Happiness Articles

Learning how to find happiness can certainly be a lifelong journey. But that does not mean you'll never know how to be happy long-term. It's simply a process like anything else, with peaks and valleys. But the reward can be a more consistent ride and finding a flow with less extreme highs and lows.

How to Be Happy at Work, 7 Tips on Finding Happiness in Work (regardless of your job)

by Jared Akers

“The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.” – James M. Barrie

Last weekend while taking a shower (yes, I take them during the week also) I was thinking about a topic to write about this week. For some reason the idea of being happy with the work you do (regardless of what that is) popped into my head.

Shortly after I was online and received an email from someone who was reading my post on The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer. They shared, “I want to get a better job but I can’t find one. I don’t enjoy the job I am doing right now.”

So I knew I was meant to write about this topic. I love signs (or you may call them coincidences). Honestly, these happen to me all the time. I think they were always there, guiding me through life, its just that today I’m self-aware, emotionally connected, and spiritually fit so I’m acutely aware of them.

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5 Tips on How to Be Content with Life

by Jared Akers

I had a reader contact me recently and ask about contentment or how to “just be.”

Emily and I thought this would be a great topic for a Podcast, so that may be on its way as well. In the meantime, I thought I’d write up something about it.

I’m not a Zen master or yoga instructor, and I like things that are practical, actionable, and sustainable. Three words I thought of while sitting in the Best Buy parking lot yesterday. This is totally cool because I realized that’s my mission. To provide tips and techniques on happiness based on real life experiences that are practical, actionable and sustainable.

A quick moment to share something… I’m not doing this alone. I certainly do not know everything or have the market cornered on happiness. What I do have is a proven method that works for me and I’ve seen it work in others. It’s not rocket science and it’s all actually pretty simple, but not easy. [Read more…]

How to be Happy Alone, 12 Simple Actions to Make Yourself Happy

by Jared Akers

Are you wondering how to be happy single or alone?

I’ve been through a couple iterations of aloneness during different periods of my life.

I refer to them as alone in a room full of people and alone in a room with myself; which I’ll talk about in this post.

As to how to be happy alone, there isn’t a simple answer. Although we can be happy without intimacy with others, there seems to be a limit to that experience until we share it with others.

I’ll share and talk about the last scene in the movie Into the Wild. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s pretty hard to watch—so you’ve been warned—it always brings tears to my eyes.

My wife Emily and I sat down and came up with 12 simple actions (most were her suggestions) that you can do—alone—to be happy; which I’ll list at the end of this post.

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Be Happy with Yourself, Maybe it’s Time to Change

by Jared Akers

If you’re not happy with life, then you’re probably not happy with yourself. Maybe it’s time to change.

Do you know someone who is constantly complaining about something or the entire universe just seems to be conspiring against them? Or, maybe that’s you?

“Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.” -Henry Ford

There was certainly a time in my life where I thought the world was out to get me. I thought that if everyone could just understand me (mainly how great I was) that I would finally get ahead. I’d get the promotion I deserved, the million dollar bonus, fame, fortune, etc. They (the world) just didn’t get how amazing I was.

I was a little off in that I believed fame and fortune would finally mean acceptance and happiness. The truth was I wasn’t happy with myself at all.

I can say with certainty that, for many years, I was confused on what being happy with yourself actually meant. Looking and acting happy seemed to be what I was doing most of the time—or at least striving for. You may be familiar with the phrase, “act as if.” Also known as “Fake it till you make it.” This suggests that if you act a certain way, whether you feel like it or not, you’ll eventually become that. That if you act happy, going through the motions of someone that feels happy, that eventually the happiness will become real. I think this concept has some merit, to a point.

From my experience, acting “as if” for years didn’t really solve my problems. Or in my case, I might have felt happy at times, but there still existed the underlying feeling of dread or general dissatisfaction with life.

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5 Ways to Be Happy Whether You Want to or Not

by Jared Akers

how to be happy in life — Me on Kauai 2008

If you want to be happy in life, you have to be happy with who you are; whether you want to or not. You have to live with YOU everyday, so you might as well learn how to get along.

People often ask me, how are you so happy all the time? The answer is pretty simple, I’m happy with who I am as a person. But that wasn’t always the case.

When I started on this journey—on how to be happy in life—happiness was not really what I was looking for. What I wanted was peace of mind and a reason to live. My journey began out of desperation.

The concept of happiness wasn’t even on the radar; I just wanted a reason to get up each morning. I know that sounds depressing because it was. Being happy in life seemed impossible because of all the things I had either done, or failed to do in my past.

As most great mothers do, my mother had always instilled in me the idea that I was great. That I could achieve anything I set my mind to. She would say, “Shoot for the moon son, the worst that can happen is you miss and land amongst the stars.”

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