7 critical steps to happiness

TABLE OF CONTENTS
................................................................Introduction 3
....................1. Happiness Is on the Other Side of Fear 5
.........................2. Happiness Is an Option: Choose It 10
...............................................3. Put Happiness First 12
........................................................4. Tell the Truth 14
................................................................5. Let It Go 16
.........................................................6. Be Here Now 18
.........................................7. Be Healthy to Be Happy 20
................................................................Conclusion 23
....................BONUS: 20 Great Happiness Quotations 24

INTRODUCTION
In the movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Judi Dench's
character, Evelyn, says,
“Nothing here has worked out quite as I expected."
Maggie Smith's character, Muriel, responds,
"Most things don't. But you know, sometimes what
happens instead is the good stuff."
Brief but powerful, this short exchange tells us a lot about
how to achieve happiness.
What comes to mind when you think of "happiness?" Does
it mean joy or excitement? How about comfort or
fulfillment or peace or being satisfied? How about feeling
loved? Happiness means different things to different
people, but we know it when we feel it.
One thing it must mean is loving and accepting ourselves
for who we are. Yet, from an early age we all receive
criticism from others. Often these people are simply trying
to train us in how to live safely and well. Parents and
teachers and society all have rules for our benefit; these
rules can be interpreted as criticism even when they are

positive, and we receive a great deal of negative criticism
along the way as well.
We don't like criticism from others, but from a very early
age we internalize it and begin to criticize ourselves.
Studies have shown that as much as 87% of our self talk is
negative.
Because of this, our self-esteem is threatened from an
early age. We want acceptance from others, but we don't
even give it to ourselves. All the negative emotions and all
the shades of insecurity (fear, anger, hate, jealousy, envy,
depression, anxiety, and sadness) begin by the time we're
toddlers. We can combine all this under the umbrella of
unhappiness; unhappiness drains our energy, distracts us,
and causes us to act in self-defeating ways.
Unhappiness doesn't have to be our fate. Our first step
toward happiness requires that we confront and deal with
our fears. Everyone has them – EVERYONE – fears are
natural, but every – EVERYONE – can overcome them and
make peace with them. Our second step toward happiness
is to learn some techniques for positive self-talk and
behavior.
Like anything else of value, happiness takes some work,
but it can be achieved. These ebook will show you first,
how to fight fear and live peacefully with uncertainty, and
second, how to think and act to facilitate happiness.

1. HAPPINESS IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF
FEAR
Since unhappiness comes from a set of beliefs that we
learn and perpetuate, isn't it logical to you that we can
become happier by challenging and changing those
beliefs? You are right, we can. We can make some basic
decisions and implement them on a daily basis. At some
point, we can even replace the old thinking with new
thinking so that choosing the option for happiness
becomes automatic. There will always be new challenges
to our thinking, but we can meet those challenges
successfully.
Happiness is not magic, and it's not magical thinking. It
doesn't belong to a lucky few. Moving from a state where
you experience a lot of negative emotions like anxiety and
depression to happiness requires commitment and
courage.
If you want to be happy, you have to entertain the
possibility that you can be. Many people come to believe
very early in life that life is a game they can't win. They
spend the rest of their lives collecting evidence to prove
that they are incompetent, and it becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy.
Here are two facts that might surprise you

• There are only two emotions: fear and love.
• All fear is the fear of loss.
From the time we leave the safety and comfort of the
womb, we are bombarded with various messages to tell us
we will lose. In the womb we had comfort and security and
nurturance without having to do anything. Inevitably, we
experience a series of losses during the ordinary events of
growing up which cause us to become preoccupied with
avoiding loss instead of with celebrating life.
Norman Cousins once said, ”The tragedy of life is not
death, rather it is what we allow to die within us while we
live." He's right, you know. In the areas of your life that
aren't working, how much denial and avoidance of loss are
you practicing? How many of these self-protective games
have you played?
• Quit before you start. If you don't enter the game (that's
any aspect of life you're avoiding), you can't lose.
• Quit in mid-stream. If you quit before the game is over,
you might be a quitter, but you've saved yourself from
being a "loser."
• "That's OK, I didn't care anyway." You never committed
to it anyway, so it doesn't matter that you lost.
• Dumb game. If you decide that the game's stupid, it
doesn't matter that you lost.
• Endless game. If you keep halfheartedly playing the
game without ever coming to a place where you win or
lose, then at least you haven't lost.

