Betsy Guerra offers five ways to feel happier now: mentally subtract frustrating people or things to see their value, practice gratitude, find silver linings, spend time with God, and stay present. She draws on The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy to frame happiness as something you cultivate today, not chase tomorrow.
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Let's talk about how to find happiness now. I was reminded of this when I was reading the Gap and the Gain, a book by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. He was sharing that in the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson mentions that we have been endowed by that Creator to have certain rights, and among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And he said that there was something wrong with that last one. The pursuit of happiness implies that happiness is in the future. I'll be happy when this or that happens or takes place. And his entire book is about how you can live in the Gain, meaning compare yourself to what you've accomplished and how far you've come along and focus on progress so that you may be happy now. He says that happiness is where you start, not where you finish. And this got me thinking and I thought, how can I help people live happily now? And here are some guidelines that are going to enable you to find your joy and live Live your best life right now. Number one, you're going to think about the thing or things or the who's that rob you of your joy? Like what bothers you? What do you complain about? Is it your job? Is it your spouse? Are your kids driving you crazy? Like, what in your life bothers you and robs you of your joy? And now when you do that, practice what psychologists call mental subtraction, which means that you're going to mentally imagine getting rid of that. If your job's bothering you, you were furloughed, you don't have a job. Now if your kids are driving you crazy, your kids are gone. If your spouse is a pain in your butt, you got a divorce or he died. God forbid, what does that feel like now? Do you not want that thing that you're complaining about? Because suddenly when you practice mental subtraction, you realize in your vision, in your image of the mind, without that person or that thing that you were complaining about, you realize how much you took it for granted. So after you do that mental subtraction, if you realize, I'd rather have my kids be a pain in my butt than not have them at all, as I feel from experience. When you see it that way, then at that point you can go to number two and practice gratitude. Thank you, God, for my kids, who are the biggest pain in my butt. Thank you for this job that drives me crazy. Thank you for my husband, who's super annoying, or. Or my wife, if you're a man listening to this, because I'm sure for a lot of annoying wives, I know I am. You get to be grateful for that, and you get to appreciate the good in that. And that leads to step three, which is helping your mind to find the silver lining, to find the blessings, the lessons in that experience you're having that you were not too long ago complaining about. When you help your mind, you're choosing what you focus on. And what you focus on expands. You create more of. Or like Tony Robbins says, where focus goes, energy flows. If you're looking for the blessings and the silver lining, you will feel them and find them, and you will feel grateful for them. And number four, you get to decide to spend time with God. I believe wholeheartedly that every moment we spend in prayer, in silence, solitude and stillness, when invoking and consenting to the presence and action of God within us, God will bless. So if you spend five minutes of your day in the presence of God, those are five minutes that are going to be filled with joy and peace and love and God. And if you spend a little more time than that, then your life is going to receive more and more joy, peace, love, blessings. So spend time with God and you will feel happiness right now. And lastly, I would like for you to consider staying in the present moment. Then now is the only real time. There is this idea that in the future and in the past, time is an illusion. Now was now in the past when it happened, and it will be now in the future when it happens. Now is all there is. So if you stay here, right here, right now, you're going to see that all you have to worry about is this one moment. And when you're in the present moment, you're not living in depression as a lot of people who live in the past live. You're not living in anxiety and fear and the what ifs of the uncertainty of the future because you're not living in the future. You're living in peace. You're living in the present moment. If you enjoyed this video, please be sure to like and share with someone you love. And if we can support you Further, go to betterwithbetsy.com.
