The Five Things Happy People Always Do

Happy women have happy habits. They manage their thoughts, feelings, and actions in ways that set them up for happiness. Check out these things that happy women always do so that you too can become happier too.

1. They Define What Happiness Means for Them.

Think about a time when you were truly happy. What were you doing? Chances are you weren’t sitting on a beach drinking fruity cocktails.

Of course, that kind of passive, pleasure-oriented contentment can be a part of overall happiness, but researchers have provided compelling evidence that focusing on service—on helping others or making a better world—has a more powerful effect on your overall sense of well-being.

Whether you know it or not, whether you’re currently connected to it or not, I believe you have a purpose. You’re here to make meaning with your life — to do good — in service of something larger. The more you do it, the happier you’ll be.

To paraphrase Frederick Buechner, I define happiness as the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s needs.

This definition is important to me because I’m married to a man who for 19 of the 20 years we’ve been together had not been successful at making money.

But my husband, Doug, and I have always done work we loved whether or not that work made a lot of money or not.

I started out as a nurse-midwife, and now I’m a coach, but Doug has always felt happiest—and done the most for others—in his writing. And guess what? Doug sold his first book six months ago with an option to create a series of many more.

So don’t you think we’re very happy that he didn’t give up on writing just because it didn’t make money for so many years? That we’re glad we both chose to focus on work we loved? Yes, yes, we are!

2. They Create the Conditions for a Life They Love.

It may seem obvious, but I talk with women every day who are so overwhelmed with the daily duties of their lives that they haven’t seriously considered the fact that they have choices about how they spend their time.

More importantly, they don’t realize they can choose how they feel about how they spend their time.

Of course, analyzing one’s life isn’t easy and may require questioning long-held assumptions, like a need to please others over caring for one’s self.

Fortunately, changes don’t have to be big ones to tip happiness in your favor.

Research shows that if you transfer even an hour of your day from an activity you don’t enjoy (grocery shopping or sitting on a committee) to one you enjoy (reading or taking a yoga class) you’ll see a tremendous improvement in your overall happiness.

Don’t believe you even have an hour of wiggle room in your day? You could spend 15 minutes walking outside or 5 minutes journaling about what you’re appreciating right now and you’ll still get a significant happiness boost.

So you see, happiness is a choice.

I have always been the primary, if not the sole, wage earner in my family and for many years I focused on how everything depended on me. I had to make sure everyone else was okay before I got any “selfish” needs met, and I found that pretty stressful.

For a long time that outlook contributed to a lot of unhappiness – until I decided that I could choose to feel happy about the fact that I was supporting our family doing meaningful and satisfying work as a nurse-midwife while my husband and I both pursued more purpose-driven work.

Taking action in alignment with your true values and your deepest desires is the key to a happy and meaningful life.

It will probably be a long journey to get to whatever it is that you have defined as success (and I can pretty much guarantee that the success will look different than you imagined), and you might even fall down a time or two.

But if you are deeply in touch with your purpose—your Big Why—and you keep getting up, you’ll notice that with every step you’re feeling happier and more fulfilled.  And yes, you will get there.

I can promise you this: It’s not the “arriving” at your goal that’s even so great or so fulfilling – it’s who you become on the journey.

3. They Avoid “IF/THEN” Propositions. 

If only I could get a better job…find a good man…lose 10 pounds…then I would be happy.

Happy people don’t buy into this kind of thinking.

The problem with IF/THEN is that our brains tend to shift automatically from believing that the thing we’re after is just one condition for happiness to believing it’s the only condition for happiness, and we stay seriously stuck.

So when you make it conditional—when you say that happiness depends on that thing you don’t have—you set yourself up to be chronically unhappy. Plus you overlook all the other ways you can achieve the feeling of having the thing you truly want right now.

Instead of making everything an “IF/THEN” proposition, ask yourself: “What will it mean to me to have accomplished this?”

That meaning—I call it your why, because it tells you why you want what you want—is the most powerful fuel you can access as you make your way down your path.

Once you have your why, it’s exciting to take one step and then another and another, and you never doubt that you’ll make it to your destination.

I talked about this in my interview with Linda Joy in the last issue of Aspire, but it bears repeating because the latest research shows that we’re surprisingly bad at predicting what will make us happy.

The brain creates something psychologists call “hedonic adaptation,” a natural dimming effect. A new car won’t generate the same pleasure a year after its purchase. The thrill of having a new boyfriend will ebb as you experience the frustrations and disappointments that are a natural part of being a couple.

Happy people are wise to this, and have learned to be satisfied with what they have by looking for things to appreciate in their current situation.

They also have learned to seek new and challenging pursuits which keep their brains engaged and, yes, happy.

4.  They Put Their (Real) Friends First. 

It’s no surprise that social engagement is one of the most important contributors to happiness, but there are scientific studies that provide evidence of the value of friendship for our overall health too.

Data actually shows that community is more important for preventive health than daily exercise or quitting smoking!

What’s also news is that the nature of the relationship counts. Compared with catching up with various friends and acquaintances through Facebook, you get a lot more joy from spending longer periods of time with a close friend.

And the best-friend benefit doesn’t necessarily come from delving into heavy discussions. One of the most essential pleasures of close friendship is simple companionship that comes from sharing a cup of tea or a walk on your lunch break.

Yes, it takes more energy to schedule a “real” date with a friend than it does to scroll through your Facebook feed. I’ve made lots of excuses for not doing it too, but studies like these remind me that I will always get more out of it than I put in. So I make it more of a priority now. I hope you will, too.

5. They Allow Themselves to Be Happy. 

As much as we all think we want it, many of us are convinced, deep down, that we don’t deserve to be happy (or at least not too happy).

Whether the belief comes from religion, culture, or the family they were raised in, many of the women I work with feel guilty if they focus on their own pleasure when there’s so much work to be done and so much suffering in the world.

That’s why I love to quote Howard Cutler, MD, coauthor with the Dalai Lama of The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World:

“Some people would say you shouldn’t strive for personal happiness until you’ve taken care of everyone in the world who is starving or doesn’t have adequate medical care. The Dalai Lama believes you should pursue both simultaneously. For one thing, there is clear research showing that happy people tend to be more open to helping others. They also make better spouses and parents.”

So, for the steadfast skeptic who still needs persuading, just think of how much more you can help the world if you allow more happiness into your life.

Let’s face it, life will offer up some pretty undesirable circumstances for us to deal with, but it’s usually enough for me to reframe “I should” or “I have to” to “I get to.”

Doing so allows me to focus on what is necessary — and even good — in any situation, and then I’ve found my peaceful or happy feeling again.

Remember, your thoughts are the source of your emotions, not your circumstances.

What I know for sure is that whether I feel happy or unhappy is completely up to me based on the thoughts I choose to focus on.

There are whole worlds of happiness, strength and new ways to look at things just waiting and ready to be found in your thoughts. Now go find them!