Feeling Cheerful And Motivated Every Day
As a child, everything seems easier and more fun. Over the years, however, some choices or lifestyles we adopt risk making us forget our dreams and feeling cheerful and motivated becomes increasingly difficult.
As we get older, we start making plans and fall into the vicious circle of comfort.
In this sense, we become slaves to routine and lose sight of what is important to us to achieve a life full of happiness and satisfaction.
However, each of us has the power to determine our mood and to set the direction of our life.
Feeling cheerful, happy and motivated
Matthieu Ricard, the happiest man in the world, defines happiness as the “feeling of deep serenity and contentment”.
Ricard states that anyone can find true happiness, through wisdom, altruism, compassion and putting aside “mental toxins”, that is, hatred, greed and ignorance.
The Dalai Lama in the book The Art of Happiness also explains how human beings create conditions that can hinder cheerfulness and happiness due to negative thoughts, emotional reactivity or an inability to appreciate and use inner resources.
On the other hand, if the human being has the ability to feed his own suffering, he is also able to cultivate happiness.
According to the Dalai Lama, the key to feeling cheerful and happy lies in inner knowledge, in knowing how to manage the attitudes and reactions we adopt and put into practice in everyday life.
A fundamental element to achieve our goals and therefore be happy is motivation.
Ricard, argues that the human being is able to self-suggest in order to experience cheerfulness, pleasure and happiness as often as he wishes.
If our goal is selfless or sincere, it will be much more likely to live with passion what we do every day and to infect others with our positive attitude.
What to do to feel cheerful and happy?
Michael Fordyce was one of the pioneers of Positive Psychology, an approach whose goal is to push people to cultivate positive feelings, behaviors and thoughts.
He created a program called “14 Basic Principles of Happiness”.
This program invites us to apply the principles of happy people so that we too are.
The 14 foundations of happiness are as follows:
- Be more active and keep busy
- Socialize longer
- Be productive in an important job
- Knowing how to organize and plan goals
- Avoid worrying
- Lower aspirations and expectations
- Develop optimistic and positive thoughts
- Live in the present
- Work on developing a healthy personality
- Foster an outgoing and sociable personality
- Be yourself
- Eliminate negative feelings and problems
- Affective relationships are the resources of happiness
- Valuing happiness
In addition to the principles of the Fordyce program, there are other important aspects to consider. We at Vivere più Sani have selected the most significant:
Take care of physical and psychological health
It should be borne in mind that apathy can be caused by certain diseases, thyroid problems, stress, chemical imbalances and psychological disorders, drug use or even menopause.
It is therefore essential to dedicate time to physical activity because it has multiple beneficial effects on the body. Taking care of the body is one of the keys to living full of motivation and joy.
Avoid envy
Envy usually occurs when we are too focused on material things and therefore struggle to maintain peace of mind. In fact, envy corrodes any kind of relationship, as well as destroying our mind and health.
For this reason, it is important to cultivate emotions that generate joy and mental serenity, such as knowledge or experience. In this way, we are able to focus and take care of our values and principles.
Enjoy positive emotions
All emotions have a positive function: they allow us to know ourselves better.
However, positive emotions like forgiveness, hope, generosity, and gratitude help neutralize the negative ones. they generate pleasure, but they also improve personal, intellectual, physical, psychological and social skills.
Accept painful experiences
Negative emotions are inevitable in life because we are always exposed to losses, mistakes and failures.
Happiness, however, is not to be understood only as the absence of suffering, it is a condition that depends on the balance between positive and negative emotions.
If we accept the painful experiences of life, we will be able to strengthen the self-control and psychological flexibility that will help us grow and move forward despite the tragedies.
In conclusion, finding the motivation and joy that can lead us to happiness is an undertaking that requires willpower, commitment and work. However, living happily means living longer and for this reason it is worth investing time and resources.
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