You Can Be Happy and Here's Why You Should Never Stop Trying

• Happiness is not an elusive, mysterious force—it is the result of skills that anyone can learn.
• Activities to increase your sense of well-being include practicing mindfulness and gratitude, removing negative inputs, and always having something to look forward to.
• Self-compassion, showing love to others, and physical wellness are also important for happiness.

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For the majority of my 15-year career as a psychologist, I have worked with people who have treatment-resistant depression. I've worked with the saddest of the sad. People who were so unhappy they often wanted to die, and they didn't respond to the usual treatments. In order to help them, I had to think somewhat outside the box. So, I approached their depression from the perspective of positive psychology, believing that if I could teach people skills for how to thrive, focus on a better future, and be well, their depression would get better. Using this approach, I've witnessed many people not only overcome their depression but find a place of sustained emotional well-being, which often vastly exceeded the expectations I had for them.

Over the years I have come to believe that anyone who is willing to do what it takes can live in a state of being generally happy and maintain positive emotional well-being over a sustained period of time. That's because, as I’ve learned through experience, happiness is not an elusive mysterious force, it is the result of a set of skills that anyone can learn.

There is a reason why everyone wants to be happy (which as I am defining it, includes a subset of positive emotions such as joy, interest, contentment, and love). It's because not only are positive emotions good feelings, but all the good things in life come easier to us when we are happy. We make better choices, are more creative, have better relationships, and experience better physical health when we are feeling good.

Positive emotions also help us to cope better with life's difficulties, which helps greatly with maintaining positive emotional well-being over time. The very well researched Broaden and Build Theory of positive emotion, shows us that positive emotion broadens our mindset, which facilities our ability to build the resources (social, personal, intellectual) that allow us to optimize our life experience.

Mental health and positive well-being, however, requires some effort, in the same way that physical health does. If you want good physical health, you can’t sit on the couch drinking beer and eating donuts; you have to do things that result in better health, such as eating right, drinking enough water, exercising, taking vitamins, and getting enough rest. If you want to experience positive mental well-being, there are things that if you do them on a regular basis, will result in mental wellness.

Does that mean if you do the things that facilitate positive emotion, that you will never experience negative emotion. No, of course not. That's because emotions aren't good or bad, even the ones we label as negative (fear, sadness, anxiety, etc.) are just indicators of what we are thinking about and the meaning we are giving to any situation. A sad event, such as a parent dying, is for most people a sad event. But the degree/intensity to which we experience negative emotion and the period of time it takes to bounce back to a more positive state, is heavily influenced by our general emotional state (usually positive, or usually negative) and the coping skills we use to deal with those negative emotions.

So, building and using a set of skills that facilitates positive emotional well-being, not only allows you to feel good/happy more of the time, which allows you to create a better life, it allows you to cope more effectively with the inevitable difficult events of life.

Below are eight essential mental wellness activities that, if done together regularly, will result in a sense of well-being that can improve the quality of your life.

1. Choose Responses as Opposed to Reacting Automatically.

Most of the way we deal with situations and events that come up in life is to react automatically. Your automatic thinking is based on past learned experience, happens so quickly that sometimes you aren’t even aware of it, and has the potential to trigger some very big emotions. The problem with automatic thinking, though, is that because it is based on the past, it may not be relevant to the current situation.

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If a situation is triggering a negative emotion in you (fear, anger, frustration, etc.), see if you can pause a moment to ask yourself if how you are responding is the way you want to be responding in the situation, and if not, what would you like to do differently? What helps this process greatly is to become more aware of your automatic thought patterns, either by doing some self-help reading on cognitive behavioral therapy, journaling, or working with a therapist that has training in cognitive therapies. (See "How to See the Blind Spots in Your Thinking.")

2. Practice Mindfulness.

The importance of learning to be consciously present and aware, as opposed to on autopilot, cannot be overstated. Mindfulness allows you to have conscious awareness of what you are doing, so you can make choices to override automatic thinking and make positive changes in thoughts and behavior. When you are mindful, you are able to observe events in a non-judgmental way, which allows you to detach from negative emotions, as opposed to being controlled by them. As a result, the way you respond to events in your life starts to change. Your emotions are better regulated, and you stop getting so upset, angry, or fearful over things you can’t control. You are also not flooding your brain with fear and worry about the future or resentments from the past, which has the profoundly positive effect of resetting your emotional state to calm and peaceful. I would recommend practicing some form of mindful meditation for at least 10-15 minutes a day. If you’ve never tried meditating, Headspace is a great app for beginners.

