Good intentions: recipe for a happy life

Are you planning to live consciously happy next year as a resolution? Have you finally listened to your heart and heard that being happy is a choice? Choosing happiness is not always easy. Sometimes it's just nice to wallow in self-pity for a while, but that's not something that's going to make you happy in the long run

To help you achieve your resolution for a happy life, I have written down the recipe for a happy life for you.

Move

Exercise is often something people feel they HAVE TO do. Of course, that’s not a recipe for a happy life. Fortunately, it’s not really about the exercise itself, but about the movement that triggers the release of dopamine.

Exercise, such as walking, is also suitable for this purpose. Any form of movement actually.

For example, do you live in a neighborhood where everything is somewhat within walking distance? By doing everything on foot then, you are also already creating the dopamine.

Another fun form of exercise is dancing or yoga. It doesn’t feel like a sport at all, but it does have the same effect. You don’t even have to wear workout clothes to dance.

Follow your passion

Following your passion may not always be possible, as there is work to be done. But having a hobby that you are passionate about can already help a lot in following your passions.

Do you like poetry? Then buy a special booklet where you write down your own poetry.

Do you love images? Buy a camera to capture images.

Whatever your passion, make time to do something with it.

Prevent yourself from getting out of bed on the wrong foot

Unfortunately, everyone is familiar with the fact that you can get out of bed on the wrong foot. In fact, this also shows how important getting up is for the rest of your day.

What's the first thing you think of when you wake up? The sound of the alarm clock? Or just everything you feel like doing that day. In the second case, chances are you'll even wake up before the alarm clock rings. In that case, you avoid the negative alarm clock stimulus.

Do you find it hard to think about the fun things you will do? Then consider what you are grateful for. Your work may not be fun, but on break your colleagues are very sociable. When you get home, you can always relax. You then shift your focus to what is enjoyable, such as your passion.

You are what you eat

Do you eat a lot of fast food, chips, and pizza? Then you’re often made up of the building blocks that food provides, and you can feel it. An unhealthy diet can make you tired—this is even a sign of diabetes!

Just by eating healthy, a few pieces of fruit and a few servings of vegetables daily instead of quickly wolfing down a sandwich can go a long way.

In addition, mindful eating helps ensure that you enjoy the food you eat more. You smell, taste, and feel the food as you eat. This makes you eat more mindfully—and often more healthily as a result—and it also causes you to eat more slowly, which often leads to eating less.

Enjoying your food gives you one more thing to look forward to daily.

Make your house a home

When you come home, does it feel like coming home or does it feel like being on a visit to a hotel or someone else's house?

Making your home truly your own ensures that your home is a place to relax. Do you enjoy listening to music with a great audio system? Then put that in your home; do you love art? Hang some beautiful things on the wall. Use your favorite color for the curtains or a wall or something.

Hang pictures if you like people.

Make your house your home where you can relax.

Release anger

Are you angry? Has someone done something to you that you just can’t get over? Holding onto anger is something that won’t make you happy.

In fact, it’s a shield that keeps joy and happiness at bay because you’re completely focused on the negative aspects of life.

To release anger and to forgive the other person, not forget, a hypnotherapist can help you.

Trauma processing

Unresolved trauma is a recipe for unhappiness. It’s very important to come to terms with trauma and to be able to look back on the event with less emotional distress.

You can get help for trauma treatment from a psychologist and from a hypnotherapist. It depends on the trauma you have.

Neuro linguistic programming (NLP) is also widely used to process trauma and disconnect emotions from the unpleasant event. Of course the event remains nasty, but you may now be less likely to get upset by sounds or other small everyday things that remind you of the trauma.

Be kind to yourself

Do you know that comedian Russell Brand? He has an entire show about shame—that little voice that keeps you awake in the middle of the night and subtly reminds you of all the things you’ve ever done wrong in your life.

If that little voice keeps you awake at night, it can also bother you during the day. This isn’t good, and that isn’t good either.

To be happy, it’s important to let go of these kinds of thoughts. You can also reframe these thoughts positively to focus on what you’re doing well or why things don’t have to be perfect.

Finding it hard to let go? Then a hypnotherapist can help you let go of those negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. This can be done, for example, with post hypnotic suggestions and self-hypnosis.

An important step, for example, is forgiving yourself for something that causes that shame voice to keep rearing its head.

Self-compassion is an important step toward a happy life.

Set your own precepts

Living rules are actually even more about the principles you live by. With what behaviors can you look at yourself in the mirror or not?

• What values do you think are important to live by?
• Which character would you be proud of?

By thinking about this and living by it, you can look in the mirror every night with pride that you have been true to yourself, no matter what other people think.

The people around you

What people do you come into contact with most in your life? Your family? Friends? Colleagues? The five people you interact with the most also have the most influence on your development and thoughts.

Are you among all kinds of negative people?

If so, chances are you will become a negative as well.

Are you right among all kinds of positive people or people who care about their own development?

Then chances are you too will experience more positivity and be more likely to pick up a book to learn from or sign up for a workshop.

Changing the people you spend time with can be difficult. Even picking up the phone to meet new people can be nerve-wracking. A hypnotherapist can help boost your self-confidence so that you no longer find it difficult at all to change the people around you.

Your partner also has a big influence on you. If there is actually nothing wrong with the rest of your people around you, you can also look at how your relationship with your partner is and what steps you can take to improve it.

In this regard, a hypnotherapist can also help.

In addition, mindfulness in your relationship can be a tremendous boost to strengthen it and make it more positive.

Would you like to learn more about hypnotherapy? Then come to a workshop or check out the training programs offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.

In addition, the book *Break Free* can also help you find happiness in your life.