The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good and meaningful is the best feeling in the world and is known as happiness. Happiness is a ladder as well, as mentioned by Shawn Achor that “Happiness is the precursor to success.” 

Here are some helpful ways to remain happy:

1. Exercise more:

It releases the good mood endorphins and does help to keep depression at bay. The best study I know is where three groups of depressed people are put on a regime of anti-depressants, exercise or a combination of the two. No surprise to know that all three groups were happier, but how long it lasted? Six months later, the group who had been treated with exercise only, had a very low relapse rate of 9%. The other two groups had relapsed and their rates were ranging from 38%to 31%, so about one-third of them were now depressed again.

2. Positive thinking affects your performance:

Positive thinking raises energy levels, creativity and productivity by as much as 30%. The secret is to use positive thinking now.

3. Trash your negative thoughts:

Sometimes people are overwhelmed by their negative thoughts and they have real problems in getting rid of them. Writing these negative thoughts down on a piece of paper and then destroying them has been found effective.

4. Treasure your experiences more than your possessions:

Treasuring experiences is highly beneficial. They belong to us, they are special and they provide long-lasting happiness. We should always aim to visit a new place or just go trekking. On other occasions often talk about the pleasurable experiences and relive the happiness. 

5. Write down why you are grateful:

Feeling and thinking about the things you are grateful for as you wake up is a great way to build more happiness. Research on brain shows that we always tend to focus on the negative things of life like those worries, tragedies, failures, and discontent. Negativity is the default position. This is why we need to focus on the good and more especially, be grateful for what we have. There are various ways you can do this. Here are some ideas:

  • When you wake up, remind yourself mentally of three things that you can be grateful for.
  • Express gratitude by phoning your significant other or by treating a colleague to coffee for their help with a project or task.
  • Try giving back by helping a person or by volunteering for a few hours a week.

6. Practice mindfulness:

It means that you concentrate and pay full attention to the present moment and accept it in a non-judgmental way. 

7. Don’t forget your beauty sleep:

When you do not get enough sleep, your negativity takes over big time. This was the conclusion researchers came to after several experiments. When we are sleep deprived, this function starts to creak and negative thoughts muscle in much more than before. Now you know why people are always in a bad mood when they do not get enough sleep.

8. Dedicate a little time to helping others:

People buy bigger houses, cars and phones but it does not seem to increase their overall happiness in the long term, but when we dedicate a little time or money to helping others, this has a significant effect on our own happiness. As it is commonly said: “What goes around comes around”.

9. Focus on the life you want to live and don’t take yourself so seriously: 

If one focuses and talk about how much happier and carefree we would be it actually would so be. Hold yourself with a “light hand”. Laugh more often and enjoy every little joy of life. Happy people trust that whatever glitch happens will work itself out.

10. Focus on your strengths:

Being able to realize one's full potential by exploiting our strengths is one of the best ways of finding happiness and helping to make the world a better place. So focus on the strength and work on your weakness to achieve best in life.