before they fell. Somewhere in life you are going to make a really bad decision. Actually, it will probably happen quite often. When it does, you must not let it deter you from creating your masterpiece of life. Pick yourself up. Dust yourself off. Then get back to building the life of your dreams.

If you want more ideas for improving your life, I recommend you read both of the following posts. You should read the list of best advice for men that is listed on the homepage and also small things you could start doing today to bring more fun and enjoyment into your life. I think you will like the ideas you find in both of them.

The fact that you have read this proves that you are the type of person who wants to make life happen. You don’t want to let life just happen to you. You want to direct it and control it like a maestro conducts a great symphony. Keep asking yourself the right questions and you are well on your way to becoming a happy person filled with personal satisfaction, serenity and inner peace. You are sure to build a life of great happiness and contentment so long as you never stop pursuing it.