Isn’t happiness what we all want? I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t like to live her life with as much positivity and joy as possible.
Yes, as this photo above suggests, chocolate is one way to feel happy! And while I enjoy chocolate myself regularly as a “happiness strategy” it’s effects are fleeting. What I’m more interested in is helping myself and others elevate and intensify our daily joy and well-being in sustainable ways. Interestingly, we probably need different approaches to access this goal.
A few months ago I read Positivity by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson. (I had the pleasure of working with her during my doctoral program.) This book and approach, based on many years of research, helps the reader understand the 3-to-1 ratio of positive to negative emotions to a tipping point, that once achieved, leads to resilience and effortlessly achieving goals. Fredrickson uses her own life as an example of the tools we can use to land in the positivity spectrum. It was an interesting and inspiring read, and offers very concrete tools to help us achieve this positivity ratio.
I’m currently finishing The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. This book details the year Rubin spent researching happiness and her experiment to see if she could become happier. I’ve been really enjoying this book too! Like Fredrickson, Rubin is generally a happy person. But she wanted to see if it would be possible to raise her happiness ceiling by following the advice of sages and cutting-edge research. While I haven’t reached the end of her 12-month journey, I sense she achieves her goal at the end. Rubin also offers the reader very specific strategies as she tests them in her own life.
My approach to helping a woman become happier is slightly different than these two authors. It starts by helping a woman identify what’s getting in the way of consistently practicing self-care within her busy life. My formula for feeling as happy and well as possible, is based on the idea that if we are not taking good care of ourselves than we can’t feel deeply happy. My method helps women become as SMART as possible. Smart women are Self-caring, Mindful, Autonomous, Respectful, and Tolerant. These principles help us shift our mindset and learn the necessary strategies for maintaining self-care behaviors, as the essential entry point to deepening our joy and well-being. (And when I say “we” I mean me too. I’m challenged as everyone is living in our fast-paced world.)
As I ponder the many books I’ve read by engaging writers and experts it’s clear that there are many different ways to advance on the happiness path toward bigger joy. We all may have different concepts, language, and formulas but they lead to similar endpoints.
It’s also interesting that these three distinct paths toward happiness are by three women who are generally happy individuals. Yet, all of us are driven to improve our own lives as well as teach others the strategies we’ve researched and tested.
As my grandpa Joe used to say “Aint’ it great that Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors?!”
Above I listed three different ways to become happier, but there are many more too! First, it”s up to each one of us to determine whether we want to feel better and experience more joy, and then, we must determine which of the many guides and concepts resonate most deeply.
Please visit us at the Smart Women Don’t Diet Facebook community page to hear what ways other women have used to successfully increase their happiness and daily sense of well-being.