4 Ways To Feel Good And Learn How To Be Happy In 2015

It's that time of year when social media starts filling up with posts about New Year's Resolutions, expressions of hope that the approaching year will be better than the last, and comments about how this is the year you will finally learn how to be happy. However, wishing and hoping that 2015 will be better than 2014 is assuming that the result is beyond our control. Instead of wishing for a better year, it is far more effective to decide to have a better year.

There may be circumstances and events that appear to be beyond your own control, but the truth is: there is more within your control than you think.

There is in fact one simple thing you can do in order to make 2015 infinitely better than 2014. It may seem far-fetched at first, but there is a perfectly down-to-earth, logical explanation. Make the decision to do whatever it takes to feel good.

Why?

This is about more than just feeling good; it is about achieving better tangible results in all areas of your life. When you feel good, you make different decisions and choices than those you make when you are not feeling good. The majority of what happens in your life is a direct or indirect result of the choices and decisions you make.

When you are feeling good, you are more likely to be active and less likely to overeat or eat comfort food. This means you have a higher chance of being healthy. When you are feeling good, you respond to stress and challenges differently than when you are not; you communicate with others differently, too. You can see how all of this affects the results you experience in your life and how prioritizing feeling good can have a knock-on effect on all areas of your life.

Now that we have looked at why feeling good is a top priority, the challenge is finding a way to feel good no matter what is going on in your life at the time. There are a number of things you can do, and with practice it is not as difficult as you may think to spend more time feeling good.

Here are 4 things you can do to start feeling good:

1. Start every day by watching, listening to, or reading something that makes you laugh out loud. This can change the course of your entire day; and as you do this every day you will experience an accumulative effect on the rest of your life over time. In fact, never miss an opportunity to laugh out loud!
2. Do at least one thing each day that makes you feel good. Prioritize it, knowing that it can make all the difference to the results you experience in all areas of your life.
3. When you feel worried or stressed, smile. That may seem absurd, but even a false smile can make a difference. When you turn up the corners of your mouth (even in a false smile), that action sends a signal to your brain to release certain "feel good" chemicals. Although the effects of these are very subtle at first, the more you do this, the more the effects will build up. Over a period of time it will result in feeling more calm. It will feel weird at first grinning to yourself, but you'll get used to it.
4. Practice the Superpower Exercise for an instant physiological change that will have you feeling good no matter what is going on around you.

If feeling good affects your behavior, choices, decisions, actions, communication, diet, exercise, social interaction, business interactions, productivity, spending habits, sleep patterns and so much more, isn't it worth prioritizing it above everything else? The only New Year's Resolution you need to make is to prioritize feeling good above all else in 2015—the rest will be an automatic result of that.