How to be Happy

How to be Happy

Posted by Joe Hoare; October 25, 2013

After a NLS (natural laughter skills) session, someone came up to me and said that until his late teenage years he was a grumpy git. One day, he decided to stop being a grumpy git and become pleasant and agreeable so for the rest of his life (and he’s now in his fifties) he did, and he still is. He was great company.

The message is clear: stop trying to be happy. Abandon immediately this modern pursuit of happiness. If you want to be happy, just be happy. Focus your attention on happiness and simply be happy. Here and now, for this moment, just be happy.

Think of happiness as a way of traveling rather than the destination because if you set your destination right, you never arrive, you find you always keep traveling.

If you’re wondering how to maintain this, become an appreciator. As an appreciator, you look for opportunities to be appreciative, to appreciate as much as possible, as often as possible. A subtle process comes into play when you do this because you start living mindfully, ie you start living more and more in the present. You become more aware of the totality of your life experience, not just your thoughts.

Anyone who practices living in the present knows that now is a place of lightness and delight with occasional disturbances. When you’re fully engaging yourself in the now, you free yourself from past regrets and future worries. You connect with your intuition and your inherent creativity and spontaneity, and you liberate your consciousness, your mind, body and spirit.

This is where the magic happens. This is where health regenerates itself. This is a place of creative incubation, where our dreams start to become physical reality. This is also where happiness is, so take a moment to celebrate. This is a robust model. We are blessed nowadays because science is providing an endless stream of evidence supporting ancient practices of meditation and mindful awareness. There is increasing research demonstrating how to worry less and become more appreciative and therefore happier. All they require is consistent practice.

So, stop trying to be happy. For this moment, here and now, just be happy.

Joe Hoare

New book: ‘Awakening the Laughing Buddha within’, co-authored with the Barefoot Doctor, is available on www.joehoare.co.uk.