On Being Happy

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
~ Abraham Lincoln

About a week ago Tracy O’Connor emailed me about a contest that I haven’t been able to erase from my head since. It’s for the “Good Mood Gig,” a six month stint where I would have to write a daily post about being happy.

So basically, if I win, I will get paid good money to do something I would want to do anyway, while being able to spend the next six months writing exactly what I want to for the first time since stepping online.

Sounds like a recipe for happiness to me!

I thought it would be nice to slip into the skin of a good mood blogger and write a post about “how to be happy.” If you enjoy the post, I would greatly appreciate it if you could please take two seconds to click on the link and send me a vote (if you’ve already done this, thanks! Votes can be cast once per day). I ended up writing and couldn’t easily stop, so I divided the post into two parts. The first ten points are today and the rest will follow tomorrow.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!

Most people wander through their lives expecting that they will eventually stumble into their own version of happiness, sometime in the distant future. They tell themselves that if they can only get to that place (whatever that place may be), then their lives will have finally found the footing they need to allow them to take a step back and truly enjoy their surroundings.

That is like waiting in line all day for a ride that may or may not be working.

A new car or a bigger house isn’t going to make you any happier. Neither will a brand new iPhone or everything on page 47 of the Pottery Barn catalogue. Yes, luxuries are nice and there is something to be said for material possessions that accentuate our lives and validate our hard work, but happiness is an internal quality and therefore impossible to gather through the exchange of money.

Material rewards are temporarily thrilling, but they have a brief half-life and once their shine has dulled, they might just leave you feeling emptier than you did before.

I am not an expert on happiness, though I do hope the judges of the contest decide otherwise. I can only speak for myself, and speaking for myself, these are ten traits I believe can make a person truly happy.

1) Appreciate what you have. Don’t waste your minutes dwelling on all you don’t have. Acknowledge all you do have and show your gratitude with your behavior. Good health, a steady job, a roof over your head, food on your table and a family that loves you. Chances are, you’re far better off than the generations before you. Do the future a favor – show the coming generations that gratitude isn’t dead.

2) Be comfortable in your own skin. Accept who you are, warts and all, and do your best each day to take the Cadillac of your confidence out of the garage. You can’t make people like you, but you can like yourself, and sometimes that’s the best invitation. Of course, you can always look to improve those things about yourself that you are not yet happy with, but you should never forget to love who you are on the way to loving who you may one day be.

3) Acknowledge that you deserve to be happy. If you don’t believe that you deserve your own happiness, then you are burying your chances in the back yard. Only you can build the road to your contentment, day by day and brick by brick. Along with life and liberty, the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right. This doesn’t mean you have the right to expect that things will always go your way, but it does mean that the quest for happiness is an essential part of a well lived life.

4) Enjoy the present. Be satisfied with where you. It is a great thing to have goals and aspirations; a full life is filled with constant climbing. However, staring only at the horizon will prevent you from seeing the beauty of what surrounds you in any given moment. Never permit your present to get swept away by the winds of a tomorrow that may never come.

5) Be nice. Karma, the Golden rule, or whatever you want to call it – what goes around does come around. Practice kindness and you will be amazed at the feelings you will foster inside yourself. Hold the door open for an elderly person, volunteer your time, money, or both, to your favorite charity. Hand out sincere compliments as though they’re candy on Halloween. Your own problems will diminish once you remove the focus from yourself and put it on others.

6) Ask for help. Problems held inside can easily fester. This doesn’t mean you should lean on others without ever taking responsibility for yourself, but you need not assume that others will feel burdened by helping you out. Think about it, doesn’t it feel good when you go out of your way to help others? See number 5.

7) Do something each day to move your life forward. Few things can fuel a wonderful life like forward momentum. Positive motion keeps you from feeling as though you are a victim. Establishing your goals, consistently meeting them, then setting new ones, is a sound blueprint for a happy, productive life. Enough baby steps can push you further than you ever expected to go.

8) Learn from the past. Don’t regret your personal past. Everyone makes mistakes. Never allow the blunders of yesterday to dictate the patterns of your tomorrow. Instead, use the mistakes you have made to help you shape your most powerful direction. Learn from your errors. Instead of living in the past and allowing yourself to remain a willing prisoner of the same insidious cycle, learn from the past and clean the canvas for a new portrait of possibility.

9) Own your life. As humans, we have the freedom to choose nearly every element of our lives. You will not always be able to control those situations which surround you, but you are always responsible for the way in which you respond. People will annoy you, things will make you sad and life will deal you hands that feel an awful lot like feet, but casting yourself as the victim will help to cement it as your identity. Own your life and wear a smile on your face. 


10) Follow your muse. Following your passions can lead you directly to undiluted joy. Engage your curiosity, find out what you love most, then do all you can each day to capture whatever it is that makes you the happiest.

Writer Dad

Tune in tomorrow for the rest of my happy list. If you enjoyed this first half, please tweet it (button is at the top) or vote for me (I promise it takes less than five seconds!) Thanks.

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