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Happy Thoughts: How to Hardwire Your Happiness
Have you ever wondered what the secret is to a mind filled with happy thoughts? And if happiness isn’t your natural state is there anything you can do to make yourself happier?
Or is it all about your genes?
Firstly yes you can become happier and secondly even though a big part of your happiness component is found in your genes, there’s still a lot you can do to be happier and enjoy a more joyful life and your genes can help!
Many of us are programmed towards the negative; practicing unhappy, angry and fearful thoughts every day.
The good news is that we can all develop ways to create and hang on to a joyful, upbeat, loving state of mind instead.
And when you combine your power to change your circumstances as mentioned in point 1 below with each of the other points you’ll find that’s where the real magic begins.
How to have more happy thoughts
Firstly understand happiness isn’t something we buy or carry around in our pocket. We have no opponent to our happiness nor a helper.
Believing you need something outside of yourself to change how you feel inside is an insidious self limiting believe.
You don’t need this belief. You are all you need. You have all you need to be happy. There’s just a few simple but essential steps you need to put in place.
1. Understand. The creative process begins with a thought which is connected to a feeling, leading to an action, ending in a result.
2. Be careful. Watch out for those unhappy moods and feelings they will derail you from your happier future. Don’t think sympathetically about all that is wrong in your life. Allow a different happier thought to take hold.
3. Practice discipline. Don’t dwell in the imperfection of yourself or others. Your subconscious mind accepts as true everything you consistently think and feel to be true.
Keep returning to more beneficial, happier thoughts and allow them to flow into your subconscious.
How to hardwire your mind for happy thoughts
1. Make a habit of becoming
Becoming the one you want to be isn’t about magic, it’s simply deciding to become a conscious creator of your life. Aligning yourself with the destiny you desire.
You have the freedom to choose how to see yourself. To decide the person you want to be. And change begins with changing your thoughts about who you think you are.
As Rick Hanson says in his book Hardwiring happiness:
“Hardwiring happiness is not mere positive thinking, which is usually wasted on the brain. It’s about transforming fleeting experiences into lasting improvements in your neural net worth. It usually takes less than half a minute. Any single time you do this won’t change your life. But half a dozen times a day, day after day, you really can gradually change your brain from the inside out.”
You can watch Dr. Hanson speaking about hardwiring happiness in the video at the end of the article.
2.“I am”
Whatever words you use after the words “I am” is the request to your subconscious mind that this is what you want.
Forget the words “I will be” they are powerless and are simply a confession that you are not, or you don’t have.
If you are trying to get something, be it health, wealth, success or love, you are operating from the mindset of not having.
The truth is you are already connected to and part of who you want to be or what you want to have and your refusal to believe this is the reason you do not yet experience it.
Wayne Dyer speaks of the power of “I am” statements here.
3. Stop allowing your thoughts to control you
Who hasn’t taken their thoughts seriously? As though somehow they are gospel, set in stone, or universal truths.
Be deaf when your thoughts tell you that you can’t live a happy contented life.
The only place that particular future can exist is in your mind, unless you accept it as a truth for you.
Examine those thoughts before you start thinking them over and over, and worse before you act on them. They are not who you are.
You are who you decide to be.
To help you with this, night after night before you fall asleep tell yourself who you’ve decided you are, in the present tense. “I am successful” “I am grateful” “I am living the life of my dreams.”
Falling asleep in the energy of these thoughts is the juice your subconscious needs to get to work to prove to you that this is your truth.
Our mind, although one, for creations’ sake appears to be divided into two, the conscious and subconscious or as noted in the book Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson, puts it, the thinker and the prover.
“The Thinker can think about virtually anything.(…) The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.”
The conscious mind thinks it’s thoughts and the subconscious mind goes about ‘proving’ your thought is ‘true’.
So you begin to see evidence of your repeated thinking.
Or as I would say, the conscious mind impresses the subconscious and the subconscious, which cannot argue or disagree or think for itself, goes about merrily turning any idea, repeated with emotion, into your reality.
It’s a super simple system, which we manage to mess up most of the time, by not being cautious about our repeated thinking.
