Sowing the seeds of joy in your life: A happy life allows room for joy. In this post about ten keys to happiness, I have summarised my hours of reading about ideas of adding joy into your life.
But such a magical future won’t just manifest itself. We need to take action. By cultivating and embracing certain practices in the garden of our lives, we are in fact growing the seeds of joy. There are ten keys to happiness we all need.
Here are ten keys to happiness; ten seeds of joy and how to start planting them:
1. Mindfulness
We experience our life one moment at a time.
Let’s acknowledge that this moment you are experiencing right now is all you ever have.
Anything that happened prior to the exact moment that you are reading this is over. All else is memory. Anything that will happen in a future moment is not here yet. A fiction. This very moment is the only experience you ever have.
If you put your attention into this moment. If you are present to it, you are mindful.
It is hard to experience joy if you are not mindful. If you are not connected to the present moment, you can’t be truly joyful because the ‘joy’ that you are experiencing is only memory or fiction.
True joy comes from mindful experience of the moment. So mindfulness is a very important one in our ten keys of happiness.
Read more on how mindfulness helps alleviate depression.
2. Let Go Of Control
All you can ever control is your actions and where you put your attention. Nothing else. This understanding takes away a lot of burdens and responsibilities that don’t belong to you. Accept your life as it is now, then work on making small changes. Letting go of control allows you to take more joy and gratefulness in what is actually happening.
Read more on how letting go of control brings joy.
3. Make Love A Lifestyle
Act as if love is a verb, a lifestyle. A set of actions. Ask yourself, is this action an act of love? Do those actions.
Tell yourself that you love yourself all day long. Tell your loved ones that you love them all day long. Spread and shower love, be the first one to do it, and people will reciprocate.
I’m not talking about romantic or passionate love here, but love in terms of compassion and care.
Read more on how love can promote wellbeing.
4. Choose Peace
Make decisions with peace in mind, this will allow you to consciously put peace into your life. When a dilemma arises, think to yourself, which decision brings me peace? Do that one.
Choosing peace removes unnecessary drama. This allows more space to focus on what matters, rather than getting bogged down in negativity, gossip and pain.
Read more on how to make peace a priority.
5. Flow
Bring flow state into your life.
Flow state is a state of mind where you are playing, fully present, joyful and forget who you are.
You are not a person doing something anymore, you are the experience itself.
Remember when you were a child engrossed in play? That was flow state.
Everyone will have different activities that put them in flow state, it depends on your own interests, values and personality. It might be walking, playing the piano, having dinner with a friend, dancing, writing.
If it makes you forget who you are, do it more!
Check out this Ted Talk on getting into flow state.
6. Play
Play! For God’s sake, add play back into your life.
This one was a hard one for me, I forgot play when life got stressful and have had to force myself to do it again. Flow state can feel like play and that’s great, but I think we need both flow state and ‘fun’ play as its own thing. Flow state can be something that is work as well, whereas the play should be something you do for no other reason except to play.
For me, flow state happens when I write, work on a project I love, see friends, help someone, do something good for the world, do a dance class where I learn heaps of stuff or take a singing class.
Whereas play is when I sing while driving, dance for no reason, play a game with my son, draw, scribble or paint.
You play for no reason other than to relax.
I think this is why sometimes when we go on holidays we don’t want to come home. On the holiday we allow ourselves to play. You read a book in the sun or walk to get ice cream.
Give yourself some time to play in your day to day life. Even if is just for a minute, it’s the intention that counts.
Read more on how play benefits the mental health of adults.
7. Add Meaning
Consciously add meaning to your life.
Take a moment and consider your values. What do you want from life? What matters the most? What difference do you want to make in the world? How can you take a stand for something?
This isn’t a change the world kind of thing. Just small daily steps.
Find out how drilling down on your meaning adds value to your life.
8. Help Yourself
Ask yourself, how can I give myself what I am missing? How can I validate myself? Fill gaps in my life? Get my needs met? Try to give yourself those things instead of waiting for someone else to come along and give them to you.
Take your own hand and lead yourself.
Read more about taking ownership of your life.
9. Fix Your Relationship With Relationships
Give people empathy but try not to go into ‘rescue mode’. It’s much better to give someone the tools (or better yet the example) of how they can help themselves, than to be their saviour.
Listen more than you talk.
Figure out your own boundaries and stick to them while maintaining the other person’s boundaries.
Practice open and honest communication.
Learn more about fostering healthy relationships.
10. Fix Your Relationship with Your Emotions
There are no good or bad emotions.
Emotions are there to guide our actions. Acknowledge them, then let them be and then let them go.
Easier said than done of course, but what is the alternative? If you ignore your emotional warning signs, they will just get louder.
Read more about emotional intelligence.
Cultivating joy in your life takes work, but the fruits of your labour will be worth it.
Take small steps each day and soon enough your garden of happiness will be overflowing … Just don’t forget to pull the weeds!
Happy gardening!