If only my drab and dreary life could be transformed in 3 easy steps!
Well I’m not saying this is an absolute solution to unhappiness and feeling low, but what I am saying is if you employ these simple techniques you will begin to feel a better sense of well-being, happiness and fulfillment.
If I was suggesting it was 300 easy steps, then perhaps that would be too much of an “ask” to really find out if it works. But 3 easy steps! that is simply too good to not try.
Smile!
That’s right, the very 1st part of being happy is the very piece you’d expect to have once you are happy. There are so many happy behaviours that can be quickly incorporated in your physiology that you can use every day. But more important than anything else is the simple smile.
The idea of creating a smile, is to learn how to hold it. A smile that shows not only in the mouth but the complete face and physiology of your body, a smile and a body language action that lasts and maintains for about 25 seconds. You also need to make it as convincing as possible, not only for yourself but others around you. An unconvincing smile gets put out amongst a crowd and can quickly be returned by snarls and scowls because it looks so fake. A good way to generate a real and positive smile is to simply imagine or remember a hilarious joke and simply allow that to go over and over. Really get yourself into the moment and allow those positive feelings to create and generate that real smile. To make this more of a habit, you can also try to create a signal that remind you to re-run this pattern that makes you smile at a certain timed basis. This could be something as simple as an alarm clock set on your phone that beeps every hour to remind you to remember joke and create a smile.
Sit Up Straight
As we briefly covered with a smile, your posture is extremely important when it comes to feeling happy. If I was to ask you to imagine a person behind you sat in chair feeling low feeling grumpy and feeling generally “peeed off”. How they be sitting? Would they be sat up or would they be slouching? In all cases people who are feeling low generate physiology and body language that is slouched and hunched over. Simply by overpowering that slouching feeling and sitting up straight you will begin to feel more positive and more energetic.
Be conscious of how you’re sitting, be conscious of how you are standing. Most of all, be conscious of how you’re feeling and how your acting. Remember, the 2 go hand-in-hand and the physiology is the quickest and easiest part to change and thankfully your emotions will follow quickly afterwards.
Fake it until you make it
This is a famous Hollywood saying, that you need to fake it before you make it. research by Peter Borkenau revealed that happy people move in a very different way than unhappy people do. Simply by acting like a happy person you will begin to generate a better sense of well-being. One good way of doing this is try walking in a more relaxed way, swinging your arms slightly more, generally putting more spring in your step, more movements. Also, try making more expressive gestures during conversations and even strike up more conversations than you usually would with a happy undertone. Another thing that generally happy people do is wear brighter or striking clothing and they also express their happiness within their general vocabulary and the use of emotional words. Words such as (love, like, fond, excited) are all great examples of these types of words. Again this is a way that physiology transforms your emotions speak slightly louder, slightly faster and incorporate those positive behaviours into your everyday actions and you will help positively enhance your happiness and well-being.
Throughout all of my hypnotherapy and life coaching sessions I actively construct situations whereby my clients will begin to interact more on a positive level to change their emotions and thus their feelings.