Plus it has all sorts of great benefits.
Research continues to prove that happiness and optimism not only benefit your mental health but that those who have these traits tend to live longer.
Good news for the cheerful Charlies among us!
4. Love the little things
Everything and everyone you encounter are part of what we call ‘life.’ Your thoughts, feelings and actions, deliberate or not, create chemical reactions within your body.
This chemical reaction can signal genes to either turn on or off.
It isn’t that the gene itself changes, it’s the way that particular gene expresses itself that’s altered. And it’s this change of expression that results in a change in your life.
A simple way to do this is to do more of the little things that you love.
Not the big giant unusual stuff, but the little positive things that you enjoy.
Doing lots of little positive things is better for your well-being than that one big giant thing.
If you can’t think of anything off the bat, try one of these:
Something social…even if it has to be online for now. Check in with someone now, or visit your online group, relationships keep your brain happy.
Get out there and walk. Keeping your body going is good for your happiness levels. And new studies tell us it decreases the risk of cancer.
Something fun. Find one fun thing to do each day and then get to it.
Remember the little things often turn out to be the big things.
5. Look for the silver lining
Even if others thing of you as a negative Nelly.
You can train your mind to look for the silver lining in events and become more of a Pollyanna – and believe me as one who has been called this more times than I’ve had hot dinners, it’s not a bad thing!
This absolutely is a great way to hardwire your happiness. A mind that is constantly on the lookout for silver linings is a mind seeking good spirits, optimism and bliss.
So instead of wallowing in self-pity when things don’t go your way, use these experiences to grow and become the you that you’ve decided to be.
You must make a choice.
Did you notice that the sun came up effortlessly today. Flowers bloomed, stars stayed in the sky and the galaxy is still in place?
Or did you allow a little worm of negativity take hold in your mind convincing you today’s a bad day?
6. Switch your attention
Wherever your attention goes your energy flows.
And the energetic frequency you operate in acts like a magnet, drawing towards you events and experiences and people who are an energetic match to your frequency.
Your thoughts contain your feelings and emotions and the very act of putting your attention where you want it to be installs new circuitry in your brain, turning it into a deliberate map to your happier future.
Truth be told once you begin to pay attention to something you start to see evidence of it everywhere.
As I’ve written before:
I’ve got a super important challenge for you. I kid you not!
Your honest, most truthful answer to my question will help you stop second-guessing and overthinking how to get hardwired for the happiness that keeps bubbling up in your heart.
What do you think is the one obstacle that get’s in the way of your happiness and what one step are you willing to take to manage it?
Let me know in the comments below…you never know you might make all the difference in someone’s world.
And if you think this article will make a difference in the world of someone you care for, please share these steps for finding more contentment and blessings.
Encourage one another.
Love Elle
xox
Watch Dr. Rick Hanson’s video on Hardwiring Happiness
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How To Overcome The Major Obstacles To Happiness
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Top 3 Gratitude Meditations To Bring You Happiness Harmony And Success
Such simple yet life-changing concepts here. This is how a simple daily gratitude practice turned my decades of depression into a happiness I didn’t think was possible. Powerful information!!
How awesome Paige that your daily gratitude practice turned those many years of depression into a happier state. That’s so exciting to hear. Thank you for sharing, this could be of immense help to others, hearing about your previous struggles.
“Love The Little Things”
Thank you for the reminder of this powerful awareness and practice.
I find it so centering and connecting to do this.
Those around me might going on about the “terrible” shape of things and I’ll be carried away on the wings of the Whistling Duck that I am watching fly away across the lake.
Great work, thank you !
I like the thought of being carried away on the wings of Whistling ducks Geroge. Thanks for your kind words.
Elle, you know I like this one a lot. Rick Hanson is my “neuro guru”. I’ve written many blogs from Hardwiring Happiness. The take away that is so important is that by changing the way we think, which we all are capable of, we can change our lives and brains. It’s is the power we all have to improve our lives.
How great that Rick is your ‘neuro’ guy Debbie. I’ve just recently read his book and found it a wonderful fit between my spiritual philosophies and the more scientific takes on life.