The 7 Timeless Habits of

Happiness
BY HENRIK EDBERG

by Henrik Edberg

Contents
Introduction.3 How to implement these habits.5 1. Choose Happiness ....6 2. Get Your Physical fundamentals in shape...11 3. Create an Action Habit.....15 4. Be Here Now....17 5. Help and Make Other People Happy..............21 6. Do What You Love to Do...24 7. Let Go...28 Final Thoughts..............................................................................31
Copyright Henrik Edberg, 2010. You do not have the right to sell, share or claim the ownership of the content of this eBook. This book is for informational purposes only and it contains my opinions based on my experience. You should always find the advice of a professional before taking action on something I have published.

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

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by Henrik Edberg

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence. Aristotle

Introduction
Happiness. According to some, the meaning of life. But how can you increase the happiness in your life? Well, I have found a few ways that work well for me that I would like to share with you. Back in 2005 I was a pretty regular guy. Life wasnt all too bad really, but I wasnt that happy either. I think the problem was that I didnt understand myself or the world around that well. I didnt understand what I needed to do to create a happier life for myself. I had some idea that more stuff wouldnt cut it. I knew that the happiness effect of a new shirt or a new video game usually used to last for a week or two but then it went away and I was back where I started. I first got interested in personal development more seriously that year because I was too lazy and simply wanted to become more productive. But I soon discovered that there were books and CDs about all the other aspects of life too. Fast-forward to 2010. Through experiences and studying I have learned a lot about both myself and humans in general over the last couple of years. And just like I do on my blog The Positivity Blog - www.positivityblog.com - I would like to share what I have discovered. Page | 3

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Now, let us be frank, will this book solve all your problems and make you happy all the time from now on? No. But it contains some of the pieces that I believe are most important for living a happy life. Those pieces, or habits, can help you to feel happier a lot more and help you to handle challenges in your life. They have certainly helped me to do so. But to gain the benefits you have to implement the advice consistently. You have to live it. Just reading the book will make you feel positive feelings for a while. But that goes away. Actually working on yourself and your own life and being patient and persistent is what brings you the real rewards. Stick to the path of applying these habits as much as you can in your daily life. Not only will the habits themselves help you. Because when you actually live habits like these, when you do what you know deep down is the right thing then you also raise your self esteem and you feel that you actually deserve good things in life. This is a big factor for increasing your happiness too.

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by Henrik Edberg

About the author

My name is Henrik Edberg and I am the creator or the popular personal development website the Positivity Blog and the Positivity Newsletter. I write articles, newsletters and create premium guides such as e-books and courses about improving your happiness, social life, health, and general awesomeness. Feel free to follow me on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook or send me an email using this contact form.

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

How to implement these habits

This book contains 7 broad habits of happiness. To change or try to improve on them all at once is too much. So choose one to work on and stick with that one for 30 days. Instead of doing it all at once and winding up being overwhelmed and giving it all up. Of course, many of these habits are intertwined. For example, as you learn to let go it also becomes easier to stay in the present. I would start with the first habit, to choose happiness. And then maybe choose the second one and work on my health. But you may resonate strongly with another habit right now, so choose that one if you like. Page | 5

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment? Epictetus

1. Choose Happiness
The first thing you must do is to choose happiness. It might not seem like it, but it is to a large degree a choice. Just like misery. Both of them are optional. That may sound all well and good from an inspirational standpoint but how do you do it practically? Heres how I do it. As you use these techniques you start to realize more and more how much you can affect and choose your own happiness. Even if it might not feel like that right now. Just like tying your shoes choosing to be happy is a conscious choice. You choose each day what you focus on and how you interpret your reality.

Choose to Keep Your Focus on What You Want

What you think about most of the time you see around you and become. If you see the world and yourself through a lens smudged by negativity then youll find much misery. If you look outwards and inwards through lens brightened by positivity youll find much to be happy and appreciative about. So being happy or miserable is seldom so much about the external circumstances at the moment. Its more about how you look at them, yourself and your world.

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Now, thinking about things with a positive attitude is easier said than done. But you can shift a negative attitude into a more positive one. It will probably not happen like flicking on a light switch, but gradually you can spend more time with a positive attitude than a negative one.

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Be grateful for what you got

One of the simplest ways to shift your focus to what you want is to feel grateful for what you have. Just appreciate the weather, your friends and family, the food in front of you, your roof and clean water, your awesome shoes and the cute wo/man that just walked by. Yeah, it might seem a bit silly. But just doing this for two minutes really works well to turn a sour mood into a more positive and open one. Do this whenever you feel down or like your focus is in the wrong place. The gratitude journal A variation of this technique is to use a gratitude journal. Here you quickly jot down 5 things you are grateful for in a journal. Do this for a few minutes each day or each week. Review the journal whenever you feel the need. Very simple but effective.

