21 Steps to Unlock the Key to Happiness: Cultivate a Peaceful Inner World & Gratifying Lifestyle

Sometimes, we can think that it’s the big events in our lives that make our life good or bad, happy or sad. If only we had our dream job, if only we lived in our dream city, if only we had the perfect relationship or friends, or if only we had our dream life. We think that it is these big life choices that create a happy life. So, we put off our happiness until we have these things. When we get them it might feel good for a minute, but we are the same person that is only chasing an idea of happiness.

Happiness to me is being present and making the decision to feel good and feel grateful right now. It’s about choosing to work with yourself at the stage of life you are in now. That is the key to happiness. By choosing to work with yourself, I mean choosing to do things that make you feel good, choosing to feel love when it’s the hardest, choosing to play the positive what-if game, choosing to tell yourself what you want others to tell you, choosing to do the things that you know are good for you, and choosing to appreciate all that you are exactly where you are.

A happy life is created from all the little choices that you make. You think that your life consists of these big moments and you look at the big picture when you actually need to do the opposite. Your life is just a string of present moments. It’s all about the small habits that create a better life. In this blog, I will talk about all of the habits, mindsets, and choices that I think you need to have a life of ease, joy, and love.

Step #1 is to choose to work with yourself as I said above. All of the steps following this will have to start with you finally deciding to do what’s best for you. My favorite little reminder right now is “discipline is remembering what you want the most, not just what you want right now. Finally deciding to work with myself instead of fighting with myself was the best thing I’ve ever done.

HEALING

2) Shadow Work

• Embrace the duality of life. Everything has an opposite and that is how we understand things. Without down, we couldn’t understand what up was. Everyone and everything is both good and bad.
• Embrace all of your qualities. Your shadow self is just the part of you that you have rejected. These qualities aren’t inherently bad, it’s just the fact that you see them as bad therefore you hide them. That is what makes it your shadow self. You were probably told it was bad or were shown that it was unsafe to have in childhood. But, there are probably people who see that quality and are jealous or like that quality in themself.
• Embrace “negative” emotions. When you’re sad, angry, jealous, or triggered, try to understand it instead of projecting it onto the person who triggered you. Everyone and everything is a mirror and everyone is just projecting their experiences and specific lense of life. You can’t escape negative emotions, but you can make it easier on yourself. Life will forever consist of ups and downs, you can learn to ride the wave and work with yourself or spend all your energy resisting and hating it.

3) Abundance Mindset

• Face your scarce mindset and get to the root. These mindsets are probably from childhood, so when they come up try to reflect on when you have felt this way, who made you feel this way, and why. We are human it’s okay to be stressed sometimes, have insecurities, doubts, and have scarce mindsets. Allow yourself to have doubts because what you resist persists. The easiest way to get rid of doubts is just to accept that you have them.
• Get out of fight or flight mode. Reflect on what your basic needs are and make sure they are being met. Work with your root chakra and practice breathwork, meditation, and connecting with your senses. My favorite breathwork technique is to inhale through your nose until you can’t anymore, then do one last little inhale, and breathe out of your mouth slowly. Do that at least 3 times.
• Adopt an abundance mindset. There is so much money out there. There are more than enough resources. There is enough success, beauty, talent, love, happiness, and luck for everyone to have their dream life. EFT tap and say affirmations to remind yourself that the world around you is abundant and so are you.

4) Detachment

• What is your attachment style? You can have anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, fearful-avoidant, or secure attachment. Now that you know your attachment style and have read about it, reflect on how this has shown up in your patterns (dating, partner choices, and all relationships). Here are two videos I like on detachment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPZnScHa1d0 & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuIxoMFVgxM.
• People-pleasing is a common symptom of anxious attachment. You are attached to the idea of someone else liking you because maybe you’re not sure you like yourself or just need confirmation that you are likable. No one else is going to know all of you except you and everyone is just going to see you through their own warped lens. Work on your self-concept so you can stand securely in who you are. Remember you are a separate entity from everyone else, you are your own person, and only you define who you are.
• Wanting to control others and outcomes is another part of attachment. This usually just comes from a place of wanting safety. You don’t feel safe or believe that good things will happen for you if you don’t control it. Control is just an illusion and it is extremely exhausting. Do you really want that job? Remember that things not working out for you is just how you are perceiving it. Things are always working in your favor and for you not to you.

