Happiness in life is what all people want to have. Happiness can come in many forms like having lots of material things, a great job or a loving relationship but authentic happiness is the only thing that satisfies a person's entire life.

1. How to Find Happiness: 7 Timeless Tips from the
Last 2500 Years
by HENRIK EDBERG
Retrieved from: http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2007/09/26/how-to-find-happiness/
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2. What do you want?
A great job?
A fulfilling relationship?
Go sailing around the Pacific for a few years in your very own luxurious
boat?
Or just to get along better with yourself?
Perhaps you want one of more of those things. But beneath those and
many common wishes, if you take it a step further, often lies a wish to
find happiness.
One good way to find a few useful, life-improving and time-tested tips
is to look back. To look way back through history. To find ideas that
have arisen in minds over and over the last few thousand years. Here
are seven such ideas about how you can find happiness. Maybe you´ll
find them helpful.
And if you want to learn much more about inner happiness then have
a look at my 12-week Self-Esteem Course.
1. You choose.
Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in
your way of thinking.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those
who are not.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
How your view yourself and your world are conscious choices and
habits. The lens you choose to view everything through determines
how you will interpret what is happening. And from your interpretation
you act. And all of this becomes your life.
You can choose to find happiness in small, everyday things. You can
choose to interpret what happens in a positive way. Or in a negative
way.
And your choices controls much of how much happiness your will find
and create in your life.
2. Focus on the present, not yesterday or tomorrow.
When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look
so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been
opened for us.
Helen Keller
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3. The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it
under his feet.
James Oppenheim
You only have now. And now. And now. Yesterday is a memory and
you cannot change it. Tomorrow is just a fantasy in your mind right
now. So live more in the now, focus on the present moment and
today. Think and worry less about yesterday and tomorrow. Otherwise
you might miss a great deal of happiness that is available to you right
now.
3. Don’t forget to be grateful.
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If
he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has
enough happiness provided for it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting
something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating
what we do have.
Frederick Keonig
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the
charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust
One of the simplest and quickest ways to turn a negative and sour
mood into a more positive one is to be grateful.
A few things you can feel gratitude for are for instance: The sunshine
and the weather. Your roof. Your health. A good TV-show, a movie or
a song.Your friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone walking
down the street.
Just try if for a minute and see how it changes how you feel. And it’s a
win/win solution. You feel great because you are grateful about your
world and the people you are grateful for feel great too because they
feel appreciated. So don´t forget about gratitude or you may forget
about the happiness that is already in your life.
4. Help someone else find happiness.
Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a
good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life
of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by
being shared.
Buddha
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4. If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day — go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else.
Chinese Proverb
Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it.
Bernard Meltzer
This is certainly one of the most popular ideas I’ve found about
happiness. And it might sound clichéd and empty. But it works very
well. When you make someone else happy – by, for example, helping
them with something – you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that
happy feeling flows back to you. And then, if you’d like, you can boost
you own ego by thinking something like: ”Wow, I really made him/her
happy!”.
And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside.
People will feel like giving back to you. Or they might feel like
helping/sharing it with someone else. And so the two – or more – of
you keep spreading the happiness.
5. Get rid of a couple of your less valuable desires.
If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away
from his desires.
Epicurus
You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.
Eric Hoffer
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
Henry David Thoreau
If you want less instead of more, more, more then your desires are
more likely to be fulfilled. And if you throw away a few of those desires
that you may not really want or need that much anyway you’ll
probably start to feel less stressed and worried. This is a calmer and
better place to be to enjoy your day (tip #2) and to take the time
discover the happiness that is already in your life (tip #3).
6. Do what you like to do.
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
Albert Schweitzer
Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of
achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
A pretty obvious one. But it’s still easy to trap yourself into doing what
you don’t want to for many, many hours. And seldom do what you
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5. really love to do. And I guess this one ties into tip #1. You may not be
able to choose to do what you want to do right now. Or for many
hours each day or week. But you almost always have a choice to do
more of what you really want to do. There is always time. Or time you
can free up. You have a choice.
7. Or at least do something.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness
without action.
Benjamin Disraeli
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things
that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the
trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
One of the best ways to not find happiness is just to hold yourself back
and do nothing. Seldom show up. Paralyze yourself through over
analysis. It’s not always easy to take action, it can be scary and hard
and difficult. But if you don’t take action you’ll be missing out on a lot.
Including many moments, people and experiences that can bring you a
lot of happiness.
More on finding your happiness and peace in life:
http://payspree.com/1025/nsfp0805
Read more on The Law of Attraction
http://payspree.com/949/nsfp0805
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