The internet is replete with complex happiness hacks and theories. But sometimes what true happiness needs is simple, personal strategies that one can implement (mostly) from the comfort of their couch. So, here is a list of 3 simple happiness hacks, 3 simple steps distilled from extensive personal experience and experiments, that give you some quick fix, easily
applicable strategies to get you started on your happiness quest.
Step 1 : Be Lazy. Procrastinate (…Your Stress)
Sometimes the best way to deal with stress is to be too lazy to be stressed. It isn’t complicated. It is just a mind game. Feeling too stressed? How about you put it off until tomorrow? Or at least until after a refreshing nap? Or a good lunch? Or idle chit chat?
When life hits you with a storm, sometimes the best way out is to lay down and let it pass.Putting off stress is an ever more complicated art that needs to be finely honed. But it is totally worth it. So, if you really and truly want to be happy, you will have to learn to be too lazy to be stressed. Procrastinate. Sometimes, that is your shortest long cut to happiness.
Step 2 : Be A (Temporary) Fool. Stop Thinking
A meditation teacher recently told me, “Brain is the seat of all trouble. If everyone could just stop thinking, life could be so much easier, simpler, happier”.
We think and over think and over analyze and go round and round in our head until everything becomes overwhelming that we either break down or shut down. The result is a persistent state of worry and unhappiness about things we have half imagined and mostly have no control over. Whatever is the cause of your stress, you only have two options. You can either
do something about it or not. If you have the former option, great! Stop thinking and do whatever it is that you can do. And if you are stuck with latter, well, then thinking about it is not going to help you anyway.So, stop overthinking!
Step 3 : Let it go
Let it go. Because if you really want to start being happy, you have to stop holding on to all the mess that life keeps piling up around you. Guilt, embarrassment, blame, hurt, caustic people, negative thoughts are just some of the things in the long list of things that you have to let go.
Allow yourself to just move with the flow of life. Because happiness rarely means getting what you want. Often it is just a realization of the value of what you have. But in order to know that, you have to first let go off everything that is clouding your vision and blurring your blessings.
Once you cut off the complexities, being happy can be simple. If only you are willing to give it a try.
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