The 12 cornerstones of happiness to start living a more positive life.
I once did an activity that blew my mind and I am about to share it here for you.
Grab a pen a paper and write down, in order, who the most important people in your life are. (or do what I did and just think it)
Stop reading and go do it! I see you thinking about just reading on.
Have you written it down or visualized it yet? Did you sit there like I did and debate which one of my sisters was higher on the list and then decided they are equal and I could never pick so you just went Sisters?
Okay! Now have a look at your list. These are the most important people in your life. They are critical to you, your happiness and your life. You have just ranked them on how much you need them in your life.
So I now pose this question to you, why didn’t you put your name on the list?
Cause I sure as heck didn’t! If you did, congrats, you are a more developed person than I was. It didn’t even occur to me to put my name on the list, it wasn’t an option on the table, it wasn’t even in the house. I just thought about other people, like I do. Like I am assuming, you did.
But think about it, You are the most important person in your life. You are the one who takes care of you, picks you up when you’re alone, fights the battles no one sees. So why aren’t you at the top of this list? You should be, in fact, you have to be. You have to re write this list and put you at the top.
How are you supposed to make an impact or add value to your life and this world if you don’t even value yourself?
But the road to self love and all the juicy delicious benefits that come with it is paved with trials and years of bad habits and poor mentors has conditioned you to fight this path. But if you are committed to breaking the chains of your past bullshit and say, Hi, excuse me, actually, if you would be so polite as to GET THE HECK OUTTA MY WAY.
Here are the 12 components that you have to have in line to be happy
Nutrition
Hi, I am Jade Welcome To My Ted Talk on Eating Natural Food. This is a complicated subject so for this post, let’s talk about all the processed sugary chemicals you are shoving in your face everyday. You probably aren’t even aware of what is going into your body. Now I am not against a treat, but when treats turn into everyday snack stops, the issue starts. It’s hard to love yourself when your hormones are a roller coaster riding the wave of sugar, caffeine, cigarettes and snacks. You try and be positive, then you dip and you get sad, so you eat more, you get happy. And the emotional connection to shit food starts. My advice, start cutting it out. Decide you no longer want to be a hostage of processed food. Start cooking, stop eating beige food so much, educate yourself on what is in your food. Like actually in it. Experiment and try new things. Plan your meals and make it a priority in your life. Love yourself enough to stop feeding your body processed shit, YOU KNOW IT’S BAD FOR YOU.
Exercise
The next nugget of destiny, exercise. The world's most underused antidepressant. And it’s free! Exercise is always that thing that we should do and we feel guilty about not doing but it always seems like so much effort for so little reward.
Well you’re wrong. Exercise is the best thing you can take up. Its rewarding, mental health boosting, social, hilarious, growth, sucking and it’s becoming better. Stop thinking of exercise as that thing you should do and start thinking of it as that thing you want to do. You want to get outside more. You want to start improving yourself. You want to treat your body to a nice little workout so it can use its many muscles that you don’t use scrolling down twitter. Love your body enough to give it what it needs.
Gratitude
Gratitude is so so so so important. If nothing else, you read this and practice daily gratitude and start expressing appreciation more, my work will be done.
You have so much to be blessed for, your life, your experiences, your luxuries, your privilege. And yes, life is unfair for everyone because there is always someone who has it easier and better. It's hard to be grateful for things in your life when they never seem quite what you imagined or someone else has it better. Gratitude is the cornerstone of loving yourself. It is the super power to happiness because if you are grateful for everything in your life and your hardships, you become invincible. My favorite quote has always been, I am grateful for my struggle for without it I wouldn't have found my strength.
Now I wasn't grateful for my struggle at the time but now I look back and I am so grateful for what I have been through because of who I am right now. Who I am is amazing and I am happy with that.
Attitude
I talk about this alot but Mindset is Everything If you are going to stay stuck in your mindset of you know what is right and wrong, you are uncompromising in your way to look at the world. You will never improve. You have to adapt to survive. Open up that big old brain of yours and start questioning why you believe blue is cursed color. Or why you don’t like Shannon from the office (is it because your friend B told you that you don’t?) Get curious about who you are and what you think. Start by getting an open mindset. Then you can actually start to grow as a person. Love your mind enough to let it be open to learning new things, seeing new possibilities.
Self Love
Self love is a difficult concept for most people because it has such negative connotations. To love yourself is arrogant, grandiose, conceited, selfish and just plain wrong. Or, if you love yourself, you will lose that drive to improve, that drive to work hard to be better that self hatred has fuelled all these years. At some point in your life, someone told you that you weren’t good enough. And you took that energy and turned it into fuel or into fire. Fuel to be better so they would find you worthy or fire to burn yourself with. But it time to let these old ideals go and love yourself. It is a deep and complicated subject but you need to let go of that shame, guilt and loss and I have a way for you to do that! Check out this blog post or an in depth activity on that! Let go of the idea you have to be someone other than who you actually are, you are worthy of being loved as you are, not everyone is going to see it but the people that do are the ones that are going to matter. Don’t try to please all these people who don’t care, they aren’t worth the price of happiness.
