The key to happiness as well as durable fulfillment does not depend on your external circumstances (even though we are affected by them) but mainly depends on your internal power.

Build Your Internal Resources

Below you can find few of the internal resources that can help us act from a state of happiness:

Cultivate Positive Thinking – Thoughts can be positive and can be negative. Yet, thoughts are just thoughts. Meaning, thoughts are not your believe system and there is no reason to be attached to them. As the master of your thoughts, you can elect choose to believe in it or not; you can select the ones that are healthy and constructive. You can choose the ones that bring you closer to your desires and would be beneficial for you in the long run. Thoughts like actions are the starting points that align your intentional energy toward the direction you want to go. Therefore, having constructive thoughts are the beginning steps toward achieving your goals.

Similarly, where you decide to focus our attention and thoughts, your focus grows. So, if you focus on the positives, then the positives in your life will grow, while the opposite is true as well. This idea is also very relevant to the way you look at life. If you decide to look at life constructively, it empowers you to constructively see your situation and find constructive solution. By changing the way you look at your situation, you change yourself and accept the responsibility to act toward your goals and create more satisfying and fulfilling life.

Use your Emotional System to Guide You

The emotional system is like a GPS (Global Positioning System, which is a navigational system). The GPS serves as an internal system that provides feedback to where you are as compare to where you want to be. As such, your emotions are simply indicators to your needs. Positive feelings signal that you on the track toward meeting your goals and needs, while negative feelings signaling that you are moving away from your goals or needs. So, rather than being upset about your “negative” emotions (indicators), pay attention to them, process them in a healthy way and understand what they want to signal you. In other words, translate the emotions to you needs, and express your needs in a constructive way while using them to move you toward your desired destination.

Embrace Healthy Attitude

Don’t bit yourself up when you make mistakes, or fail. Healthy attitude is all about being constructive. So, don’t be stuck in the past, unless if you want to visit the past and learn from it for the present or the future. As long as you are motivated by doing the right things and you are not attached to the outcome, you will be able to move forward and grow, while you enjoy your journey. In addition to enjoying your life, the by-product of that attitude will be success, but again, the success will not the driving force, but rather the process of moving in between the present and the future goal.

Don’t be Afraid to Fail

Many people are afraid to take risks. Those people are saying “what if? What if I fail? What if it is not going to work out? One needs to recognize that most successful people “failed” many times.

Thomas Edison had many quotes. Two relevant quotes are:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” And,
“Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.”

Like Thomas Edison, successful people did not view failing as a negative thing, but rather they saw it as a learning experience that just bring them closer to where they want to be. So, learn from it and move on. It is important to note that if you don’t try, you won’t have a chance to succeed.

The list below is a continuation of articles 1 on building your internal resources as the main mechanism that helps individuals to act from a state of happiness:

Your Experience is your Teacher – Whatever in front of us is our teacher. Every experience, regardless of the outcome, is a learning experience that allows individuals to explore and gain insight to become a better person and deal with life in a better way. So, it is important to build upon your experience and use it to for your long term benefit. Connect the dots in your history and experience to enable you to create your unique value. This will allow you to achieve new goals and move toward a brighter destiny and future.

The following are steps to allow you to move forward constructively:

• See the reality and accept it. Don’t deny it. Only if you know where you are, you will be able to navigate to where you want to be. If you don’t know where you are, you will not be able to move in the right direction.
• Define what you want and where you want to be (not what you don’t want or where you don’t want to be).
• Ask what you need to get where you want to be.
• Accept (and appreciate) what you have and understand what is absent in your life to get where you want to be.
• Do your best and work toward achieving what is needed from you. At the same time, accept the cost/investment associate with that. It is important to understand that we all have limited resources and for any new thing you are getting, there is something that you giving. If you say YES to one thing, you say NO to another. So, let go of what you “lose.”
• Be diligent, committed and patient. This is the only attitude that would lead you to success and growth.

Be Altruistic – Be unselfish and have regard or devotion to the welfare of others. Give for the sake of giving. For example: do something meaningful for a total stranger, be polite and courteous to others, say “thank you,” compliment, smile, etc. establish cause or donate to a charity, help someone at needs and share what you have the least.

Be Who You Are – Be real and authentic, because you cannot be anyone else and everything else would be unreal and not attractive. Yet, to be who you are you need to know yourself; your true self, and this requires continual self-awareness and self reflection that leads to growth, acceptance and love.

Trust yourself – Once you know deep (true) self, you learn to trust yourself. We all have the power to deal with whatever life throw at us. We need to believe in ourselves and trust that all challenges are internal challenges, which we can run from. We just need to be committed to better ourselves and accept whatever comes with responsibility to deal with it and respect to whatever comes our way.

Manifest Abundance – Creating success and abundance depends on our beliefs and intentions. It depends on the way we think,. Do you think, believe you have a lot to be thankful? Are you worthy to have love? Do you appreciate what you have? Do you appreciate your partner? Do you look at the positives in your life? If we appreciate ourselves and what we have, then will live happy life, which leads to the feeling of happiness.

Let go – Let go of controlling your life and trust yourself and life in general. Allow yourself to accept whatever the universe brings you while respecting it, while doing your best, when it comes to the things that are within your power and let go of whatever is beyond your power. Adopt the serenity prayer as your mantra: “God (whatever is it for you), grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”