I’m going to share 15 rules for happiness and happier life. Everybody wants happiness but it’s hard to find happiness in this era. Most people aren’t that happy because they stay in their comfort zone for the rest of their lives while others seem to whistle all the time. Strangely, two people can differ that much when it comes to a state of mind. But you don’t have to follow these rules because sometimes you’ve got to break the rules and beat the fools. Do what works for you and discard all the rest. Let’s start with my favorite one.
15 rules: Wake up with the sun
Waking up with the sun means getting up at 5:45 in the morning and I decided to give it a try. I did this the first time to be able to watch UFC 202. I wanted to watch how the battle of the alphas would end. So I could have gone back to sleep but I didn’t, I revisited a blog post and went training with a buddy. I was already training at 8 in the morning and it felt great. It was Sunday morning and the streets were dead, most people were probably still sleeping because they had turned their alarms off.
This way of living has multiple benefits like:
- You’ll be more proactive
- There’s a bigger chance that you’ll exercise. This increases dopamine and reduces cortisol
- You sleep better
- You’re much more optimistic
- You’ve got more time to spend some spare time on things you like since you’ve done your work earlier in the day.
Willpower is like a muscle
In the book The One Thing they mentioned that your willpower is like a muscle, it gets fatigued during the day. So it’s strongest first in the day and that’s why it’s the best time to get your work done. You’ll probably never start if you keep postponing your work. You could procrastinate for five minutes but suddenly those five minutes turned into an hour, the hour into a day, the day into a week and so on till you never do it.
The most successful people got up early when they started and they keep on doing it. Richard Branson gets up at 5 am every day and he’s the example of a successful person. It’s the best time to find focus, motivation and it’s so damn quiet outside. It’s relaxing.
It was known 300 years ago but we’ve forgotten about it. Or we became lazier which is possible as well.
“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” — Benjamin Franklin
Wiseguy.
I know that most of you will tell me that you’re not a morning person but no worries, I’ve got a solution to your problem. Become a morning person and become happier while doing it.
15 rules: The first 10 minutes of the day should be me-time
These can make or break your whole day. If you snooze, you’ll lose. I mean it, snoozing means losing. So what do you lose? You’re the whole day because you’ve started it wrong. Robin Sharma has a pretty nice trick to spend every day as he wants. He asks himself the following question: “If this was the last day of my life, how would I spend it?” You don’t want to end your last day with regret, don’t you? You want it to be productive and happy. That’s why he’ll start the day off with meditation and laughing. I start the day off with some shadowboxing just to get my blood flowing, after that it’s time to make a bed and I’m good to go.
15 rules: Take a cold shower to feel some positive power
I take cold showers every day because I like them. They feel a lot better than hot showers when you’re used to them. But there is another good reason why you should take cold showers. Cold showers help you fight negative thoughts and depression. It’s like all the negativity flushes away when you take cold showers.
So it’s either taking cold showers or waiting till you do something stupid due to your unhappy state of mind. It’s hard to get out of this comfort zone but you’ll never want to go back once you’ve left it.
15 rules: Don’t worry about the future just work hard
There are tons of people who worry about the future and they worry about others’ futures at the same time as well. It’s useless to worry since this drains energy from you. This won’t bring you happiness, just more negative thoughts, and endless worries. Besides how many fears have become a reality in your life? I can’t remember a single fear that has become a reality unless the monster under the bed would suddenly show up after all these years.
Fear lies you should learn to conquer it. After a while, you’ll get out of this mindset and feel happiness. Just work towards your goals and you’ll notice that everything will work out for you. It just takes time and patience. That two things that most people neglect. Learn to embrace the power of now and you’ll be a lot happier.
15 rules: Just do it
I learned this by reading the book Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This is one of the best books that I’ve read and I will read it more than twice. This book was a complete game-changer in my eyes. I had the key to a lock but I didn’t know how to open it, this book gave me the manual to open it. I just started writing blog articles and I hadn’t written a single page in English in my entire life. It was trial and error but after a while, I got the hang of it.
I like to compare life to martial arts so just get in the ring and you’ll adapt to the upcoming punches. Sometimes you’ll get hit but you learn from those hits and make sure they don’t hit you twice. It’s an exciting and fun experience. It’s all about taking the first step, after that you just need to keep on walking.
Most people work for the perfect moment but there is no perfect moment. You create that perfect moment and roll along. It’s like waiting on a train at an abandon train station. You can wait for your entire life or you can start walking until you can hop on a moving train.
Someday is a disease will take your dreams to the grave with you. There’s no someday, there’s only today.
15 rules: Spend less time on social media
Social media is our number one time consumer. Many people lose sleep or even jobs because they spend too much time on social media. You can chat all day with people on Social media but what have you accomplished by that? Nothing right? We’re all becoming social media zombies who’re chasing Pokémon instead of chasing the things that matter.
