Who wouldn’t want a super juicy life?

Life is meant to be experienced wholly and joyfully.

Deep down inside, we may not believe we deserve the good that life has to offer. We may allow so many ideas or conditions surrounding our right to happiness that we constantly deny it; we forget that happiness is a choice. It’s not something that just happens to us. We have to be in agreement with ourselves that if happiness is wanted, then we need to see where we stand against our own happiness.

Try a few of these tips on and see how they feel—you might surprise yourself. It is all within your power to make life superbly, deliciously juicy right now!

1. Pleasure.

Find pleasure everywhere you go; whether the circumstances are negative or positive, create pleasure. Begin and end with pleasing yourself. It makes you a more agile receiver of all the juiciness that life offers.

2. Play.

Think of the sandbox: building castles, where the sound of laughter and singing can be heard. Look for the playfulness with others, engage them in playing, too. Even if it’s to give a wink of an eye, kindly offer a compliment or make your kids chase the car as you start to drive out of the parking lot—play!

3. Forget the drama.

Don’t make circumstances into a drama. Stop looking for attention for what is wrong, so you can commiserate or get sympathy. Stop placing your self-worth on the line by needing so much from others, instead of giving it to yourself—fill your own empty holes. While you’re at it, stop reading all the drama in the media, which has nothing to do with you. There is nothing else to help with drama but stop it. Creating drama does not bring happiness.

4. Find the quiet.

Mmm, delicious. Feel yourself absorbing the quietness. At first it may feel awkward, but the more you do it, the more connected to yourself you become. And the more connected you are, the less needy you will feel, because the quiet can give you the peace you crave and then the hole inside stops running your life.

5. Be okay.

Be. Okay. Accepting yourself leads to all of life’s goodness. When you really get that all of your shortcomings are really a gift, it makes it easier to go about your life. Self-acceptance leads to a happiness most people never allow themselves to experience. You actually start to witness the unlimited rather than the impossible.

6. Quit looking for approval.

No one has to approve or validate what you do or how you do it! Happiness comes from seeking your passion or sense of happiness within. It’s from that place inside, you begin to understand what pleases you and what you block based on seeking approval from others. People live a lifetime based on other people and never ever experience true happiness.

7. Blunting pain.

When you stop or avoid pain, you also avoid happiness. All sums are equal to the whole. If you block an emotion, you block all emotions, so the experience is perhaps, duller or even depressing—there’s no emotion in the ocean! Don’t hide from pain, allow it. It changes everything.

8. You’re worthy now!

Sometimes you’re just waitin’ for the other shoe to drop! Worrying about being too happy, because the gremlins of misery will soon remind you of your lot in life. You can get almost phobic about happiness, as though you must go through huge trials and suffering in life before you’re deemed worthy. You’re worthy now, right now, just as you are!

9. Rake the leaves.

Literally, get into doing something physical. Garden, work out, do something that is physically stimulating—pleasure and happiness abounds when you’re physically engaged. While, you’re at it it’s a great time to get rid of some of your old beliefs around happiness, the ones that weight you down with guilt or regret. The past will fill your future with dust balls of discontent if you let it, so gain clarity, clean up and get moving!

10. Forget the outcome.

Attachment to life having to be a certain way or end up in a perfectly wrapped package can keep you from allowing happiness. You may feel that your current circumstances should dictate your level of happiness. You may think you have to be at the destination, achieving the goal to deserve happiness. You never get to the destination when you’re waiting to be happy. It remains elusive.

Happiness is not the goal, it’s the journey to the outcome.

If you’re so attached to having it your way, you are stressed and more than likely in a constant state of disappointment. Stress and disappointment are based on expectations, look at how many of them are realistic and the ones that aren’t, ask yourself why you hold on to them. So, let go and be happy.

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Ed: Catherine Monkman

{Photo: Pixoto.}