In pursuit of happiness.

Every day, everywhere people are searching in their pursuit to find happiness and Every day, everywhere people are searching and looking in the wrong places. What we think will make us happy is more money, a better house, a better job, nicer clothes, the list is endless. But ask yourself this and be honest, when you last wanted something be it a job promotion, your first pull up, reaching a set weight etc etc whatever the goal, when you attained it, how did it make you feel? Happy obviously, but how long did it last? An hour, a day maybe, a week at the most? Yes, attaining these goals will make you happy, but only momentarily. The reason being is that once you hit your goal, you immediately think of “oh now I want a muscle up” or “brilliant I finally made store manager, but now I want to be area manager” etc. Goals are vitally important for motivation and drive but achieving them doesn’t give us much long standing happiness. In fact, everything people think will make them happy, ultimately doesn’t. What does make us happy and has been proven is gratitude. This is something I am practicing daily.  If you can be grateful every day for your situation it will being so much longer lasting happiness into your life. Be grateful for the job you have, the car you have, the money you make etc because someone somewhere would give EVERYTHING just to have car, a job and any amount of money. In order to practice gratitude subconsciously on a daily basis then turn your HAVE TO’S in to GET TO’s. An example is instead if saying “ugh I have to get up early for work tomorrow” say “yea I get to get up early for work tomorrow” or “I have to go to the gym today” say “ I’m so lucky I get to go to the gym today”. Simply from turning your have to’s into get to’s will make you grateful for all that you have at present. Secondly, what has proven to be extremely effective at creating long lasting happiness is GIVING and you must give non-renewable things like LOVE, TIME and compassion. The reason it must be non-renewable is because if you give away things like money or clothes to local charities these are things you can recoup and mean noting really. However if you give time to a charity or give love, care or compassion to another person these are things you cannot get back and make someone else happy and in return will make you happy.   So stop looking for happiness in from material things and instead practice daily gratitude turning your HAVE TOs into GET TOs and GIVE to the world every day.