How to be happy with yourself: 7 very useful tips

Happiness is a recurring theme in people's daily lives. Many think that it is necessary to look for finding new places and new people, and they can get to invest a lot of time in doing it ...

The questions we must ask ourselves would be Where is happiness really? Where should I direct my life to find it? Perhaps it is closer than we think, where we least imagine it.

In this article we will see some useful indications to stop looking elsewhere for what is in ourselves. In fact, we will talk about how to be happy with yourself.

• Related article: "Low selfsteem? When you become your worst enemy"

What is happiness?

Happiness can be understood in various ways; It is a subjective issue, and it depends largely on each one of us, on the way we understand the concept of happiness.

So how do you be happy with yourself? We can agree that happiness comes when we carry out activities that generate a sense of gratification, or when we get some reward (material or not).

Sharing moments with our loved ones, practicing our favorite sport, listening to a symphony, are things that can generate an indescribable feeling of happiness. This is because these actions cause our brain to secrete some substances in charge of give us those sensations, the so-called hormones of happiness (endorphin, serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin).

When we experience the happiness that these activities generate us our reward system is activated so that we seek more of that happiness through the same activities. Thus, it is clear that happiness depends to a large extent on the particular reward system of each person, on how we have "configured" it.

Tips to be happy with yourself

Let's now look at some recommendations to live a full and happy life, without the need to be surrounded by material things or to be the most popular of the group (elements that are beyond our control).

1. Know what motivates you

When we recognize what our true longings are, we are less likely to get caught up in the task of seeking happiness in the wrong places. It is important to take time to meditate on what we really want to spend our time on.. Achieving this implies deepening the skills of self-knowledge and knowing how to recognize no longer what makes us feel good at the moment, but what excites us and gives us strength when undertaking personal projects or professionals.

2. Set your goals calmly

This refers to the fact that you must be careful with the anxiety of reaching your goals too quickly. Remember that good things don't always come quickly, and the best thing will be that you learn to enjoy the road. That way you will be much happier as you do things.

3. Love yourself

Affection is a natural source of happiness, and sometimes we spend too much time looking for it in other people. The sooner we realize that we are important in our life, the closer we will be to being happy. Thus you have to cultivate good self-esteem.

You don't need to receive praise and affection from many people when you know your worth and learn to appreciate yourself for it. To achieve this, we must be able to see not only our failures and imperfections, but also what we are achieving.

4. Find happiness in what depends on you and not so much on the rest

As we've already mentioned, you don't have to look elsewhere for happiness. If you organize your life in the right way, you will be able to make it be there, within you; you just have to focus on seeing it. Many times it is more difficult for us to see the things that we have in front of our eyes, or in this case behind them ...

Our happiness lies in ourselves, in the things we like, in the enjoy the good times focused on the here and now, avoiding the anxiety of thinking about the future or the melancholy of thinking about the past.

Let's be happy living in the present and avoiding generating irrational obsessions. If you manage your thoughts, you will manage your happiness.

5. Seek your dreams

There is a saying that goes as follows: "Tie your life to a dream, and you will be happy." Dreams are projects that depend to a great extent on ourselves and the desire we have to fulfill them.

The more we focus on the things that we can do on our own and avoid depositing our happiness in the hands of third parties, the more at ease with ourselves. Ideally, your happiness depends mainly on you, it is essential that you have it clear.

• You may be interested: "Types of motivation: the 8 motivational sources"

6. May the last thought of the day be positive

Before you go to sleep each night, be sure to think of at least three positive events from your day. This habit will help us configure our mind and make it tend to give relevance to the good things over the bad.

At first you will do it voluntarily, but later seeing things from the positive will become an intrinsic part of your personality. In addition, it can be a useful strategy to fall asleep more easily, by not focusing on what worries you.

7. Make sure your goals are achievable

This point is of great importance for our happiness, and it is that if we set goals that are flatly unattainable, then we are signing a sentence for a life of stress and anguish.

The ideal will always be that before defining our goals we make an objective evaluation of their feasibility, that way it will be more likely that we will be able to carry them out and less likely that frustration will arrive. We must strike a balance between what it means to leave our comfort zone and what is beyond our abilities or options accessible with our resources.