5) Inner Child

• Using visualization to heal your inner child is a great tool. Imagine your inner child coming up to you and you tell them what they always needed to hear. Also, just repeat affirmations throughout the day that are for your inner child or in triggering situations. Like, I am safe, I am enough, and I am worthy.
• I use journaling more to understand my inner child and get to the root of my wounds. Here is my Pinterest board for my inner child where there are journal prompts to choose from: https://www.pinterest.com/bloominginthewild/inner-child-healing/.
• A more fun tool to connect to your child self again is to do the things you love as a child. What shows and movies did you love, activities, dreams, clothes, etc.? Sometimes, I like to do things specifically for her, like pick out an outfit or do my makeup for her. Just let your inner child out and let them know that it is safe to be their authentic selves.

HEALTH

6) Move Every Day

• Moving your body releases endorphins and helps relieve stress. It is good for your mood, sleep, energy, mind, emotions, and of course health.
• It can literally be as short and simple as a 5-minute walk. Do what works for you and start where you are. The goal should be to get to 30 minutes while still giving yourself rest days and listening to your body.
• Always come from a place of self-love. Come from a place of I deserve to show up for myself, I care about my health and want to be the best version of myself.

7) Eat More Good Foods

• I like to focus on eating more healthy foods and bringing better meals into my diet than to focus on restricting myself and cutting food groups out. Focusing on adding rather than subtracting allows me to stick to eating healthier and feel better about myself.
• The goal should always be a balanced lifestyle. You don’t want to be stuck in the cycle of eating super clean and then giving up. For me restricting never works long term.
• Try to find healthy foods that you actually like and make a Pinterest board of recipes to try out.

8) Drink Enough Water

• You should be drinking about 1/2 of your body weight in ounces.
• Drinking enough water is good for your brain, digestion, heart, energy, regulating your body temperature, and so much more.
• If you don’t like water, try adding fruit, cucumbers, lemon, or try out those water flavorings.

9) Get Daily Sunlight

• You only need 10-30 minutes of daily sunlight.
• Sunlight releases serotonin which is the happy hormone, it helps with your mood, supports your bone health, lowers your blood pressure, and helps you to produce vitamin D.
• It also helps you regulate your body’s circadian rhythm, which is your body’s internal clock. This helps you get better sleep because you respond to the sun’s light and then can fall asleep when it gets dark.

SELF-CARE

10) Have a Hobby Purely For Pleasure

• Adopt a habit or activity that is purely for pleasure and just yours. Sometimes we can get caught up in improving ourselves and thinking everything we do has to have a purpose. We can forget to just enjoy ourselves and put ourselves first.
• You should have a hobby for pleasure, for your health, and one that makes you money.
• We are humans. We don’t live forever. I don’t want to spend my whole life trying to be somewhere else. Our priority should be living not working, not improving ourselves, or being in a future moment.

11) Do What Feels Good

• Consciously do things that make you feel good. This is a habit that has helped me stop putting my happiness off into a future moment. When you get what you were putting your happiness off for, you realize that is not why you’re unhappy and you just move on to the next thing that you want.
• Allow yourself to feel good and feel how you want. When we want something, we actually want the feeling that it will give us. We think that the only way to feel that feeling is if we have that thing. Not true. You have access to any feeling you want and can feel that way right now.
• Following what feels good also gets us in alignment. It is pretty much manifesting because you are aligning your frequency to what you want, making yourself a magnet to receive it all.