Self Care
This is another very complicated subject but there are actually 5 types of self care:
Physical
Intellectual
Mind and Soul
Emotional
Social
And you need to cover all these bases, its all well and good having a bubble bath but that won’t help your need for intellectual stimulus. You gotta mix it up, don’t worry for feel overwhelmed! These are actually very simple!
Physical- See Exercise!
Intellectual- See Growth!
Mind and Soul- See Adventure! Connect with your form of spirituality, practice kindness and maybe meditate? :)
Emotional- See this article or the anxiety battle plan!
Social- Spend time with people you love!
Self care is about finding balance and the best way to keep on top of your self care is to make a plan.
Internal Talk
How You Talk To Yourself Affects Your Reality. If you berate yourself constantly, you will be unhappy, all the time. You have to change that internal dialog and give yourself a break. No one is happy all the time and sometimes you can have those thoughts but you have to turn the tide. Instead of 90:10 to negative, make it 70:30 to positive! You are fighting nature here, the brain is wired to be negative but you have the power to tell your brain to shut up and change your reality. Everything you see, experience and do is based on your perceptions, created from your life experiences. That is why people experience the same thing so differently. I know it can feel daunting but you control your brain, even tho it does its best to convince you other wise. You can change your whole life by starting with how you think, positive and productively and most importantly, with love.
Adventure/Fun
You can’t be happy if you don’t have fun, that is just simple math. HAVE SOME FUN. Go on an adventure! Travel, do something you love, learn a new amazing fun skill, go hang with your friend. Make time for you and go have some fun.
Benefits of having fun:
Reduced Stress
Serotonin. THE BRAIN LOVES IT!
Improved Ability to Cope With Stress
Boosted Energy
Improved Memory and Concentration
Improved Connection with Others
Sounder Sleep
Make it a priority in your life. No exceptions.
Confidence
First thing I want to address is the fundamental difference between confidence and arrogance. It is often presumed that to be confident is to be arrogant. That simply isn't true. Confidence is trust in one's ability to do something and it is built through trial and error and experience. Arrogance is thinking you are better than somebody because you are more skilled than them. Confidence is an attribute, arrogance is an attitude and a bad one at that.
There is nothing wrong with being confident, it's actually necessary to progress in life, you have to take those steps forward and you will be confident in some areas of your life. You can sit and tell me you have no confidence but there is something in your life you feel confident doing. Like taking the bus, brushing your teeth, painting. We are all confident, we just decided one day it was safer not to be confident because to gain confidence is to practice new skills and risk failure and abject humiliation. And we would rather be safe than progress and that is why we are unhappy. It's time to stop playing it safe and step up and accept that you are a confident person, you are just more confident in some areas than not and for the areas you aren’t strong at (like doing your taxes), doesn’t mean you aren’t confident at all, it just means in that area, you aren’t confident.
The story you are telling yourself that you aren’t confident is causing more harm than good.
Body Acceptance
I can and will talk about body acceptance for hours and I mean HOURS. Your body is basically your car, the vehicle that transports you around and keeps you alive but we have been raised to believe that to look a certain way is unattractive and if you don’t look like that then you are unworthy of love. You need to disconnect that idea that your worth is ingrained with your body, it isn’t. Your body is just the car. Sure, some people may judge and say your car isn’t a ferrari but your car is a ferrari. IT’S YOUR FERRARI! just because people can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t. People are blind because they haven’t learned the truth yet. That it is just a body and it deserves as much love as you would love a real ferrari. (I am not a car person so I often equate it to the love you have for your child or cat).
Money
A healthy relationship with money is so important. It can be crippling to your happiness if you are always living in a state of lack or you are an overspender living outside of your means. You need to develop a healthy balance with money so that you can feel secure and safe and feel free to treat you self but not so much you endlessly shop for no reason.
Growth
Stagnation is the death of happiness, you can be grateful, you can live your dream life but we love to grow and change and we crave more. You have to keep growing, trying new things, learning more! Never lose that curiosity for life and embrace it, love where you are and then embrace the new.
And finally, the most important thing
Routine
Routine is the key to self love. It sounds odd I know, but telling yourself over and over again that you are worthy to reprogram your pre existing belief system, takes effort. Routine helps you stick to things, we are human, we love routine! It means we don’t have to think about stuff, we already have too much to think about, we don’t want to add stuff to that! So use your love of routine to your advantage and change your routine. To something more interesting and more self loving. When brushing your teeth, add in a internal mantra (or song) of telling yourself you are worthy. Start a new routine of going for a 7am run (big ask I know, it’s so early) or just getting up and doing some yoga. You love routine, even if you think you hate it. Start watching what your routine is, and improve it. Love your humanity enough to accept it for what it is and then work with it.
Thanks guys! See you on Instagram!