Did you find yourself in one of these? Just about everyone
does. If you saw yourself, GOOD! You just took the first
step to turn yourself around. That takes courage, but you
can't change what you can't see.
The next step is to make a commitment; you need to
commit yourself to changing both your attitude and your
behavior. Spend some time looking at the areas of your life
that you're unhappy with – what are these areas and what
negative thinking and avoidance behavior are you
practicing in these areas? Now, let's begin to discover how
to confront this thinking.
In his excellent book, What Happy People Know, Dr. Dan
Baker talks about fear and love:
“We need to be willing to charge headlong into the
inferno of our most horrific fears – eyes open,
intellect and spirit at the ready.… That takes courage,
and that's when courage is one of the prerequisites
for happiness. But where does that ability come from?
What power grants the strength to overcome the sick,
shaky feeling of fear? Only one power is that strong:
love. In the ultimate analysis, human beings have only
two essential, primal feelings: fear and love. Fear
compels us to survive, and love enables us to thrive.
… For you to be happy, love must lead this dance."
Dr. Baker goes on to talk about appreciation as the
highest, purest form of love. It's higher than romantic love,

the love parents have for children, or the love children
have for parents. It’s the strongest love there is, and it's
the only thing strong enough to be the antidote to fear.
Dr. Baker describes his feelings during the loss of his
infant son. It was at this time in his life that he discovered
the feeling of what he calls “Appreciation.” He felt that his
son, even with his brief life, was a gift full of joy and love
whose presence would never leave him. On Dr. Baker's
part, he was feeling an unselfish love, the purest form of
love, the love he calls appreciation.
An attitude of appreciation can help you survive all the
difficulties in this world without being destroyed by them.
It’s the type of love that allows you to enjoy an experience
while being able to let go. This attitude can help you when
you lose loved ones, when unfortunate things happen, and
even with confronting your own death. You face the fact
that these negative things happen and you've chosen to
experience and enjoy the good things, including your own
life, while you have them. Dr. Baker concludes that the
constant fear of loss is what creates our unhappiness and
that once we face and accept this, we will be able to be
happy.
Dr. Brené Brown states some similar ideas in her book,
Daring Greatly. She says that our unhappiness is caused by
anticipation of things going wrong. Using herself as an
example, she talks about how we all suit up in our suits of
armor in an attempt to keep ourselves safe from all the

negative things in the world. The problem is, of course,
this doesn't keep the bad things from happening, but it
does shut out a lot of the good things, including all of our
positive emotions. She believes that we lose so much more
than we win because of negative projections. Her solution
is to know who you are, to believe in your inherent worth,
and to face things as they come.
I recommend both of these books to you. They are
excellent in their courage and simplicity. Telling the truth
to yourself and standing in your courage are not easy
things to do, but they will bring you the happiness you are
looking for.
Replacing fear with truth and courage is the road to
happiness. The following chapters will help you confront
your negative thinking and behavior and replace it with
truthful, courageous thinking and behavior. These are
skills you or anyone else can learn if you have a true desire
to do so.

