What Are Your Rules For Happiness?

If you want to add more happiness to your life, take a minute and ask yourself this question: “What are my rules for happiness?”

If you don’t think you have any rules for when it’s okay to be happy or how happy you can allow yourself to be, think again. Your rules might not be conscious, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have any. We all do. Here are three common rules, even if they don’t initially seem to be rules:

I’ll be happy when…
I would be happier if...
I’m usually happy until…

To really discover if you subconsciously have any of these rules, write them out and finish the sentence with whatever pops in your mind. Keep writing answers down as they pop into your mind and then go to the next rule.

Here’s the thing about rules; we think they are important and should be followed. You have to make up your own mind about that, but you would probably agree that some rules should be changed.

What if you changed the three rules above to “I am happy for no good reason and I’m going to stay that way!” What if you realized that you are happy (we are all happy about something) and you decided to pay more attention to when you feel happy? What if we got in the habit of doing that?

Why not think about what rules you have had about happiness? And then made up a new list; one that really rocked?

And before you leave, please leave a comment and share a “rule,” a principle or an idea that would help all of us create and experience more happiness, fulfillment and joy.

P.S. If you want to learn more about happiness in your life and work, get my book “Seven Secrets to Enlightened Happiness” on Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Secrets-Enlightened-Happiness-ebook/dp/B008KOJZG8 for only $2.99 for a limited time only. Here is what Roxane Hettinger said about it:

I have read, literally, hundreds of self help books and I have a Masters in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, so trust me when I say, this little book sums everything up in a succinct version of how to LIVE a happier life. Alan has taken complex theories and reduced them to steps, EVERYONE can manage in order to get their life under their own control. I was moved, inspired and encouraged to add this to my own personal, “hour of power.” If you want to get down to the nuts and bolts of how to live a happy life, skip all those long and boring self help books and read this book alone. It will save you time and perhaps even save your life. You can finish it in one setting. I encourage you, as does the author, to read it many times. Action is one of the steps in this book, take action now, read this book.