5 Habits to Be Happier and Feel More Bliss

Happy Sunday my beautiful friends! I love slow mornings. I love taking time to enjoy my tea. I love reading my book and starting my day deep inside my mind. It it small moments like this that make me love life and feel blissful. It isn’t easy to take the time to do the little things, but boy do they make such a difference in my happiness.

It is hard to feel happy all the time.  Life will always be challenging.  It can be tough to feel negative feelings. Heck as I am writing this post, I feel anxious. I want to eat more food or scroll more on social media. But the truth is I don’t want to do those things.  I hate scrolling on facebook for more than 20 minutes.  I don’t like feeling so full it makes me tired.

What does bring me happiness? Writing. Sharing my heart. Creating something. It isn’t easy to write all the time. Sometimes I have a million things to say, but no idea where to start. I have pages and pages of documents filled up with ramblings that haven’t made it to the blog.  Some things are just too rambling and others I am scared to share, or maybe they are just cathartic ramblings to sort out my thoughts….  Happiness habits aren’t always easy to do. But the pain of choosing the habits that keep you stuck are almost too painful to choose anymore.  There has come a point for me (and maybe you) where the pain of not doing what my soul craves is more painful than the work it takes to do them.

I am glad I am writing this post. I know a lot of people are probably in the same boat as me.  Life is hard and that is okay because it isn’t supposed to be easy.  In my experience so far, I have found that getting to know yourself, your core desired feelings, and how you best get stuff done…is key to developing happiness habits that actually work for you.  Everyone works differently and these words I write will resonate differently depending where you are at in your life.

So I thought I would share what I believe to be the 3 steps to figure out your own happiness habits and how you can make them happen.  At the end, I am going to share my 5 habits for a happier more blissful life. Lets get started!!

You don’t have to do all the things to be happy.

I used to pressure myself to create a perfect morning routine. For a bit, I wanted to be one of those super type A people who woke up 5 am and completed a whole day’s work from 5am-7am.  I wanted to get in intense workout, journal, meditate, eat breakfast, and get in 30 minutes of work all before dawn.  I thought it was the key to happiness and I would fail until I got this right. Until I realized that no one could tell me the key to success.  No one could tell me what would make me happy. I am type-A, but I like to describe myself as a border line type A.  Accepting this about myself was freedom. I don’t have to do all the things.  I discovered that I like to take things easy.  And that pressuring myself to do all the things made me anxious and I want to run away from it all.

Listen to your body and dig into your core desired feelings.

If you have never read the book by Danielle Laporte “The Desire Map”.  You need to go find it at the library and check it out.  Or just go check out her Core Desired Feelings Library and browse through… We always crave something and connecting to yourself to understand what you really want to feel is magical. We are always evolving and shifting based on what is happening around us.  And with that our desires change.  When we know how we want to feel, we can take action steps to create habits that will help us feel like that every day or at least aim to get us closer.  Feel into your body and be in it. What do you want?

Some of my core desired feelings right now include:

Devotion – It feels good to be completely devoted to something. It feels good to be committed even through the difficult times. I show up because developing trust in yourself is one the best things you can do for you.

Alignment –  I want to feel aligned in what I share with the world. I don’t want to say things just to talk. I want to feel something when I speak up. I want to feel aligned.

Nourishment – I want to feel nourished completely. I want to feel nourished through food. I wanted to feel nourished through movement. I want to feel nourished in my soul.

Lit Up – I want to feel lit up with passion and excitement so I can light up those around me.

Create structure to develop habits that work with who you are. 

We all work differently. Some people just can automatically force themselves to do all the things.  Some people need other people to hold themselves accountable.  Other people commit to things and they immediately want to rebel. Other people sit and question themselves before doing anything. If you have heard of Gretchin Rubin, she has a good book about this called the “The Four Tendencies.”  The 4 types are Obliger, Upholder, Rebel, Questioner and is very helpful in learning how your work and develop habits.  For me, I am a questioner with a bit of upholder. I don’t just do things, without trusting the person in authority. I question things because I don’t trust that other people will. (This was good as I finally was able to question my belief of what I thought would bring me happiness.)  I am also a bit of an upholder.  If I make a commitment to someone, I like to honor that. More and more I try to honor commitments that I make to myself. In order to do this, I have a flexible schedule.  Flexible because I am questioner that asks ” Why do I need to do this?”  and scheduled because it is easier to follow through something when you have the space.

