Today is Blue Monday - calculated as being the unhappiest day of the year. Happiness coach Maria Hocking is a charismatic life changer and author of the new book, Strip Naked & Re-Dress With Happiness. Having re-dressed with happiness herself after suffering from Alopecia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, she firmly believes that her soul purpose in life now is to help others do the same. Here are her Top 10 Tips for staying happy today and throughout 2017.
Blue Monday on Female First
• Tune into your soul by seeking solitude. In the chaos of daily living surrounded by work and chores, we often forget what we need to make us happy. Within solitude, particularly within nature, we gain the opportunity to let our inner voice make itself known and we gain clarity, inspiration and direction. My advice is to ‘make an appointment with yourself’, put it in your diary and guard it with your life. Take yourself to a beautiful place such as a beach, a park or a forest to just sit and ‘be’. Ask yourself “what do I need to make me happy?” Your soul will answer in solitude.
• Embrace the art of gratitude. Be thankful and grateful for all that you have and experience. Focus on what makes you smile, and not what makes you sad. Start to identify your own gratitude thoughts and record them regularly in a journal. Create your own gratitude book and keep it beside your bed. Before you go to sleep every night, write down at least five things that you are grateful for (the only rule is no repetition!) Find new moments of gratitude every day. Progress to noticing greatness in others (spectacular service in a restaurant, for example) and call or send a note to show your appreciation. Make or buy a small card and send it to a friend with a few heartfelt words. Feel the immense joy in making others feel good with genuine words from your heart.
• Identify your values. What is really important to you in life? Examples of values include freedom, security, health, independence, love, honesty, safety, adventure, loyalty and growth. Draw 8 stars and write your 8 most important values within them. You need to connect with your stars because by influencing your behaviour, they determine how you live. To be happy, you need to start noticing your twinkles and live your life in alignment with them. Living a life influenced by others creates unhappiness. You will only truly happy when surrounded by your own stars.
• Choose your friends wisely. Surround yourself with people who make you feel amazing. Limit the time you spend with people who drag you down. Seek out people who inspire you and people who are happy themselves. In your search, eliminate the need to look for people of a suitable age, and instead look for those with a suitable spirit. There is much to learn about happiness, from both the young and the elderly. Do you find your happiness levels influenced by social media? Commit to a Facebook ‘cull’. Identify people that fill you newsfeed with daily negativity and remove them. Optimise your social media optimism.
• Be unique, don’t be a sheep! What would it be like if you stopped comparing yourself to others? You may be trying to ‘fit in’ , but the truth is, you were born to stand out! Within your brain you have a unique set of neural pathways, formed by millions of connections based on your life learning’s and experiences. Therefore it’s impossible to be like anyone else! Embrace your differences and show the world the real you. Work your quirk!
• Increase money spent on travel and decrease money spent on material possessions. A new sofa, or a new car may bring happiness but it will most certainly be short term. Travel however gives the opportunity to experience the world to learn, grow and create long lasting memories. Choose to occasionally avoid the package holidays, and create your own itinerary to give you more freedom. Explore some of the seemingly ‘less fortunate’ countries. You may discover that the people with less, have more.
• Recognise that there is no failure, only feedback. If you try something, and it doesn’t work then don’t beat yourself up! See it as a way that ‘didn’t work’ which takes you closer to a way that does work. Developing this belief and living your life by these words can have a profound effect on your happiness. Imagine the word ‘failure’ being removed from the dictionary. What if you had no concept at all of failure? What would you do that you have been too afraid to do? Look back on past experiences that may have seemed like failures at the time. What feedback did you get? What did you learn? Act as if there is no such thing as failure, and notice the opportunities that make themselves known.
• Be keen to contribute. As a human being, you have an innate desire to contribute to society in some way shape or form. You need to know why you are needed, and need to feel valued. Think about how you could contribute or ‘give more’ of you and your skills to the world, with a view to making a difference. Volunteering can dramatically increase not only our own happiness, but the happiness of others. Give an hour of your time to visit a care home, and help the residents to polish their memories. Help out with a charity or school event, or simply take the time to speak to a stranger in the street. People need you more than you know.
• Exercise on a regular basis. Your body and your mind are intrinsically connected. Your mind affects your body and your body affects your mind. A healthier body encourages a happier mind. Make movement a part of your daily routine, be it walking, yoga, running, cycling, stretching or swimming. Stuck for time? Then set your alarm an hour earlier and unleash some early morning endorphins by exercising. Exercise is a natural anti-depressant, and is available without prescription whenever and wherever you need it. Commit to happiness and health today.
• Understand that what happens to you doesn’t define you. Your happiness may be affected by divorce, bereavement or redundancy, but you will never be ‘divorce, bereavement or redundancy’. You will simply be a person experiencing those things. You may think that having been through difficult times, it’s impossible to be happy but that thought is far from the truth. The happiest people have often been though the toughest times. Be one of the happiest people. Tough times allow us to see what is really important in life, and the trivial worries pale into insignificance. Use everything that you have been through to create the amazing and happy life that you deserve!
Strip Naked & Re-Dress With Happiness: How to survive and thrive through personal challenge, by Maria Hocking is published today by Practical Inspiration Publishing, RRP £10.99. For further details visit: www.mariahocking.com