Use big, written goals

By setting goals, writing them down and posting them on a wall where you can see them every day you can keep your focus steadily on what you want instead of what you dont want out of life. I recommend setting your goal like this:

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Most people are about as happy as they make their minds up to be. Abraham Lincoln

I earn 7000 dollars per month. Now, the goal might not be money related. But its good to write it down as if you already have it to tell you subconscious to start working to achieve that goal right now. If you write it down in the I will earn form you are telling yourself that it will always be achieved sometime in the future no matter how many days you work at it. It is also helpful to write it down as specifically as you can. If you just write down that you exercise each week instead of that you exercise 3 times each week you give yourself to much wiggle room to procrastinate and to come up with bad excuses. I would also recommend setting big goals, not reasonable ones. One mistake I made last year was to set a too small goal for how much money I wanted to make from my business each month. It was reasonable, but it also didnt inspire me that much. By the summer I realized this and tripled the amount of money I wanted to make. Suddenly, I felt uncomfortable but also excited. My mind started to spit out solutions to help me reach that goal. I didnt reach the goal in 2009 but my income shot up quite a bit during the last six months of that year.

Ask yourself useful questions

This is a powerful way to refocus if you slip or to find even more clarity in what you choose to focus your time and energy towards. Here are two great ones.

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Is this useful?
This is a good way to weed out thought habits that may not be so useful. Your mind may for instance fool you into believing that its the right thing to go around being angry at someone because, well, youre right. Or that its right to dwell on a problem because you had such bad luck or was singled out. Both thought patterns are quite seductive because they can fool you into believing that you are doing the right or normal thing. But are such thoughts useful to you? Probably not. Theyll just create suffering in your life, waste your time and do little to solve a practical situation. By asking if something is useful you can stop yourself while heading down a negative path and turn around towards the light again.

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

What is awesome about this situation?

This is a good way to find the lesson within an experience that may be seen as negative. Or to just reframe a situation and create some positivity and enthusiasm within yourself to get going to practically handle a situation instead of falling back into a dwelling, negative victim-thinking kind of thought pattern. Asking yourself this question may seem stupid or silly at first. You may not find anything positive or awesome about a situation at all. But after youve started to ask yourself the question in more and more situations youll probably find something thats at least good about a situation. And the more awesome, positive and good things you can find in experiences the more Page | 9

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Very little is need to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. Marcus Aurelius

your mind starts to accept that you can indeed find something good in just about any situation. Your mind just has to get a bit used to thinking about things in this new and unfamiliar way.

Choose an Environment of Happiness

Your environment has a big influence over you. You are in it every waking hour so you need to be proactive and create an environment that supports your happiness and habits. Being a bit ruthless and cutting out as much of the negative influences and busywork makes your mind clear, uncluttered and focused. Two simple suggestions for shaping your environment to support a happier life are: Cut back on the time you spend with most negative person in your life. And spend more time with the most positive person(s). Cut out or cut down on the most negative media influence in your life. It could be the news on TV, the newspaper, some magazine or type of music, type of books or blogs or websites. Replace that time and find new energy and inspiration from one or more positive sources like inspiring movies and books. Or uplifting music and people.

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

"Those who think they have no time for healthy eating will sooner or later have to find time for illness." Edward Stanley

2. Get Your Physical Fundamentals in Shape

Perhaps the most obvious but also one of the most important factors for living a happier life and to be able to better develop the other habits in this book is to get your fundamentals in shape. What do I mean by fundamentals? Eating healthy. Exercising regularly. Getting enough sleep. Now, this may seem painfully obvious. But those things have a huge impact on just about anything in your life. The ideas are simple. But you have use them too. Thinking and talking about them is easy. Living them is what changes your life.

Eat Healthy
There is ton of information out there on what to eat. I tend to eat whole-wheat and low GI products, quite a bit of veggies, lean meats and a lot of fish and shellfish. I drink green tea, water and a couple of beers from time to time. I supplement this with a multivitamin and additional vitamin C (and vitamin D during the dark months here in Sweden).

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Now, you may prefer another way of eating but this helps and fits me.

