The Six Most Important Elements For Happiness

There are certain elements that prove to be present in happy people’s lives. If you make sure you have some of each of these elements in your life on a regular basis, you will become a happier person. A flourishing and fulfilling life has the elements below.

Try to experience:

1. Pleasure in your every day life

You are the expert on what gives you immediate pleasure. Other people like eating tasty food, drinking champagne at a wine bar, biting into a delicious chocolate, taking the first bite of a banana split ice cream, taking a nice warm bubble bath, enjoying a thrill ride in an amusement park, smelling the flowers and watching a stunning sunset. Small, positive surprises that others do to us or we do to others also contribute to a feeling of joy and happiness.
 

2. Engagement in what you do, so you can feel flow

When you get so absorbed in the activity you are performing that you forget time and place and focus totally on the task at hand you are experiencing flow. The task is interesting, challenging (but not undoable) and you need to use your strengths and skills to succeed.

The nine elements of flow:

1. There are clear goals every step of the way

2. There is immediate feedback to one’s action

3. There is a balance between challenges and skills

4. Action and awareness are merged

5. Distractions are excluded from consciousness

6. There is no worry of failure

7. Self-consciousness disappears

8. The sense of time becomes distorted

9. The activity becomes “auto telic” (an end in itself, done for its own sake)
 

3. Relationships with family and friends

The old saying that you become happier by making other people happy is still true.

From the time you are born, to the time you die, all the people you spent our life with, whom you touched and who touched you, you had some kind of relationship with.

Relationships can bring us utter happiness and joy, and – unfortunately – the opposite. They can create hell in our lives. Relationships bring out the good and the bad in us. It brings out laughter’s and tears. Important relationships need to be nourished.  Some of the people we have a relationship with will be with us until the day we die.
 

4. Meaning in your everyday life

Finding meaning is something humans seem to have been in search of through all times. Maybe we are equipped with some genes that make us drawn to the quest of finding meaning? Normally it is interpreted as being a part of something larger than our selves.

To some people it means being a part of a big organization, to others nature, the universe or religion. You have to find what it is for you. Finding meaning will most likely improve your happiness, wellbeing and satisfaction in life.
 

5. Accomplishments of goals

This is about you setting goals and then doing everything you have to do to accomplish them. Achieving goals, or more importantly achieving success in all the small steps that lead to your big goal gives you an increased feeling of self-confidence and fulfillment and makes you feel good. This confidence might propel you towards bigger goals and bigger rewards. The importance here: Never forget that being on the journey to your goal gives more gratification that reaching the goal.  That pleasure is short lived.

6. Gratitude for everything you are and have

Gratitude is the shortcut to happiness. It can shift your mood from being dissatisfied and grumpy to feeling content and happy. If you spend a few moments every day to be grateful and to really feel the gratitude inside, you will soon notice a change in your happiness level.

When you are truly grateful for everything you are and everything you have, and all the pleasures you have experienced in your life, you will soon start to feel better about your life. If you find it challenging, then start by being grateful for all the bad things that didn’t happen and didn’t go wrong when it could have.

Tip: Write a gratitude journal as often as you feel like it. This journal is great to come back to when you are feeling dissatisfied. It is so easy to forget everything you can be grateful for, and this journal will remind you.

To sum it up

So, as you see, being able to sprinkle your every day with a few bodily pleasures and surprises, doing some gratifying activities that creates flow, throwing in some good deeds for others, spending time with family and friends, and making sure you are experiencing frequent moments of gratitude – will be rewarding. If you in addition can cram in some sense of belonging to something larger than yourself while accomplishing a few goals, you are in good shape for enjoying true and lasting happiness.