Whether you are lucky to wake up on the right side of the bed or your friends constantly refer to you as ‘Debbie Downer,’ feeling happy and content can be a daily challenge to overcome.

By: Lourdes Mestre

18 Game-Changing Tactics To Achieve & Maintain Everyday Happiness

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Achieving and maintaining everyday happiness can be difficult during seasons when life seems to be challenging on every side. When unexpected events occur, you can find yourself in a bad mood. Apart from helping your overall health, keeping a positive daily outlook will also improve the time you spend around those you love. If you are looking for practical daily tools to help you increase happiness, here are some tactics that you can use to achieve and maintain inner positivity.

1. Create a Happiness Training Plan

Following a routine can assist you in prioritizing a positive outlook as you go about your daily activities. Just like a runner training for a marathon, it is important to put daily effort into your mental well-being. Create time slots on your calendar to work on daily gratitude meditation or to read books/papers on positive psychology. Start journaling as writing strengthens your thinking and keep track of how happy you feel on a daily basis. You can use a free daily Happiness Quotient tracker like this one by HQ.

2. Find Someone To Connect With

By sharing time with a loved one, friend or a family member – you can greatly boost your mood. Connect via phone, video chat or you can also send a friendly email – and of course, an impromptu get together works as well. This is something you can do even when you are busy.

3. Help Others

Can you remember the feeling you had the last time you decided to help a person selflessly? When you stretch your hand to help someone, psychologically that effort creates positive impact. Having a service-minded focus + positive attitude will also create new opportunities for personal growth.

4. Practice Brain Optimizing Processes In The Morning

You can change the tone of the whole day by beginning your day off with behaviors that inspire happiness consciousness and gratitude. One traditional brain optimizing process is to exercise which get’s the metabolism going. Another is to meditate on the things you want to focus on for the day or to set your daily intention. Program your mind to the things that you want to get done & the kind of person you want to be.

5. Deep Breathing

One of the easiest means to stay present is by connecting with your breath. Breathing can be erratic, shallow or quick when you feel anxious or stressed. You can reverse these two by breathing slowly, evenly and deeply while focusing on the present.

6. Positive Affirmations

Stay in tune w/ your positive desires and intention by using mantras or affirmations. Create a list that is meaningful to you + say these out loud every day during your meditation time. The more you fully believe in these mantras when you speak them, the more effective your results will be.

7. Spend A Moment With A Furry Friend

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Apart from being a cuddly and beautiful source of joy, pets can provide a companionship that is good for your positive outlook. Having someone to care for can be a nurturing experience that can be extremely fulfilling.

8. Have a Positive Password

If you are spending a huge chunk of your time logging in and out of email and other sites, then you should make it a chance to remember an affirmative message or thought. You can make your password a reminder of being positive or one of your daily affirmations.

9. Lunch Break

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Decide to eat healthier and spend more time thinking about what you are consuming. Another key to keeping daily sanity and boost your overall wellbeing is to take a meal break without distractions or phone by your side. Even if you only take 10-15 minutes, create a break from your daily grind to enjoy your meal with gratitude intentions.

10. Laughter

Conquer stress with laughter. Watch a video or funny move to improve your mood and that will make you giggle.

11. Look Back On Your Day’s Achievements

Although you might think that you haven’t accomplished much for the day, positively focus on the things you did achieve. Don’t underestimate small daily accomplishments.

12. Try New Self-Help Modalities

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With all the new techniques available in the digital world, consider online therapy or online couples counseling whenever things seem difficult and you are having trouble dealing with severe challenges or obstacles. If you feel that you need a clinical path to achieve acceptable levels of daily happiness, another valuable solution would be to add an online psychiatrist to your routine. Getting opinions from mental health providers for consultation via a digital format can be extremely convenient and time effective.

13. Clean up Your Vocabulary

It’s a good idea to remove certain words or negative phrases from your daily vocabulary that take you further away from attaining your happiness goals. Replace “I can’t” to “I’ll find a way” and start looking at life with a “glass half full” mentality.

14. Inspirational Quotes

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Whenever you bump on an inspirational quote that feels personal to you, write it in your journal or somewhere in your smartphone. Follow positivity-inspired Instagram accounts or social feeds to optimize your mindfulness at different times of the day. Remove negative social media “noise” by unfollowing accounts that are not positivity-forward.

15. Work in Joyful Space

Perhaps spruce up your workspace w/ inspiration quotes or motivational books. Keeping an organized & tidy workspace can improve your mental focus and drive improved productivity.

16. Positive Visualization

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You can spend a portion of your time each day meditating on your positive intentions/gratitude and think about how they will manifest in your life. Visualizing the happiness goals you want to achieve will inspire you to work towards them.

17. Keep A Gratitude Jar

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When you have a visual reminder of gratitude or your intentions, you can learn to give thanks for what you have on a daily basis and this should be one of the building blocks to achieve happiness. Every day, write something you are grateful for and keep it in the jar.