This is a bit of how I got to where I am today.  There is so much more to explore, but this bit of knowledge will hopefully re-inspire you to dig into your life and set it up so you have a bit more happiness or however you want to feel.

Next I am going to share a bit of my non-negotiable happiness habits. This is what I am doing. You can take them as your own or create something that works better for you.

These happiness habits have helped me stay focused, happy, motivated, and feel a bit more bliss.

1. Daily Movement

   I use the word “movement” because my relationship with exercise has completely transformed compared to a few years ago. I used to move and exercise to stay skinny.  Now I choose to move to just feel ALIVE. My body craves the little high that I get. It craves movement of all forms.  So that is what I do. I intuitively listen to my body by getting outside and going for walks.  I lift weights and do HIIT.  I stretch and massage my body.  I take yoga classes.  I don’t judge myself on what I do.  I just do something!! Sometimes the hardest part is making it happen every day.  What works for me is setting a schedule and committing to 30 minutes a day of exercise.  Sometimes I don’t want to do much at all – but sweating even the littlest bit – changes my whole mood so I set the clock for 30 minutes . You might have to force the happiness habits sometimes for your own mental sanity.  Get to know yourself and do what works for you.

2. Not Eating Sugar

   I cannot wait to dig into this more. I have been off sugar for about 76 days at the time of writing this. Eating sugar messes up my mental health. I have noticed how I want it, but at the same time I don’t.  Sugar for me soothes me. It relaxes me. This is fine time to time, but it is so easily used as a crutch to not deal with my feelings. When I reach for it to make me feel better, I easily find myself eating more and more until I am so full I don’t want to move.  That isn’t happiness. That is self-sabotage and it messes up my brain and gets in the way of me working towards my goals…which is another happiness habit. For me, I will continue to limit my sugar intake because it doesn’t serve me in any way.

3. Have a Project/Side Hobby/Business

   I don’t care what you call it. Just take the pressure off and make it fun. For me, I love blogging and the more I remember that the more I want to pour myself into it. It makes me feel good. It feels good to create pretty pictures. It feels good to share my heart with the world. It feels good to hopefully make others see something in their own life. My goal is to just light up myself by working on something that fills me with passion, so I can light up others too.  And they then can light up more people. It is our passions and dreams that will make this world a happier place.

4. Essential Oil Self Massages

   Something I do to work on loving my body more is massaging my legs and my whole body with essential oils. I 100% believe in the power of essential oils. They are SO cleansing, so nourishing, so uplifting. They change your mood and put in you in a better space.  They absorb directly in the skin and change your brain chemistry.  Right now, I have been loving Lemongrass, Grapefruit, Sandalwood, and Serenity. I use the Doterra essential oils. I could list a bunch more, but these are my favorites to use for morning and night. (I don’t use the citrus-y oils at night because it is so uplifting) Check out my post on Essentials Oils 101 Here!

5. Go on a Social Media Cleanse.

   I delete Instagram off my phone almost every day. I love Instagram so much, but the endless scrolling is killing me. And when I delete it, it’s hard to access without the app so it WORKS. No more social media.  But what do you do when you have moments to spare??? That has been my question…should I spend more time sitting in my thoughts? Or reading books?  Well I try to do both. So I read books on my kindle and think a lot more or read blogs.  I am still consuming information just hopefully “better” info right??!?  Gosh, we live in such an addicted information consumerism society…….

And those are my current 5 happiness habits!  YAY! I would love to hear what yours are below! So post a comment and share! Now I am feeling that i need to go for a walk on this beautiful spring day…have a beautiful Sunday and week ahead!

xoxo
Chelsea Jolene