7/18/24 How to Live a Happier Life: 7 Things to Start Doing Today
Are you happy? Do you think you could have a happier life? What if there were simple, easy to do things to help you start living a happier life with just a little effort that can have big results? Today I’m going to share 7 things that you can start doing today to live a happier life. They’re simple and may not seem easy, but I assure you life is happier and easier when you do them, and one of the things I’ll share is the secret to getting started even when you don’t want to, so let’s get into it.
Welcome to the Moving Toward Better Podcast. I’m your host, Karen Bemmes, and Today we’re talking about 7 things you can start doing today to live a happier life.
Before we dive in, I want to make clear that what I am about to share are experiences from my life and what I learned along the way. Your situation may be different, and this is no substitute for medical or mental health intervention if your situation warrants it. This podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any mental or physical condition. If you suspect you or a family member is at risk of physical or mental harm, please seek proper medical help immediately.
For those who are new to the podcast, when I talk about personalities, communication and relationships, I use the DISC personality model of behavior and refer to people as D or Driven, I or Inspired, S or Supportive, and C or Cautious. You can find links to take your own Personality Assessment in the Show Notes.
This podcast was inspired by someone I’ve never met face to face but have known for years. We first connected in an online chat room over a decade ago and then moved into a private Facebook group when the chat room shut down. The chat room and Facebook group started as a way to help women who struggle with keeping up with their homes, but the group has evolved into a place where we share much more than our daily triumphs in taking care of our homes.
We’ve watched children grow into adults. Sent love and sometimes more when our friends and now loved ones needed help. Some of us have met in person, and although we have very different lives and backgrounds, we truly care about each other.
About a week ago, one of our members posted the following, and while it might not be Thursday when you hear this, I’m sure you can make the leap to whatever day of the week it is. The post said…
One of our members asked if she could take this as a sign that she doesn’t have to be a grown up because it was so hard
I was going to ask with true sincerity why she thought that way because I’ve never once wanted to go back to being any age before my 18th year. I will always prefer being an adult to being a child because my childhood was not great, so while being an adult makes me happy, it presents a challenge for her, and that became the inspiration for this podcast because I find it fascinating that something that makes one person so happy can make another completely unhappy.
I’m also going to add a quick disclaimer here. I am not naive to all of the garbage that goes on in our world, nor am I going to go into detail about it. Suffice it to say that I am aware of it. I understand that some people are going through truly difficult times, and these concepts and strategies may appear useless to them, but that’s exactly what I’m talking about. If something I suggest doesn’t align with your life, feel free to skip it, but if it brings you a bit of peace, keep it and use it as much as you need to, and hopefully we’re all in a better place soon. I truly mean that.
All of that being said,
I am an outgoing Inspired person who loves variety. My husband is a reserved, supportive person who prefers routine. I love people and getting to know them. My husband is content to be on his own with a very small circle. The importance of this is that the things I’m about to share with you work for me to live a happier life. Some work for him and others won’t, so if something I say doesn’t resonate, there might be a nugget that helps you find the things that help you live a happier life.
For example, when I’m feeling down, I love to connect with friends, often over lunch. My husband would never choose that. Instead, he might go hit a bucket of golf balls at a driving range. How do I know that? Because he sometimes travels for business, and his idea of what to do on a weekend he’s alone is to golf. So, what I’m saying is that one size does not fit all in the happiness realm. These ideas are a starting place and knowing what won’t work for you is just as powerful as knowing what does because it keeps you from wasting time, although if you’ve never done the things I suggest, you might try them and see what happens.
So are you ready to talk about what you can do to be happier in your life? I am because you know what? Sometimes I need these reminders as much as the people I coach and reach out to, and when I help others, I remind myself what works for me and renew my commitment to live the best life I possibly can while helping others do the same. So here we go…
1. The number one thing you can do to be happier is to live in gratitude, but before you roll your eyes at me, I do not mean that you need to be happy all the time or feel gratitude for everything because that doesn’t work for anyone. Nothing makes me angrier than when someone tells me that everything always works out for the best, or I should be grateful that things aren’t worse or that other people have it worse than me. Shut up! I much prefer the expression that not all days are good, but there is good in almost every day. The day my dad died was not what I would call a good day. We knew it was coming, but it still hit like a gut punch, and yet, we joked about the fact that the NCAA college basketball national finals was that night, and my dad loved that game. We figured he decided to go so he could have a front row seat at the game, and that memory makes me smile and feel grateful that we could find a happy thought at a not so happy time. So, to me, gratitude is not so much about being happy for all the good all the time. It’s about finding moments that you can lean into that bring you joy when the joy seems to be spread a little thin.
