How to Become Happier by Discovering Your Authentic Self

Many of us are living what I call a so-so life. We are not actively unhappy, but neither do we spend much time delighted. An easy way to improve our level of satisfaction without making major changes is to make sure that our daily choices actually reflect what we authentically enjoy instead of simply going along with whatever is popular. For example, do you really like the color that your walls are painted or the fragrance you are wearing, or did you let someone else choose them because you were not sure what you wanted?

One way to think about authenticity is that each of us is like a unique plant that grows best when our personal requirements for sun, soil, and nutrients are met. We would not expect an oak tree to flourish in the same spot as a climbing rose.

When we copy other people instead of expressing our authentic selves, it is unlikely to be a better fit than a rose copying an oak tree in an attempt to learn how to live well.

Strategies to Express Your Authentic Self

Buy yourself a notebook or create an online journal, and use it daily to record your reactions to the exercises below.

Step 1: Gather Information.

This step involves moving away from your ideas about what you should or should not like. It uses your five senses to explore your gut reactions. This is a bit like becoming a small child again. Small children are not confused. They automatically gravitate to whatever attracts them, and they ignore or move away from what does not.

Exercise 1: Smell

Go to a shop that sells essential oils. I am starting with essential oils because they are fairly uncomplicated. You can sniff oils with only one main ingredient, like rose oil or grapefruit, which makes it easier to tell the scents apart. Start sniffing the samples one at a time with your eyes closed. Separate them into three groups:

1. Love the scent
2. So-So
3. Unpleasant

Look at the ones in each group and see what they have in common. Is any particular scent group your favorite? For example, I tend to find lots of citrus scents in my favorite group. Is there a group that you instinctively dislike? Or are there others that are just not very interesting to you—the so-so's?

The So-So’s

The so-so’s are an important group by default. When we blindly follow other peoples’ lead in life, we often find ourselves living with a lot of so-so things, doing a lot of things that are just so-so, and wondering why we are not feeling much pleasure or excitement.

Note: If you cannot find essential oils, go to a fragrance counter in a department store. Ask to smell categories of scents—a floral group, a citrus group, a musky or earthy group, etc. Do the same exercises as with the essential oils.

Exercise 2: Visual

Another simple way to understand our authentic selves is from a visual perspective. Some colors will make us feel happier than other colors. We are instinctively drawn to our happy colors and repelled by ones that we dislike on a gut level.

It is as if we are a walking chemistry factory that unconsciously recognizes and automatically responds well to certain needed elements and rejects and avoids looking at ones that we do not need or like.

This means that we need to pay close attention to our own responses. We need to make a point of noticing how the colors around us affect our mood and sense of well-being. Everyone has favorite colors, but our color responses may change as our needs change. For example, if you are feeling cold, you may find yourself attracted to warm colors, such as yellow, orange, and red, even though you usually like cooler shades of grey or blue.

Color Exercise

Buy a pack of colored construction paper in all the shades of the rainbow. Every morning, go through the pack of colors slowly and notice your reactions. As with the scented oil exercise, you are likely to find yourself instinctively drawn to specific colors, indifferent to some colors, and actually disliking others. Choose the one you are most drawn to today.

Put that sheet of colored paper somewhere you are likely to see it during the day. Look at it occasionally and notice your reaction. See if you can find that color in other places during your day. Is the sign on a building in that color? A piece of clothing in a shop window?

Note the color you chose and your reaction to it in your journal. Here are some other things to note at the end of each week:

1. Did you pick the same or similar colors each day?
2. What colors do you instinctively avoid?
3. Did you learn anything new about yourself while doing this exercise?

Paint Chips: A slightly more advanced level of this exercise involves going to a paint store and looking at the paper paint color samples. Quickly go through the sample colors and come out with the following:

1. Three colors you love
2. Three so-so’s
3. Three you dislike

Do not try to be realistic or practical. You are not actually choosing what color to paint a wall. If it helps free you up, pretend you are only five years old, and there are no real-world consequences if you like, dislike, or are indifferent to some colors.

Write in your journal about the colors you chose and what it felt like to be able to choose anything you liked for no other reason than you like it.

Exercise 3: Touch

No one besides ourselves can possibly know what type of touch we will enjoy at any moment. If you have ever been frustrated by someone massaging you too softly or too roughly, you will know what I mean. When it comes to touch, we are all a bit like the children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We want it “just right.”

Here are two touch exercises to explore.

Self-Massage Exercise

Pick an area of the body that you can reach and massage it. Make the massage as hard or soft as you like. Be playful. Try different things, from long strokes to tapping. Again, the goal is to notice what actually feels good to you right now—not what you think should feel good.

Texture Exercise

Assemble an assortment of things with different surface textures. You can include anything: a brick, a leather coat, a cashmere scarf, or a rubber ball. Now close your eyes and feel each of them slowly.

Again, the only goal is to pay attention to your authentic and rather automatic reactions. Record your reactions in your journal.

Taste and Sound: You can create similar exercises to explore your sense of taste and sound. The basic principles behind creating exercises such as these are to:

1. Put aside your expectations.
2. Create a group of things to sample and compare.
3. Pay attention to what you are drawn to today and what you are not.
4. Do not talk yourself into or out of your authentic preferences, even if you find them weird, uncool, or embarrassing.

Step 2: Use the Information.

Now that you know more about what you authentically like, look around your home. Do you see your favorite colors, smells, and textures represented there? If not, start adding them. If you find out that you have somehow surrounded yourself with things you do not like to look at, smell, or touch, gradually replace them with things that you actually enjoy.

As for the so-so stuff, try and keep them to a minimum. You may not have noticed before how many things you have collected that are just so-so. Having a so-so can opener may be OK because it is practical and cheap, but you do not want your whole life to be just so-so—practical without pleasure.

Summary

Many of us have lost touch with our real likes and dislikes. We have allowed ourselves to be overly influenced by the choices of people we admire or by advertising or by current fashions. You can reclaim your authentic self by simply allowing it out to play and taking your own reactions seriously.

Having things around you that you authentically like will increase your sense of happiness. If orange is your happy color, and you find that you love the scent of roses, you can add these elements to your daily life.

Remember: Happiness is not haphazard! It is something that you can consciously do for yourself.

Adapted from a Quora post.