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Happiness: Age 18

by HijabMan :: posted 21 October 01

Happiness comes in several different forms, and its achieved through stages, i personally go with the humanistic approaches to happiness. My ways of achieving happiness coincide with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (or at least I hope so). We’ll start with the first (and easiest) steps to being happy.

1. Sunlight is therapeutic, go out for a walk, play some frisbee go over a friend’s house and climb up big hills or small mountains together.

2. Wake up early- no big explanation necessary-you just feel like you have the rest of the day to do things- more productivity.

3. Exercise a bit everyday, walking or running works. Get that blood flowing to your brain. Get that adrenaline released so all of these nice natural euphoric feelings occur.

getting trickier…

4. What I like to do to keep a smile on my face is to pretend that everything I see, I see for the first time. For instance, its about 7 am and I’m looking at this squirrel balancing on a twig way up high in the trees, and the silly little squirrel is bouncing up and down because the twig is so small, and the squirrel’s tiny hands are so cute! And the shadows of everything all over the street and grass…

4.5 A variation of this is sitting on a bench, closing your eyes, and listening to the birds chirping or the bustle of New York or Ypsilanti wherever you may live…(closing your eyes and letting the sun’s warmth seep into you gradually…

5. As far as religion goes- people tend to get too serious. If everything was meant to be serious, why did God create humor? CAUSE ITS GOOD FOR YOU :) so use it to relax., to feel better.

6. Remember that prayer is not just for God but its also for you, in that it is a form of meditation. What I usually do is start w/ something my Dad told me to do.. just sit there and say, “God, you know, I really don’t understand you, but you know, this is what I’m feeling right now, and I hope that I make the right decisions, thanks for your guidance.. etc.” Formal prayers are not the end-all of prayers. Remembering God is prayer in itself.

trickiest…

7. I’ve noticed that people are scared of being “child-like” or to have a child’s mentality towards some things. Like a child will play duck duck goose, will sing and dance without hesitation, but once we get older, they become afraid, “what will people think?” they worry. This is something I am having trouble with- being myself- for some reason people think its impossible to be silly AND also have the ability to have a serious intellectual discussion, what happened to the multiple facets of people. If you suddenly have the urge to jump, or skip, or smile or laugh or just shake and be silly- GO for it! Forget about those people who think you are on some kind of hallucinogen- if they ask? Say you are on this drug called life!

8. Make a contract with yourself, what you plan to do in the next 3,6,12 months. Fulfill your contract (or else you have to take yourself to court, and all sorts of confusion happens.. (Garia gave me this one)

9. Make yourself believe that your world right now is not concrete, its fluid- you can change it. When I was 14, I thought that that was the end of the world, but my life drastically changed over the past 3-4 years.

10. Be honest with yourself and other people, tell them how you feel about them…..

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