Not sure how to do that? Think of one thing that you’ve done in your life that you enjoyed. I loved and still love being a mom. I love being a Nana. I have a home that will be paid off in 5 years or less. I have cars that are paid off. My children and grandchildren are healthy, even the one with an extraordinary medical condition. I am married to my favorite person on the planet, and I have businesses that I truly love.
Some days I forget that and focus on the fact that I weigh more than I would like. I see two of my children and my grandchildren less than I would like. It feels like I never have enough money or energy to do the things I would like to do, and those are not good days. When I can remember the things I enjoy, I feel better, and the day seems to go better, and that makes my life happier.
2. The second thing I suggest to help you live a happier life is to figure out what works for you. I have ADHD, so it’s easy for me to dip into social media to check something out and come up for air hours later. Some people can look at social media for 10 minutes and walk away, and that’s great for them. I also have to leave the TV off because if I get pulled into one show, I’ll stop and watch for the entire day, yet I have a friend who is incredibly productive with the TV on as background noise. The one time I use media to my favor is that I can listen to focus music, classical music or a specific playlist I have when I want to focus on something that I want or need to get done, but even then I can sometimes struggle if I see something tempting to look at, so I often hide the screen that the music is playing on to keep temptation to a minimum.
3. Idea number 3 to live a happier life is to stop when you’re stressed. Stop yelling. Stop muttering. Stop rage cleaning and storming the pantry for snacks and making yourself angrier in the process. Stand or sit still and take a long, slow breath. While you take that long, slow breath in and out, relax your forehead. Let go of the tension in your jaw, your neck, your shoulders, and your back. Unclench your stomach. Notice how each feels as you let go of the stress and relax. Practice this wherever and whenever you feel stressed and let your breath and thinking bring you peace. Focus on your breath or something that brings you joy. One of things that I do is to imagine my favorite people and places on earth, and if I remember, I send them love. For me, my family and friends are my favorite people, and the places are near the ocean or some other moving body of water. It’s amazing how I can calm myself when I think about the places that I find most peaceful and the people I love the most.
4. This next strategy is a biggie and can take some time. It also changes over time, and that is to figure out your priorities. To create a life you love, living your priorities is essential. For example, if you say your family is your priority, but you spend all your time working, your family may not be your real priority. Instead, providing for your family financially may be your priority. If that’s the case, working long hours is fine as long as your family understands, but I would guess that time with your loved ones is as important to them as financial security. So how do you reconcile that? In our particular case, I stayed home with our children which sometimes meant that my husband worked a second job umpiring softball and officiating volleyball while our children were growing up. It was a great way to help us get out of debt and take care of our family, but our children missed their dad. To help make our family a priority, we had dinner together nearly every night, and we had weekly family dinners and meetings, usually on Sunday, to reconnect and go over the upcoming and past weeks’ activities. It kept my husband connected to our family and made taking the extra jobs a little easier. We know that doesn’t work for everyone, but whatever the priorities, make sure you don’t lean into one thing at the expense of everything else. So many would tell you it’s about balance, but I don’t agree. It’s about what needs your attention most, and sometimes that means taking extra work. Other times it means giving extra time to your loved ones. Hopefully it balances out, but for those who struggle financially, you know that working keeps a roof over your head and food in the bellies of your family. Just make sure if that’s your case that you make the most of the time with your family because that time flies by so quickly.
Now that our children are grown, we are focusing on paying off our home and saving for retirement. We’re hoping to see that happen sooner rather than later, meaning that we are hoping to retire my husband from his 9-5 that provides us all health care, so he can work with us on what is now several side hustles, including this podcast, which is why we ask you to like and share because it is a way to support the podcast without asking for any specific financial support. I think it’s pretty cool that you can like, subscribe and share to help creators like me make a living from helping you to live a happier life.