3. Input the Positive.

What you take in from your environment matters a great deal to your emotional well-being, because it stays active in your subconscious mental space for a period of time, even after the event is long over. For example, if you’ve ever listened to a song on the radio and then heard it in your head a week later, or watched a scary movie and had a nightmare the next night, that’s because those events are still active in your mental space and influencing you emotionally.

Most people don’t pay attention to what they are taking in. If you watch a lot of negative news stories, chronically listen to songs about heartbreak and sadness, frequently watch crime dramas and horror movies, regularly play violent video games, or spend a lot of time listening to other people complain about their lives, that is a steady junk diet of emotional negativity that is bound to drag you down.

To really experience the benefit of inputting the positive, I suggest a two-week environmental detox: Go through your daily routine and remove anything that, when you think of it, feels like it may generate a negative emotion. Turn off the news, disconnect from anyone who drags you into negative conversations, and stop watching or listening to anything sad, violent, or scary. Instead, make a very conscious effort to only give your attention to things that feel positive and uplifting. Listen to music and read books that inspire you, watch videos that make you laugh, spend time with pets and people that are happy, take more walks in nature, keep a gratitude journal. Keep in mind that the formula is simple: Attention to negative things = negative emotions; Attention to positive things = positive emotions.

4. Practice Appreciation and Gratitude.

Keeping your attention on what you are thankful for in life has many well-researched benefits including helping to build positive emotion. Creating a daily gratitude list is a good way to train yourself to focus on things that already exist in your life that create positive emotion when you think about them. Many people have trained themselves to see what they don’t like or want in their life, and this becomes the default way they view the world. Because the brain works on an activation/inhibition model when you actively look for negative things, it inhibits your brain's ability to see positive things. Intentionally choosing to look for those things that you appreciate and feel grateful for can over time retrain your cognitive filter and you will start to experience the world in a more positive way.

5. Always Look Forward to Something.

While there is a lot of attention placed on being present, and I believe practicing mindfulness is an essential wellness skill, positive anticipation has been shown to be one of the most significant generators of positive emotion. A large part of your brain is dedicated to reward processing. Rewards are the things that you look forward to in life, and they generate feel-good chemicals like dopamine. Learning to always give yourself something to look forward to with positive anticipation is an important well-being skill. While it could be something big like a vacation, it can also be small things, like looking forward to getting together with a friend, watching your favorite movie, taking a bubble bath, or going for a walk. Set up your day, your week, and your year with things to look forward to and engage in as much daydreaming as you want about the positive experiences you are anticipating. It’s a great way to stay engaged and get through some of the more mundane aspects of day-to-day life.

6. Be Self-Compassionate.

One of the most foundational elements of emotional well-being is self-compassion. Without it, you cannot find true happiness. It is impossible to hate yourself and have a good life. Negative self-talk damages your self-esteem and can lead to serious conditions like anxiety and depression.

Self-compassion is about learning to be kind to yourself and to be self-forgiving of the flaws we all have and the mistakes we all make as human beings. It is the ultimate form of self-love and a prerequisite to real self-confidence. I highly recommend the book Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff as a way to train yourself into a more self-loving mindset. A chapter a week will alter your view of yourself in a few short months.

7. Practice Loving Others.

When we show love and compassion to other people, it releases chemicals in the pre-frontal cortex and reward center of the brain that professionals refer to as the "Helper’s High." People who help others report many positive mental and physical health benefits, including lower levels of stress, lower blood pressure, and relief from depression and physical pain. Research also shows that those who engage in altruistic behavior not only have a higher quality of life, but they also live longer.¹ Engaging in some type of regular volunteer activity on at least a monthly basis, or just spending more time doing loving, kind things for the people in your life, helps get you out of your own head, creates well-being for others, and makes you feel good about yourself.

8. Don't Neglect Physical Wellness.

The body cannot be separated from the mind. As a result, it is difficult to experience mental well-being if you do not take care of yourself physically. While for a period of time professionals characterized all mental illness as brain disorders, there is growing research demonstrating that the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain involved in feelings of well-being, such as serotonin, are directly affected by other important areas of your body such as the gut microbiome (digestive tract), and so nutrition is the newest frontier of treatment for psychiatric disorders. Recent research suggests that adopting The Mediterranean Diet while reducing sugar, fried food, and alcohol can significantly improve depression.²

As important as diet is, exercise is equally critical for positive emotional well-being. It has long been known that exercise releases endorphins into the body, which results in feelings of pleasure. Recent research shows that 10 minutes or more of cardiovascular exercise a day is enough to significantly improve mood functioning³ and sleep quality, which has been shown to help people improve their ability to regulate emotions and experience greater well-being.^4,5

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