12) Bring Your Desires into Reality

• Manifestation is just taking what you desire in your mind and bringing it to your reality. It’s just taking the steps to get what you want and aligning vibrationally.
• A reason you could feel unhappy with your life is because you don’t think you can get what you want and you don’t allow yourself to believe it. Every time you’re jealous, which jealousy is just admiration turned sour, you just shut it down. When you’re jealous you are just being shown what you want through another person.
• You get to have what you want. So, note what you are jealous of and make that happen for you. Create a plan to actually get your dream life and take the steps. Allow yourself to want your desires because you get to have them, you just have to work for it.

13) Have a Purpose

• You get to define your own purpose and your own dreams. Look to your values, interests, and passions. Look to your north node in astrology for clues and human design incarnation cross. But, ultimately, you get to decide what it is and what it looks like.
• Reflect on what you can give back. Not everyone has enough to give in every area of their life at all times. Not everyone has money to give back. But you have energy, time, knowledge, etc. What do you have that you can give back?
• We need people. Your relationships play a big part in your happiness. It’s important to cultivate meaningful connections. Make time for your loved ones, for conversations, and for brightening people’s days. How can you show your loved ones how much they mean to you today?

INNER WORLD CARE

14) Meditation & Breathwork

• When you try to start meditating or you take a break, it can be hard to get back into it and calm your mind. Instead, I like to incorporate silencing my mind, observing my thoughts, being in my body, or breathwork throughout my day. So, while you brush your teeth or do your dishes, use that time to meditate. Don’t think that meditating needs to look one way. It can be painting, going in nature, or just doing whatever gets you in that state.
• There are so many benefits to meditating and it’s important to know how it’s benefitting you, so you’re more likely to do it. It helps with stress and anxiety and brings you into the present moment. It improves your self-awareness, concentration, and attention span. It allows you to feel more grateful, deepens your creativity and intuition, and productivity.
• Something I didn’t put together was that you weren’t supposed to just meditate and then forget about it. You are supposed to take that mindfulness into the rest of your day. That is the harder part for me and something to practice.

15) Feel Your Emotions

• Many people think that intellectualizing or thinking about their feelings is processing them. That is not what your emotions want. They only want to be felt.
• When a feeling arises, I want you to drop into your body and feel the sensations. Where are these sensations located? What do they feel like? What emotion are you feeling? What triggered you and why? I like to feel I’m the guide for my emotions. I allow myself to sit with them and just be the observer of my inner world until they are released.
• How do you normally deal with your emotions? If you are somebody who pushes them down, first just practice releasing any resistance and sinking into your body and just being aware of them. If you are someone who invalidates your feelings, practice telling yourself what you want someone else to tell you. If you feel as though they are a waste of time, practice making time for them and recognizing them.

16) Gratitude & Love

• All of us live our life through our own lenses. Your life can be significantly better or worse depending on how you choose to see things. Daily gratitude is one of the easiest ways to rewire our minds to see the positive and create an uplifting inner world.
• There will always be something else that you could have, somewhere else you could be, basically, there is always more. The chase for more and more is not a rewarding or fulfilling one. It is the need to fill a void within you that you are not facing and fixing.
• The power of love is something that I am realizing right now. My life motto is now to wrap everything in love. The feeling of emptiness is just the absence of love. Why it is so horrible to feel sad sometimes is because yet again you feel shame and no love. Reach for love always and wrap yourself in love like a warm blanket especially when it’s the hardest to reach for. Remember it is always there inside of you.

17) Affirmations

• Affirmations can be a great way to rewire your brain. With affirmations, you want to start where you are. Start with saying what you need to hear, what you want others to tell you. Affirmations don’t really work when you just jump to repeating I’m a millionaire without having a strong foundation first.
• Affirmations don’t really work when you don’t mean what you say. When you say something that you don’t mean in the back of your mind what you actually believe is still going. So, it is better to say only a couple with meaning and emotion than 100 without.
• Recently, I’ve been playing the positive what-if game a lot more. This gets me feeling good and in a hopeful and excited state. It is great for manifesting and working with the law of attraction. Why play the negative what-if game that only gives you anxiety when you could play the positive what-if game?