5. Speaking of paying off our home and saving for retirement, figure out your finances is strategy number 5 for living a happier life. This is a touchy subject, I know, but when you’ve got this piece figured out, your life is so much sweeter. How do I know this? Because when my husband and I got together, we were not on the same financial page, and it was not fun.
I was raised in a family of four, Mom, Dad, and two kids. My dad had a decent white collar job, and yet, I was raised believing we never had enough. In some ways, that is true. We did not have the finances to maintain the kind of lifestyle we lived, so my parents had credit card debt and numerous fights about money. It wasn’t until I met my husband that I started to think differently about money. My husband is the youngest of nine children, and his father made about one third of what my father made, and they never thought of themselves as poor because they lived within their means.
I had never taken a vacation that didn’t take months to pay off the credit card debt we incurred, but I learned that you could actually save in advance for a vacation and not have several months of angst post vacation. It was awesome. The same happened for Christmas, and to this day I have a Christmas account where I save each month so that the last three months of the year don’t taint the first 3-6 with paying off debt.
More awesome, though, was figuring out how to live within our means and save money for college so that our children graduated without debt. I know many people say that’s impossible, but we did it on less than $100,000 per year income after paying off $38,000 of credit card debt. Granted, our children went to state colleges, but it worked, and so did they. Each of them had skin in the game in some way, and we think they’re better for it.
I honestly think this one thing alone can solve over half of marital problems today, and if you work on it together if you’re married, it can truly be a bonding experience that makes your life better. And I say that as the wife of someone who wanted nothing to do with finances. Before we were married, his mother handled his finances, and for the first part of our marriage, I took care of everything, but when we got on the same page, we moved toward our financial goals faster than ever, and it was wonderful. We’ve slacked off here and there over the years, but when we get back on track, we always feel better and our finances are better for it. Do this for yourself and your family.
6. The next concept is an ever evolving one for me and probably for most of you, and that concept is to believe in yourself. Now, I don’t know about you, but I was not raised to believe in myself. If you were, I am so happy for you because it’s a terrible thing not to believe in yourself. I also feel like I have to qualify this because some people have a very high opinion of themselves combined with a very low opinion of others. That’s narcissism, not a healthy belief in one’s self. What I’m talking about is a belief in yourself that you can be, have and do better based on your ability to learn and grow in whatever areas you want/need to without having to harm anyone else physically, mentally or emotionally to do it. For me, there was a time that I thought I was bad with money. Turns out I didn’t know enough about money, and when I started learning about it, my money situation improved. Amazing, huh?
I’m also not particularly task oriented, so cleaning and organizing don’t come naturally to me, and my born organized mother couldn’t teach me something that came so naturally to her, so I had to learn from someone else and develop a plan that worked for me. It still doesn’t come naturally, and things backslide at times, but because of the system that I developed, I can now get back on track and not get as overwhelmed by my own home as I used to. I also work with my natural energy rhythms and make it as fun as I possibly can, which makes me want to do things rather than think I have to do them. It also helps to have a little reward afterward, whether that is to do something creative, have a piece of chocolate or watch a show I’ve been wanting to see after the work is done for the day, of course.
In business, I used to say that I was terrible at tech, and I was because it seemed so complicated and overwhelming, and I had been out of the workforce for 25 years when I jumped into being an online entrepreneur. Turns out, sometimes tech is complicated and difficult, but after years in the online space, I know where to go to learn more (thank you Google and YouTube), and if I still can figure out what to do, I know who to ask for assistance. Sometimes that means merely asking on social media if anyone knows how to deal with the situation or knows someone who can help me. I’m often surprised at how amazing the answers are and the people I’m connected to because of that. It truly becomes a joy rather than a struggle, and I think that’s awesome.
7. And that brings us to concept number 7, which is to ask for help. There’s a lot to talk about here, but I’m going to keep it pretty simple. In the US, we have this idea that we should be able to do things by ourselves and that asking for help is somehow a sign of weakness. I call BS.
