How to get more pleasure from life? American psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky* offers us several affordable ways to get closer to this goal.
1. Be grateful. Call or visit someone who has done something good for you (albeit in the distant past). Show your appreciation, even if the person doesn’t expect it.
2. Tune in to optimism. The same circumstances can be perceived in different ways and even come out of the tragedy stronger and wiser.
3. Don’t compare yourself to others. Happy people do not follow other people’s successes and failures, but compare themselves to their former self, trusting their sense of how things are going.
4. Be kind. Good, selfless deeds (even small ones) enhance the feeling of enjoying life like nothing else.
5. Spend effort on relationships with other people. Communicate without a special reason, spare no time, words and feelings to express your warmth and affection, be able to listen.
6. Come up with ways to deal with difficulties. Don’t replace problem solving with a showdown. Learn from failures.
7. Learn to forgive. Even if you do not have contact with the person who offended you, write him a “letter of forgiveness” (it is not necessary to send it to the addressee). Happy people are able to rise above any resentment. It is not easy to forgive another yourself — learn to do it.
8. Strive for a state of «flow.» Look for activities in which you can feel a complete merger with what you are doing, feel the highest, selfless tension of your strengths and abilities. “Flow” can be found even in routine matters, if you see in them the meaning and point of application of your skills.
9. Feel the taste for life. Pay attention to small joys, to good news, to be surprised at how the world works, and do not miss the simple daily pleasures.
10. Choose worthy goals. Let them be flexible, achievable, and lead you to something, not away from something.
11. Develop spirituality in yourself: it provides answers to many of our daily questions.
12. Take care of your body. Sleep, exercise. Meditation also helps us become receptive to what our body is saying — listen to it.