Absorb happiness, or the first step to becoming a happy person

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Probably all of us have heard at least once in their life: “I wish you happiness”. Perhaps we often receive and make such wishes automatically. Such a way of wishing all the best to someone has simply set in.

But if there were an opportunity today to reflect on your own happiness and experience what it’s like to be a happy person, would you dare to try?

I just want to invite you today to think about your happiness. I also want to share about a single habit with you. A habit of happiness. It is very simple and you don’t need much time to develop it. Just … 20 seconds a day.

Let’s sort out some things first and then get down to details.

The first step to becoming a happy person

For each one of us, happiness can mean something different. Happiness is one of the basic values ​​in our lives. It’s universal as we all recognize it as a value. Happiness is also a need, thus it can be the main driving force behind many of our activities, although we are not always aware of it. That’s because sometimes we confuse happiness with other values, feelings or needs, e.g. love, serenity, pleasure. Whatever happiness is, there’s no doubt that we crave to have as much as possible of it in our lives.

With one simple habit, you will learn to let in more positive experiences into your life. And it has nothing to do with the cliche “positive thinking”. In addition, you will “remake” your brain so that it builds more and more positivity and happiness into your life every day and helps you become more and more “susceptible” to happiness.

How to do it?

Start absorbing the good. That’s the key. This single habit can be enough to start changing your life and see positive results quite quickly. The point is to train your brain to pause on positive experiences for a little longer than you do every day – at least for 20 seconds! Apparently, so little time is enough for our brain to rebuild neuronal structures.

Here is a simple step-by-step instruction showing how absorption of goodness can look in practice:

Step 1. Collect positive experiences

Be alert to collecting positive experiences. It can be anything: a pleasant moment, a feeling of self-satisfaction, a child’s smile, a sense of intimacy, gratitude. Be aware that it’s very important here that you go further than the so-called “positive thinking”, that you really experience all these emotions. In order to do that, you need to “freeze”, to pause. The idea is to give yourself time (at least a few seconds) to experience (not just think of) everything that comes up.

Absorb happiness, or the first step to becoming a happy person

Step 2. Enrich positive experiences

When you notice that you have just added new positive experiences into your spectrum, enrich them with even more good experiences. In order to do this, dig a little deeper in them ;) How does it feel? What does it trigger in you? Is this something new or do you already know this feeling because it is similar to something else? Pay attention to the reactions in your body. Stay focused on it for min. 10 seconds

Step 3. Absorb positive experiences

And now it’s time for the highspot: absorbing! :) Imagine that you are a sponge with excellent absorption properties and you soak up all these pleasant sensations and experiences. Become one with this feeling: absorb it, but also let it absorb you. Enjoy this feeling for a minimum of a few seconds.

Sense of happiness

This simple habit was named and described by Dr. Rick Hanson in his book “Hardwiring Happiness”. There are many benefits of introducing and cultivating such a habit. It not only tilts your brain towards more happiness, but also improves your relationships with others and brings more satisfaction, serenity and flavour into your life.

Some people, however, act as if they were immune to happiness. They see negative things everywhere, the glass is always half empty for them, the sun is too bright, and the grass is greener on the other side of the hill. No surprise there, because as Dr. Rick Hanson points out, as humans we are evolutionarily programmed to suck in the negative aspects from the reality around us. Thanks to this ability our ancestors could survive when being attacked by a tiger, e.g. we quickly reacted to suspicious movement in the bushes. Due to the fact that our brain immediately caught what is “not right” in this situation, we could – as a species – get off the tiger’s back and escape unharmed.

We live in the 21st century and we are still controlled by this stone age programming. It’s a quite primitive, let’s say, software that makes us often unhappy out of habit and due to lack of awareness of other possibilities.

Meanwhile, you can learn to be happy just like you can pick up any other skill. And it is worth doing so, because every day we face many stressful stimuli that overload our nervous system.

Simply start by developing some new habits to encourage your brain to work for your happiness. Certainly, this is not all you can do to find the answer to the question of how to be a happy person. However, I hope that this text will inspire you to take the first step on the path to your own happiness. And that’s what I would like to wish you.

I wish you that you develop a fruitful new habit of absorbing the good… and happiness, of course!

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