I know I slowed my own progress in several areas of my life and caused myself so much undue stress by not asking for help, especially when I was new at something or not very good at it. In business, I would spend days trying to figure out how something worked and failing, and when I finally asked for help, it was a quick fix if I only knew what to ask Google and YouTube or who to ask for help. Sometimes it was the people in my own house, like the time I had to fix over 40 blog posts, and it took me two hours to do two of them. My youngest was home from college for the summer, so I asked him to help me, and about 10 minutes later he walked out of my office and said he was finished. I was stunned and asked if he’d finished a blog post already. Turns out, he found a global fix and took care of all of them. I was so happy I cried.
Another time I tried to do something for hours and got so frustrated, I messaged my business coach and was ready to give up. She jumped on a call with me and helped me fix the issue in minutes. That’s when I realized that I needed to ask the right people, like the people I trusted with my business. I was paying them to teach me. DUH!
That’s the other thing about help. Sometimes you have to pay for it. When I was a mom of 3 with a newborn with medical needs, we hired someone to clean our house for several months because I didn’t have the bandwidth for it, and our child needed a clean home to thrive in. Turns out, having someone clean for us inspired us to declutter a bit and think about what we brought into our home. Did we really want to find a storage place for it? Was there something we could get rid of to make room for it? We ended up seeing that help as an investment for our family to be happier and healthier every day, and as I get busier as an entrepreneur, we’re revisiting that concept again because sometimes the money we invest in one place comes back to us somewhere else. Pretty cool, huh?
So, remember how I told you earlier I would share a tip to get started on each of these things even when you don’t want to? That tip is to use your time better. Sounds cryptic, doesn’t it? I assure you it isn’t because when you learn to use time in your favor, you will thrive like never before.
Feeling grumpy? Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and write down what you’re grateful for. It can change your outlook.
Feeling overwhelmed? Even one minute of mindful breathing and relaxation can change your body chemistry. Are you using your techniques, whether that’s music or something else? If you are and it’s not working, what else could you do? Take a walk? Talk with a friend? Do something nice for someone else? The options are unlimited.
You can also revisit your priorities and see if you’re following them. One of my priorities is to always have a clear kitchen table. There’s a specific reason for that. It’s the sweet spot of my home, and when it’s clear, life is better and happier. I have an entire podcast episode about that with a link to that episode in the show notes.
Feeling frantic about your finances? Take 15 minutes to work on them. Make a meal plan and a grocery list (they save you money, trust me) Look at your subscriptions. Look at your last credit card statement and see where you spent the most money and on what. It can be incredibly eye opening and give you a quick reference on where to focus your energy regarding your spending.
Feeling like you’re not up to the tasks of your life? Time to take a success inventory. Find one thing you’ve done well today, and if you can’t find one, do something. I don’t care if it’s clearing a space, making a call or writing an email you’ve been avoiding, or even cleaning a toilet. Do something that makes you feel like you’ve moved forward and accomplished something, and if nothing comes to mind, ask someone to help you. You may accomplish more than you ever imagined you would, even if it’s just having them tell you what an awesome person you are, and yes, asking a friend to list a few of your good qualities qualifies as asking for help. It feels weird at first, but your friends want you to succeed, and when you struggle with that, they’re the ones who can lift you up in the most amazing ways. Honestly, the possibilities are endless, and if you need help with them, go to the Moving Toward Better Homepage and schedule an appointment to chat about how you can live a happier life, using the techniques that I’ve already shared or something else that suits your personality even more.
Remember to like and subscribe and share to get more content on living a happier life and share your own tips for living a happier life in the comments section.
Until next time keep Moving Toward Better. Love you all!
Show Notes
It’s amazing what a life experience like a college reunion can bring about. It can be a humbling and yet uplifting experience, and that’s what my most recent one was for me. Come along and listen to the experiences and for the challenge that I issue to get your own perspective.
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Thanks for listening, and if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share so others can benefit from it too.
Finding the Sweet Spot in Your Home and Your Life https://www.movingtowardbetter.com/podcasts/moving-toward-better/episodes/2148562147
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Purchase your Assessment here https://www.movingtowardbetter.com/choose-the-assessment-that-s-right-for-you
Purchase and schedule your Personalized Personality Strategy Session here https://www.movingtowardbetter.com/offers/x9VFGxdq
