Cultivating Happiness-Relationships Matter

Cultivating Happiness:

A key contributing factors to happiness is having active supportive relationships. Research shows happy people tend to have a broad base of supportive relationships, including family, friends, and social circles.

Investing time, effort and energy into relationships is key to improving happiness. Improved happiness also has a contagious factor, that is, the more happy you are, the more positive things and people are attracted to you, improving your social circle of support.

A CBT Technique-Make The Choice
Staying connected, to develop, nurture and maintain a relationship, initially is a matter of deliberately deciding to actively participate in the relationship. This will take practice, risk and effort for many, particularly if you’ve been challenged with negative thinking of self-worth, or anxiousness about social interactions. Look to develop a habit of initiating contact rather than waiting for it to happen

Invest in Relationships
A reportedly common ‘end-of-life’ regret is not having stayed in relationship with family and friends more. Stay in touch with those who make your life brighter and lighter. Call, write, email, text, Facebook, Instagram…. whatever it takes, stay in touch. The benefit is not only improved mood, but also a sense of community and connection, bringing more sense of meaning and purpose to self.

Look for Happy Folks Around You
Happiness is literally contagious. So look for happy people and surround yourself with those folks. Spending time with happy people rubs off on us. This will take effort, and again a decision to intentionally initiate and stay in contact is a pre-requisite.

Be Happy for Others Good Fortune
Again, the choice and decision to change a perspective is essential, and an essential Cognitive Behavioural Therapy technique. Again, a deliberate effort to shift perspective, from anxious-thinking like “I’ll never be good enough like they are” or depressed-thinking “It’ll never work out for me, only bad comes my way”. Deflecting this style of negative thinking is essential to re-frame and continuously re-focus on the brighter perspective.

So rather than be envious and/or resentful of others good fortunes, instead be happy and delighted that something went well for someone you know. Go the extra mile and acknowledge how happy you are for their good fortune. This will brighten their day, and in turn brightens you and your day. The final byproduct is that you’ve made yet another social-type connection.

Be Complimentary to Others
Everyone has their good, positive qualities, traits and characteristics. Notice these in others, think of what you appreciative and admire about that. Then, don’t be afraid to tell them. You will have a positive impact on that person’s day, thus encouraging them to be friendlier with others. It is also a testament of the degree of value on that relationship.