5 Ways to Live a Happier Life

 

We just want to preface this by saying that we are genuinely happy people. We have amazing friends, a blog we’re truly passionate about (obsessed with), and each other! We don’t have a whole lot to complain about. This post is just about being a HAPPIER human being. Little things to change in your day-to-day that will bring even more of that “cupcakes & sunshine” feeling into your life.

1) Organize your stuff

A cluttered house makes for a cluttered mind. Simple as that. One of the easiest ways to live a happier life is to organize your home. If you’re not a clean freak, start small. Go through your closet and take out items you don’t see yourself wearing again. Put them in a box far out of reach (and plain sight). If you forget about the box after one month then get rid of it all! If you have to frantically dig through the box for something you want to wear, then keep that item.

Also, make your bed every day. This one may sound crazy to most people, but at a young age we were taught that you make your bed each and every morning. It definitely makes your room look put together and clean, even if it’s not. It’s basically an optical illusion. You’ll feel better about coming home to a pretty, put-together room. Trust us.

Something that will save you time each and every day (and excess time makes anyone happy) is to organize your closet. At the very least your summer clothes should be separated by your winter clothes. We (Britta) also organizes by style and color, but if you’re just a beginner that can come later.

2) Concentrate on your accomplishments, not your disappointments

This one took us the longest to figure out. Even though we consider ourselves to be very optimistic “glass half full” type of people, it’s hard to see how far you’ve come when it’s more clear how far you need to go. We, like most of you, have big goals. Goals we’d like to accomplish in the next few years. Humans are very impatient people, us especially. We want to be successful now, we want the shoes now, we want to eat now (this one is warranted). So it’s hard to not get disappointed when you don’t get the job, or you don’t get the raise, etc. But here’s the trick: keep a list of your accomplishments for the entire year, big or small. Starting on January first start a list. If you got a new job, write it down! If you made a new recipe, write it down! It doesn’t matter the size of the accomplishment. If it made you feel good and proud, write it down. When you are feeling discouraged and having self-doubt go back and look at that list. You are guaranteed to feel better. It will give you enough confidence to get back on track to reaching your goals.

3) Relax

This is a tough one for us. We are the type of people that try and do as much as possible in a 24 hour period, sleep being low on the priority list. So we literally have to pencil in time to relax if we’re going to stay sane. This time usually comes on the weekend. But even then we spend about 70% of the weekend either blogging, or doing something blog related. Sometimes when we’re having a busy week we’ll pick one night to do something that makes us happy and relaxed. A few weeks ago we attended a DIY workshop. For two hours we crafted and sipped wine with other creative souls. It was the most relaxing thing we did that week.  Another activity we love is binge watching 2 Broke Girls (our bio pic). We always like to accompany the binge watching with eating (duh). The night becomes a cycle of laughing and eating, laughing and eating. Two of our favorite things to do! If you’re like us and always have to stay busy, please try to pencil in some time for relaxing each week, it’s bound to make you happier!

4) Don’t compare yourself to others

This might be the hardest thing to stop doing, but PLEASE make an effort to put an end to this bad habit. It’s so easy to look at your peers and think “Wow, she makes so much more money than me” or “He bought a house?! I can barely afford rent for my one-bedroom apartment”, but let me let you in on a little secret…the minute you stop comparing yourself to others, you WILL be happier. Everyone has a different, unpredictable life path and that’s a good thing. You don’t want to have the same path as someone else, right?! You want to be your own person, with your own milestones that come at a time that’s right for YOU. You can only be you, everyone else is taken.

5) Concentrate on what you DO have instead of what you don’t

When we were unemployed for a few months last year, we were constantly focusing on what was absent from our lives. We stressed ourselves out every day over not having a steady income & barely enough money to pay our bills. It took a few good cries and some motivation from our boyfriends and mother to realize that things WILL get better.

In fact, life was actually pretty great at that point in time. The ONLY thing missing was a job. But once we realized that we had so many great things going for us (our health, our boyfriends, loving family & friends), we started to worry less about finding a job. You know what happened when we concentrated on what we did have instead of what we didn’t? Things got better and the jobs came! We truly believe that positive minds harvest positive outcomes.

Next time something isn’t going right in your life, think about what IS. Your positive attitude will turn your life around, we promise.

XX, Britta & Carli

Post Originally Published on The Haute Mess