Guest Post: Act Like A Kid to Find True Happiness

Have you ever visited to a park and watched kids playing in the playground? They seem so free and so happy. Often if you look at the adults, they are happy just watching the children play. It’s contagious. Why does this make adults happy? Is it because they are remembering the pure innocence of children? Or perhaps it’s because they can see the beauty in the freedom from worry

Gal’s Note – Anytime I’m feeling a bit down I take my dog to the nearest park.  Watching her play and watching the adults & kids there having fun, never fails to cheer me up.  If it’s too cold for the park, try the mall or anywhere else where happy people congregate.  Happiness truly is infectious.

As adults we are often bogged down with stress and responsibility from work, raising a family, taking care of pets, and the financial burden of mortgages, bills and debt, etc.

It’s important for our own mental and physical well being to make sure to find a point of balance in our lives. Some steps that I have found useful are to go back to the basics, like when we were kids.

It helps to ask yourself a few questions. Here’s what you can do today to get started on finding happiness. Get out a piece of paper and a pen; yes they can be hard to find these days. Turn off all electronics, no music, no TV, no computer, no cell phone…(just for an hour, you’ll survive!) If you can’t handle no background noise, just put on some music that makes you inspired and happy, to help get you in the mood for inspiration. Pandora.com is a great website that is free with all types of music you can listen to on your computer.

Start making a list of all of the things that you would like to do with your life. You can make it any way you would like, but here are a few key things you can ask yourself:

What is an area of my life that I would like to improve?
Here you can list examples such as lose weight, get a better job, learn a language, learn how to cook, learn to paint, learn yoga and so on….

What are the current obstacles in my life that are keeping me from getting what I want?
Often you will find that you will say something like… “not enough time” or “too busy”. This is where you need to analyze where you are wasting your time. If you go back to when you were a kid, it seemed like you had all the time in the world. Why don’t you have time nowadays? Are you spending too much time checking emails? Too much time taking crazy personality quizzes on Facebook? What did you do with your time before the Internet? Didn’t you play outside more, read books, and draw more? Cut back on time wasters, or limit them so that you can have more time for the things that actually make you happy.

What do I need to do about the things that I would like to improve?
If you would like to lose weight, there are some great websites out there that offer you support.
Sparkpeople.com and Livestrong.com are great websites to get started with tips on losing weight, testimonials, ideas, articles, recipes, diet plans, workout logs, calorie counters, and a great way to network and find friends.

Gal’s Shameless Self Promotion – I have this other blog which features information on weightloss and fitness if you’re interested.  It’s called 60 in 3.

If you would like to read more books, there are some great resources these days for both paperbound books as well as the new ebooks that you can read on an ereader, or even from your computer. Amazon.com has a huge database of both kinds of books that you can get delivered to you fairly quickly.

Gal’s Note – For a few ideas on books that will change your life, check out this post.

Think simply and find inspiration from what made you happy when you were younger. Don’t forget about your dreams, and find a way to get back to balance in your life. Moderation in all things is a great motto that my parents have taught me. It has helped me realize when I need to step back and go back to the simple things that make me happy.

–

Taraneh Guidry is a writer for TeachStreet. TeachStreet is a website dedicated to providing online and local classes, from Zumba classes to personal finance classes. So if you’re looking to learn something new, check it out.

–