2. HAPPINESS IS AN OPTION: CHOOSE IT
If we're so smart, why aren't we happy? For one thing, a lot
of us don't really believe it's possible. But the secret is -
happiness is a choice, just as unhappiness is a choice.
You don't believe me? You probably have lots of reasons
not to. You may have faced external circumstances that
challenged you and even threatened your survival. You
may have internal demons that challenge your
relationships or career or friendships or your own peace of
mind. You may be full of confusion and doubts and can’t
see your way to being happy until you have answers for
these things.
Many of us accept the fact that unhappiness is a natural
state for us. We accept it, and fight like brave soldiers to
survive in spite of it. We trained ourselves to be unhappy
through thousands and thousands of negative responses.
We can train ourselves to be happy by choosing, time after
time, the response that will give us happiness.
In the past we responded with anger, impatience, jealousy,
and fear, but each time we choose peace, acceptance,
forgiveness, and love, we are telling ourselves that this is
an option. Remember the old question," Which would you
rather be, happy or right?" Well, this choice comes down to
"Would you rather dwell on being right and be unhappy, or
would you rather dwell on having a response that makes

you happy." “Right” is subjective. It doesn't make you
wrong or weak to choose being happy; it makes you smart.

3. PUT HAPPINESS FIRST
One thing we can agree on is that we all want to be happy,
right? You might think so, but studies of people in every
stage of life have shown that we virtually never put
happiness first. It is always a by-product of something else
and never the main event.
When you look at this breakdown, you might agree that it
sounds fairly accurate:
Question: "What will make you happy?"
• Elementary school – children in third grade listed their
wants as trips to the amusement park, dolls that talk,
bicycles, no more homework, and video games.
• High school students – this age group wanted to be
popular, to have a boyfriend or girlfriend, to excel in
sports, to get a drivers license, they have nice clothes,
and get into a good college.
• Mid-20’s group – this group wanted a meaningful
relationship, a better job, more money, a good
apartment.
• Mid-40’s group – this group wanted better relationships
with their spouses, more respectful children, better job
opportunities, financial security, less stress, and more
personal time.
• Mid-60’s group – this group wanted health, security,
respect from others, status in the community. Once in a
while, they mention peace or comfort or even happiness.

Never was the word " happiness" mentioned, but when
people of every age were asked why they wanted bicycles
or a drivers license or a better job, they always said it was
because that would make them happy. They believed that
happiness would be the end result of obtaining all of these
things, but they never stated it directly. The result of that
is that they’re putting off their happiness until they have
the things they think will give it to them. The solution is to
choose to be happy now while they're working for
whatever it is they desire.
In many cases, happiness is as easy as realization of it.
What's standing in the way of happiness is all the negative
self talk and training that brought us to a point where we
thought we had to have something – whatever that thing is
– in order to be happy. In many cases, it's just as easy as
flipping a switch.
The solution, then, is as simple as making the decision to
be happy now.

4. TELL THE TRUTH
Have you ever come across the type of person that you felt
you just couldn't trust for some reason? You didn't know
exactly what it was, but he just wasn't on the level. Or how
about the type of person who always has a story, it's just
not a story you believe. Most of us have come across those
types – they're easy to spot because they're obvious. The
truth is, though, we all have some “masking” in us.
As we were growing up and forming our ideas about how
to act safely in this world, we all began to wear masks in
varying degrees. We say and do the socially acceptable
things, and we defer to people in authority over us, no
matter what our age. We've been doing it for so long and
it's so automatic, that many of us have no idea what we
really think or feel. We do it because we don't want to be
rejected by others and because we’re not so sure about
ourselves to begin with.
These masks keep us safe. They also imprison us. All of
our “shoulds” and “have to's” and “ought to’s” obscure who
we really are. Some people are afraid of repercussions if
they decide to be more authentically themselves. But
authenticity is not a license to be boorish, and most
people know that, so fear of repercussions is invalid. A few
people may be threatened by your authenticity in and of
itself, but more people will probably welcome it, and

studies have shown that the more authentic you are, the
more authentic people you attract.
The more people trust themselves and are comfortable
with themselves, the more authentic they become in what
they say and in their behavior. The more people give up
their masks, the more they can explore and celebrate their
real self. This releases all the energy that went into
maintaining their masks so that it can be put into
celebrating their lives.
Do a little investigating into what you think and feel. Is an
authentic? Is it working well for you? Is it time to replace
those old thoughts and feelings with more authentic ones,
ones that represent who you really are.
We are all changing and growing all the time. Choose the
beliefs, feelings, and values that are real for you now. You
will be freer, more alive, and happier.

