A Few Techniques to Increase Happiness

Here's a few techniques to add to your tool kit that can help you elevate your mood & happiness when needed. A few of these stories share similar concepts. However, sometimes the context of each story may strike a chord within each of us differently. Some might like one technique over another, and a different individual may find it to be vice versa. Take what works for you and discard anything that doesn't.

1) Reframe and imagine that our souls are floating around in outer space. Perhaps, an individual's soul is encased within an asteroid soaring through space. You may be traveling with other asteroids nearby and perhaps they are close friends or family members. You may have traveled together for many years, for some, maybe thousands of years. After so many years of floating around, all one yearns for is to be able to communicate with the other asteroid next to them. Communication is difficult when one does not have a mouth to verbalize anything as an asteroid. The neighboring asteroid may find it difficult to hear without ears being an asteroid. Oh, to have senses, be able to express yourself, hug someone, experience joy, experience anything might seem so great after having no means to experience anything at all being trapped within an asteroid. There might be a tiny reprieve where a soul is allowed to stretch out and have experiences after it has been beamed to a small blue planet. From this perspective, an act such as being able to see a flower, smell it, admire it, wear one on your ear, give it to someone and create some joy, can have an entirely different effect. It may make it much easier to appreciate and be grateful to the simple things in life.

2) I'll be paraphrasing greatly here and recalling the story from Hugh van Cuylenburg. His story stuck with me, and I've found it very helpful. He was traveling in India and was able to secure room and board in exchange for teaching English to children at a school. The accommodations were a bit surprising for him to say the least. It included sharing a small room and sleeping on the floor with a handful of other individuals. Coming from a 1st world country, this would require a drastic adjustment for most people. He observed the people in the village he was staying at had people that were generally happy. He highlighted a little boy who would try to communicate with him and show him the shoes that he had to wear. He'd show him the rice that he was provided to eat on a daily basis. Not everyone had shoes and not everyone always had a meal. So, the little boy was felt quite happy and blessed. When his feet outgrew his shoes, he cut the front portions of so his toes could stick out.

Hugh was able to make these observations and compare it to what he knew back home within the 1st world country he lives in and with his own family. Having a sibling that battled some mental health challenges, he wondered how our society can have such a mental health crisis epidemic even when we are sometimes provided with the best the world has to offer. Hugh covers a number of very helpful reasons, but what sticks with me most is the little boy who was filled with gratitude of what he had.

I believe there are a number of factors here such as not knowing or being aware of all the other potential material things that exists in the world. That makes it easier sometimes to focus on what we do currently have. Instagram wasn't available for the little boy to see the life of the rich and famous or other Instagram stars. If were not given the opportunity to see those things or if we had the abilities ourselves to control our brain to not focus on other people and material things, this indicates to me that we all have the ability to be greatly happy within ourselves.

This boy and this story serve as inspiration for most of us to be grateful, satisfied, and happy with whatever we do have. If this boy is able to feel such joy and happiness with his surroundings, we may be able to work towards that same ability. Simply, placing his situation in my mind allows me to have a lot of positive feelings.

3) A friend once mentioned to me that we can achieve greater happiness and joy by imagining that we have nothing. His quick one liner, I felt, encapsulated the essence of the short-cut to happiness. If we closed our eyes imagined that we had absolutely nothing in this world, it helps us see all that we do have when we open our eyes and look around. It can be a simple exercise but highly impactful.

In a nutshell, these are various methods of focusing on what we do have versus what we don't have. That saying may have been heard before. Hopefully, these examples can assist in taking that further for the people that find it helpful with the additional imagery or exercises.