EVERYDAY HABITS

18) Make Aligned Choices

• To live a better life, you want to live a life of integrity. The only thing that you have to do is make every choice aligned with your values. Figure out what your values are and then keep making your decisions aligned with them.
• This is the ted talk that inspired this section, if you’re inspired to watch it I totally recommend it. There are a few points that have stuck with me even months later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KysuBl2m_w&t=813s
• Shifting this topic to manifestation, a lot of times we make decisions based on what we are used to and what we usually do instead of making decisions thinking about our future. From now on, think about your goals, your highest self, and your dream life and make the choice that will get you one step closer.

19) Follow Through

• The reason why you might not be confident is because you don’t trust yourself. The reason you don’t trust yourself is because you don’t follow through with what you say you will do. Trust actually promotes self-confidence. This is a great way to boost your confidence.
• When you don’t follow through with what you say you will do, you are telling yourself that you can’t rely on yourself. And when it is time to achieve your goals and make steps toward your dream life, you won’t believe in yourself that you will make it happen. You can’t rely on everyone, but you should be able to rely on yourself.
• The easiest trick to rewire your subconscious mind to believe that you follow through with what you say you will do is by basically announcing what you are about to do before you do it. For example, I’m going to pick up my phone, then pick up your phone. It’s that easy.

20) Assume for the Better

• When humans don’t have enough information, they will always assume mostly for safety and control. If you have the choice of what to assume, why do we assume the worst?
• What if you choose to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume everyone likes you? People actually like you more than you think they do. Why assume something that only makes you feel insecure and like shit? Is that thought a confirmation of something you already believe about yourself?
• The stories we tell ourselves have an impact on how we feel and the action we take because of how we feel. How do the stories you tell yourself cause your own suffering? But also give you insight into your subconscious mind?

21) Be Okay with Being Uncomfortable

• Being uncomfortable is just a part of life. Hard conversations are uncomfortable, negative feelings are comfortable, and even achieving your dreams. Getting what you want involves you putting yourself out there, getting out of your comfort zone, and expanding yourself. These are all uncomfortable.
• You will not grow inside of your comfort bubble. Growth happens outside of it. Getting outside of your comfort zone can give you the opportunity to prove to yourself what you are capable of and reach your potential. A reason you could be depressed is that you feel that you could do more and you aren’t reaching your potential.
• The most uncomfortable people in life are the people that resist and run away from being uncomfortable. Resistance is the most uncomfortable part. I have realized that emotions aren’t that hard to feel or uncomfortable. It is the resistance and shame that make it very difficult and painful.

Reminding yourself that your happiness comes from all of the little choices helps me feel as though it’s doable and feel in more control. Every choice you make can be to make you feel comfortable or can be made for your future and help you move toward your dream life. This is the key to happiness.

Happiness is a feeling that comes from within that you can allow yourself to feel. It doesn’t come from a job or a partner, it comes from gratitude, being present, and romanticizing your life. Allowing yourself to be happy right where you are in your life is what creates a happy life. Focus on creating a peaceful inner world and the outer world will follow. I hope you enjoyed my blog on 21 Steps to a Happy Life for my 21st Birthday this week. I hope you are now looking within and reflecting on your daily decisions. Everyone deserves to be happy and including you.

My Other Blogs to Check Out:

Feel Better About Yourself & Life: 10 Tips to Guide You on Your Healing Journey: Feel Better About Yourself & Life: 10 Tips to Guide You on Your Healing Journey

Take Charge of Your Life: Stop Waiting Around for Love and Put Yourself First: Take Charge of Your Life: Stop Waiting Around for Love and Put Yourself First

Start Your Day Grateful to Be Alive: Create a Morning Ritual that’s Authentic, Enjoyable & Flexible: Start Your Day Grateful to Be Alive: Create a Morning Ritual that’s Authentic, Enjoyable & Flexible

Break Free from Stagnation: A Guide to Reclaiming Control of Your Life and Following What Feels Good: Break Free from Stagnation: A Guide to Reclaiming Control of Your Life and Following What Feels Good