5. LET IT GO
The surprising thing about judging is that the more
judgmental we are about others, the more judgmental we
are about ourselves. The real reason to let things go is that
we ourselves will benefit from it.
Judgment is all around us all the time. We learned it as
children. We heard from parents, friends, religious leaders,
and the media. So, we began to do it ourselves at an early
age. The result of all that judging is that we have a lot of
opinions; many of them may easily be based on bias that
we have learned in the past but may not be valid today.
Our habit of judging is exhausting since, now more than
ever, we are bombarded by the media with more things to
judge. Furthermore, media concentration on negative
events leaves us stressed and anxious.
Another aspect of judgment is forgiveness. People have a
problem with forgiveness because they feel that if they
forgive someone who did something wrong, they are
letting that person off the hook. So, a way to look at that is
to concentrate on what it is doing for you, not what it is
doing for the other person. When you let something go,
you are freeing yourself from that burden of resentment
that you have been carrying around with you. You have
become more compassionate person. The great benefit is
not in your compassion for the person who wronged you,

but in the compassion you are showing for yourself. By
becoming less judgmental, you have freed yourself. It's not
an easy concept to understand or to practice, but it works.
Take a look at all the people and things you are judging.
Are your judgments valid? One question to ask yourself in
each case: "Is this hurting me or helping me?" If it's not
helping you, you should try to drop it. Does that sound
simplistic? It's really not. We are talking about happiness,
so the bottom line is to let go of whatever is hurting you. It
never had any value. The more negative judgments you
can release, the greater your happiness and freedom will
be.

6. BE HERE NOW
Remember the statement, “All fear is fear of loss."? Closely
connected with that idea is the idea that unhappiness
exists when we think about or regret something in the
past or when we worry about something in the future.
When we live in the present moment completely, we don't
experience unhappiness.
Have you ever known someone who wanted something so
much but was afraid she wouldn’t get it (for instance, a
woman who wants to get married or have a baby) that she
can't be happy in the present moment? Or, have you ever
known someone who is so unhappy because of an event in
the past (for instance, loss of a spouse through death or
divorce) that he can't be happy in the present moment? I
think we all have. But this is a choice those people make,
knowingly or unknowingly. If they choose to let go of that
memory or that fear in the present moment, they could
begin to be happy. It doesn't mean giving up on their
dreams or ignoring the memory of their loved ones; it
means choosing happiness now.
Maybe, like those people, you are concentrating on
something in the past or something you are afraid you
won't get in the future to the extent that you can't enjoy
today.

The difference between people who live unhappy lives and
those who go on to thrive is not what happened or didn't
happen to them, but how they reacted to it.
Living in the present will increase your happiness for
another, obvious reason. When you increase your attention
on something, you increase your ability to enjoy it. Make a
conscious decision to be present in each moment. It
increases your power and effectiveness and deepens your
experience.
Letting go of the past and the future and fully enjoying the
present will increase your happiness.

7. BE HEALTHY TO BE HAPPY
Your attitude can go a long way toward making you happy.
How conscientious you are about checking your attitude to
make sure that you're telling yourself the truth and
confronting your negativity will make a big difference to
your happiness. But I think you have to agree that without
good health, it's impossible to maintain peak happiness.
Take a look at this list and pick out something to do that
will help you improve your health and maintain it.
1. Exercise – did you know that people who exercise
regularly live about 5 to 7 years longer than inactive
people? Try to get about 30 minutes of exercise on most
days.
2. Watch Your Weight – obesity is linked to heart disease,
type II diabetes, several other health conditions, and
reduced life expectancy. Find out what your ideal weight is
and find a plan to help you get there. It's easier than ever
these days because we all have more options. Do it.
3. Stop smoking – people who smoke die about 10 years
earlier than if they had never smoked, BUT if you stop
smoking, you can get most of those years back.
4. Get enough sleep – get the amount of sleep that is
right for you. Doctors generally recommend around seven

