Jack Canfield shares six practices to cultivate happiness: gratitude, visualization, affirmations, meditation, self-care, and laughter yoga. He argues that during hard times people slip into survival mode and lose sight of joy, and these tools help raise your vibration and improve your mindset.
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Hey, welcome everybody. I'm Jack Canfield. You probably know me as the co author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, the book the Success Principles. And I'm really glad you stopped in to watch this video today, because there's one thing I know for sure that everybody needs more of in their life right now. It's happiness. And it's the one thing you can never get too much of. You'll often hear me say that joy and happiness are our internal guidance system. But when we're going through uncertain or challenging times, such as the past 18 months we've all been through, our joy and our happiness typically become secondary as our survival instincts kick in to run the show and navigate us through the never ending daily challenges. And everywhere you look, it all still seems like it's all doom and gloom, right? And if you were to base your perception of the world only on what you see on your news or your social media feeds, it would seem like the world is all division and chaos, right? But of course, the world is joy and love and beauty and all those things as well. Now, when you're bombarded by negativity, it's easy to lose sight of that. And if you stay in that zone, it will drain you of the energy, the motivation and the creativity you need to achieve the results you want in life. So today I'd like to share six powerful tools that you can use to cultivate more joy and more happiness in your life and experience all of the beauty that life has to offer. Now these are quick and easy tools that you can use any time of the day to turn your energy, raise your vibration and put a big old smile on your face. Now the first tool is gratitude. Now it might be funny to think of gratitude as a tool, but when you actively practice it every day and everything that's good in your life, you will be amazed at the impact it will have on your life. When you practice gratitude, you realize that your life is bursting with miracles. From the beauty of the natural world around you, to the gift of the friends and family you have to the people who create all the art and the tools and the treasures in your life, to the people who made it possible for those things to end up in your home. Now this dramatically raises your vibration and makes it so much easier for you to cultivate a positive mindset that allows you to experience more joy and more happiness in everything you do. Now the next tool I encourage you to try is visualization. Visualization is the art of getting very clear on exactly what you want to experience in your life and then imagining it visually in your mind every single day so that the reality you want to create always remains top of mind for you. It's a very powerful practice. And when you visualize yourself experiencing more joy and happiness in your life, it makes it much easier for you to focus on the positive and look for joyful moments in everything you do. Now, I also encourage you to use affirmations to grow your happiness. Now, as you probably know, an affirmation is a positive statement that describes you as already having your goals already achieved. For example, if your goal is to experience more joy in your life, your affirmation can be something like, I'm so happy and grateful now that I'm able to remain focused on the positive and experience joy in every moment, no matter what is happening in the world around me. Now, if you were to say that affirmation to yourself every day, several times a day, I guarantee you'll find yourself getting less irritated or frustrated with the people and the events that are beyond your control. Now, another powerful tool is meditation. Meditation helps you maintain a joy focused mindset. Meditation allows you to become more aware of your thoughts so you can release the ones that don't serve you and hold on to the ones that guide your actions and your behavior in the direction you want to go. Now, if you don't follow any sort of daily meditation practice, I encourage you to consider adding one to your daily routine. And of course, I also encourage you to practice self care as much as possible. A lot of people think that taking care of themselves first is selfish, but really it's the best thing you can do to help others as well as yourself. So make sure you take the time to eat healthy, to get enough sleep, to stay active, to exercise, maybe take a bath, get a massage, and spend time with people you love. Now these things aren't indulgences, they're really necessities. You see, self care keeps your energy high and your mindset positive. And you'll get better results in everything you do as a result of that. And that includes helping others as well. Now, finally, I have one last fund suggestion to share with you. Have you ever heard of Laughter Yoga? It's something I often practice at my live events and on my own as well. Now, it sounds kind of crazy, but it's really powerful. All you have to do is laugh. You just try to think of something funny and if that helps. But the key thing is you simply open your mouth and start laughing. Now, it might seem forced at first, but then it will get to feel genuine and you'll find yourself truly laughing and it will feel great. Now let me give you an example. I could just start laughing right now, And when you start to do that, you'll find the physiological shift will take take place in your body. I just started to feel hotter and I felt happier as a result of simply just choosing to start laughing. Now you can find videos on laughter, yoga and all kinds of things that will stimulate that, and you can find those on YouTube and I want to encourage you to check them out because laughter is a powerful medicine because it releases endorphins, which are your body's feel good hormones. It also decreases the hormones that cause stress and can actually boost your immune system and improve your resistance to disease, which is valuable right now. It even improves your heart health and it burns calories. So if you're looking for a way to add more joy and happiness to your life, I encourage you to laugh more. You'll be amazed at how good it makes you feel. Well, all right, that's it for today. So thanks for watching and let me know which one of these ideas you've tried, looking forward to trying, or what your own personal practice for creating more happiness is for you on a daily basis and go ahead and post that in the comments below. I love being inspired by your ideas and if you happen to find this video helpful, please make sure you share it with a friend who may need it and subscribe to this channel for more videos like this one and for additional tools and videos on how to experience more joy and happiness in life, make sure to check out the resource page on my website@jackcampfield.com there's a ton of great stuff there. So thanks again for watching and have a great day.