I mean people got hit by a car because they wanted to catch a Pokémon. I honestly didn’t expect that I was going to hear something like that in this day and age. Furthermore, it doesn’t make you particularly happy since you’ll see all the fake happiness. I use Facebook to talk to other people but I don’t overdo it. I never scroll down the timeline anymore because I always saw the same things: depressing quotes, workout pictures, couples, travel pictures, the news and tons of hate.
15 rules: Walk the walk and talk the talk
There’s a difference between saying something and doing it. Most people talk a lot but they end up doing nothing. Others just commit themselves and they make it happen no matter what. Did you want to work out early? Don’t snooze but do it. Do you want to spend a couple of hours with your friends? Do it instead of playing video games or something else. The commitment will make you happy if you can keep up with it. Sometimes it’s hard but the things you’ve got to work for are the best.
15 rules: Realize what the true source of happiness is
Chasing happiness will make you unhappy. Most people link happiness to an eternal source for example: if I have a girlfriend I will be happier.
Shawn Achor described this pretty good: Every time your brain has a success, you change the goalpost of success. For example, you get good grades, now you need better grades — you made a good income, now you need a bigger income. Every time you hit a target, the target moves. Thus, “if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. We’ve pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society,”
Happiness is like a shadow, you’ll never catch it if you follow it. Just turn around and it will have to follow you.
15 rules: Learn to burn the ships
Most people start something and immediately make up a plan B just in case they don’t make it. Creating a plan B is the same as telling yourself you won’t make it. A plan B plants a seed into your brain that you can fail. This is dangerous and most people don’t even realize the danger of this approach. Forget plan B, just take plan A and work till you get it.
This was also described in Think And Grow Rich. Besides some people end up working on two plans at the same plan and end up with plan B as a result. They end up with the plan they wanted the least. It’s extremely sad when this occurs.
15 rules: Realize that happiness isn’t for sale
I once claimed that having rich parents was more a curse than a blessing, well at least in most cases. They just try to make their kids happy with materialistic stuff. This kind of happiness lasts for a couple of hours. It’s like buying a new cell phone. The first hour you’re impressed and you’ll call it the best phone in the world. A few days later this “best phone in the world” turned into a normal phone that’s just fine.
The happiest people in the world don’t have that much stuff. Stuff gets in the way and pulls energy from what matters.
15 rules: You won’t live forever so you better act like you never will
Most people never pursue a dream because they’ve still got a whole life ahead of them but suddenly they arrive in their mid-40’s and start to act like teenagers again. The so-called midlife crisis is just the result of procrastinating your dreams or goals. What would you do differently if you knew that you would die tomorrow? But Alex, tomorrow is just one day from today.
That’s right but you’d be surprised how much you can do in one single day. I mean a day lasts 24 hours and you sleep for 7 to 9 hours. So your day lasts about 15-17 hours. You can do a lot of work in those hours if you make the right choices. So no snoozing and less time on social media and you’re good to go.
15 rules: Plan the next day the day before
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” — Benjamin Franklin
I have got a notebook in which I write my goals for the next day. Mostly these are three things that I want to do, on rare occasions, it will be four. These things take in a whole day and I want to get them all done before I go to bed. This takes only ten minutes per day and gives me a head start in the morning. I don’t have to stress out about what I’ve got to do since it’s already written down in my notebook.
15 rules: Eat healthily
What do all the depressed women in the movies have in common? They eat tons of ice cream and cry.
What do all the depressed men in the movies have in common? They drink tons of beer and eat junk food mostly pizza.
It easy: if you eat well you feel good. If you feel good you do good. Learn to eat healthily and you will feel a lot more energetic. Happiness will follow after a while. Health needs to come first and happiness will be waiting right behind the corner, ready to show up.
15 rules: Start doing intermittent fasting: become Wolvelean instead of Wolverine
People don’t get why you should fast but it’s pretty easy and there are tons of benefits if you do it.
Your body will recover a lot quicker and your immune system will improve because your body doesn’t have to process food all the time.
Some other benefits are:
- Increased testosterone
- Improve digestive efficiency
- Increase mental clarity
- Remove toxins out of the body
- Improve vision
- Give a general feeling of well-being aka happiness
15 rules: Be grateful
Being grateful is good for your happiness but also your environment. Just look at all the benefits of gratitude.
- Stronger immune systems
- Less bothered by aches and pains
- Lower blood pressure
- Sleep longer and feel more refreshed upon waking
- More alert, alive, and awake
- More joy and pleasure
- Higher levels of positive emotions
- More optimism and happiness
- More helpful, generous, and compassionate
- Exercise more and take better care of their health
- More forgiving
- More outgoing
- Feel less lonely and isolate
You should even be grateful for the people who throw hate towards you since they are testing your patience. Gratitude is the mother of all virtues and there’s no point in neglecting that.
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Till next time
Alex