hours per night. It helps to repair your body and
regenerate you overall.
5. Eat smart – it easier than ever these days to eat
healthfully because we have a lot of choices. To make it
simple, try to build your diet around vegetables and fruits,
lean sources of protein, and complex carbohydrates. If you
take the time to learn a little bit about good nutrition and
food choices, you'll find that there's enough out there to
choose from so that you can be healthy and not feel
deprived.
6. Floss – you might not know how important this is, and
not just for your teeth. Flossing removes bacteria that
could otherwise cause inflammation in your gums. This
inflammation activates your body's inflammatory response;
this in turn raises your blood pressure and puts you at risk
for heart disease and stroke. It can also damage brain
tissue. Studies are showing that inflammation is at the
core of much disease today; flossing is an easy way to
guard your body against inflammation.
7. Socialize – people with a strong social network of family
and friends live longer than those who are not connected
to others. Connection is an antidote for stress.
8. Get a check up – you will live a longer, healthier life if
potential problems like diabetes or heart disease are
caught early.

These are minimal things you can do to stay happy and
healthy. Consider them. They take a little work, but there's
a great payoff.

CONCLUSION
Are you thinking by now that happiness sounds like it's a lot of
work? I agree. But isn't being miserable a lot of work, too? Not
many things are more exhausting than depression. Or
disappointment. Or all the other negative things that we feel
through our negative self talk, negative attitude, and negative
reactions.
If you're skeptical about how well this approach to consciously
seeking happiness will work for you, why not give it a try? If it's
too much trouble, your misery will be waiting for you to
reclaim it.
I wish you great happiness.

BONUS: 20 GREAT HAPPINESS
QUOTATIONS
1. The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes,
but is liking what one has to do. – Sir James M Barrie
2. There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the
interval. – George Sanayana
3. But what is happiness except the simple harmony
between a man and the life he leads? – Albert Camus
4. There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease
worrying about things which are beyond the power of our
will. – Epictetus
5. Happiness depends on being free, and freedom
depends on being courageous. – Thucydides.
6. Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole
aim and end of human existence. – Aristotle
7. Our greatest happiness does not depend on the
condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is
always the result of a good conscience, good health,
occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits. – Thomas
Jefferson

8. Happiness is experienced when your life gives you what
you are willing to accept. – Ken Keyes Jr
9. To win one's joy through struggle is better than to yield
to melancholy. – Andrew Gide
10. Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to
make work a pleasure. Well enough to support your needs.
Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them.
Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them.
Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.
Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love
enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others.
Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough
to remove all anxious fears concerning the future. –
Johann von Goethe
11. All animals except man know that the principle
business of life is to enjoy it. – Samuel Butler
12. It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is
willing to be what he is. – Erasmus.
13. One is happy as a result of one's own efforts – once
one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness –
simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a
point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience. –
George Sand
14. Some pursue happiness, others create it. – Anon

15. No man is more cheated than the selfish man. – Henry
Ward Beecher
16. Five great enemies to peace inhabit us: avarice,
ambition, envy, anger and pride. If those enemies were to
be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace. –
Ralph Waldo Emerson
17 Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less,
breathe more; talk less, say more; love more, and all good
things will be yours. – Swedish proverb
18. Few are they who have never had the chance to achieve
happiness… And fewer are those who have taken that
chance. – Andre Maurois
19. Most folks are about as happy as they make up their
minds to be. – Abraham Lincoln
20. Happiness is: a good martini, a good meal, a good
cigar and a good woman…or bad woman, depending on
how much happiness you can stand. – George Burns

7 critical steps to happiness

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