Know what and how much you are eating

If you dont know how much you are eating its useful to start a food diary at fitday.com (its free) and see what you eat for a few weeks. This can help you to see what you are really putting into your body in terms of calories, fat, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. And it can also tell you if you are overeating. I think one of the most common mistakes people make when trying to keep or lose weight is simply to consume more calories than they use. You can solve this problem by using the FitDay diary until you get a good sense of the amount of food you put into yourself. It may seem a bit boring but it really helped me to get an accurate sense of my food habits and to lose a lot extra weight in 2009. Of course, use this with common sense so you dont get obsessive and feel bad just because you ate an extra cookie one day. You dont have to be perfect to get good results. Two of my favourite blogs that have taught me much about how to eat healthier are: Marks Daily Apple Fitness Black Book

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. John F. Kennedy

Exercise Regularly
One area of my life that I really focused on improving in 2009 was my body and physical health. I did this by eating better as described above. And by using the Turbulence Training program by fitness trainer Craig Ballantyne. You can read the review of that program right here. The results? I lost 26 pounds in four months. I have a flat belly and my energy has at least doubled. My productivity is up and its a lot easier to stay positive. Getting in shape is something I believe we often underestimate (I certainly did). We have so many problems and things to complain about. But when you start to get into good shape you realise that much of that is just vanishes or at least decreases. How we manage our body has a huge, huge impact on our thoughts, emotions and everything that happens in our personal world.

Find a way that fits you

Some of the most important things about exercise are consistency and finding something that fits you. I have for example enjoyed lifting free weights for few years. The best thing I got out of Turbulence Training was the bodyweight circuits. You basically do 6-8 exercises with just your bodyweight. Stuff like jumping up and down, pushups and different squats.

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The simple combination of free weights and bodyweight circuits works well for me. But it took a while and some experimentation with other forms of exercise to find it. So explore and see what fits you and your life so you can get and keep yourself in shape.

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

"Sleep is the best meditation." Dalai Lama

Get Enough Sleep

I sleep well so I dont have too many tips to add on this topic. I do have three rules I follow though: 1. A dark room. Keeping it really dark in your bedroom is something that makes it easier to go to sleep, to sleep well and not wake up too early. 2. No caffeine after 8 PM. If I drink tea after that time I find it harder to go to sleep. 3. No work late at night. I tend to not work on, for example, my writing too late. If I do that then my mind will be spinning with thoughts and ideas for an hour or more as I roll around wide awake in bed. Instead I make sure to relax and just take it easy a few hours before sleep.

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. Benjamin Disraeli

3. Create an Action Habit

One of the best ways to not find happiness is just to hold yourself back and do nothing. Seldom show up. Paralyze yourself through over-analysis. Think and think and think about how bad things are for you. I admit, its not always easy to take action. It can be scary and difficult. But if you dont take action youll be missing out on most things. Including many moments, people and experiences that can bring you a lot of happiness. If you dont create a habit where you take a lot of action you wont get a lot of results in real life. Sure, reading can educate and inspire you. But to reap the rewards you have to take action over and over again. Not sit at home on your hands and think that someone else will do it for you. Or think that just reading will solve your problems in some magic kind of way. Without an action habit little in life works, including the habits included in this book. So how can you create a habit of taking more action each and every day? Besides using the focus tips in the first chapter of this book my favourite and most effective tip for becoming a person of consistent action is:

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didnt do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. Mark Twain

Use a morning ritual

You simply set up a routine in the morning that you do as soon as you wake up. This works so well because what you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. As humans we have a strong tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. Thats one big reason why a bad start often leads to a bad day and a good start often leads to a good day. My morning ritual Get up, drink a glass of water. You get dehydrated when you are asleep. Pull the blinds from my windows and open a window to let in the sun and more fresh air. Eat breakfast and drink a cup of green tea. Brush my teeth and tongue. Make my bed. Declutter for a few minutes. I wash any remaining dishes from yesterday. I put anything that is out place back into its right place. I clean up my workspace so its clean and organized. Then I get started with the most important task of the day. Basically, I center myself and get into an organized and productive mindset by doing these simple things to order and clean up my environment. It is also a good way to warm up for your day, to get out of a procrastinating mindset and it makes it easier to consistently take the next step.

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. Buddha

4. Be Here Now
Tomorrow isnt here yet. Yesterday has passed. Now is the present moment. And all three of them are always the present moment when we are living in them. So there is no real space where you and I can change or live in except the one you and me are in right now. And now. And now. But still we insist on spending much time regretting yesterday. Or fearing tomorrow. Thats normal. But it isnt so useful. We cant really do anything about the past. We can learn valuable lessons from it but after that its not so important. And most of the things we fear will happen in the future never really show up. A negative attitude can do wonders to create monsters within the mind to occupy much of your time. So, planning your future is very useful but over-thinking it is seldom helpful. So much time is lost by thinking compulsively, over and over again, about things we have little control over. And it can create a huge amount of suffering within that is projected and acted out into the world. And it distracts us - blurs our vision and shatters our focus - and keeps us from fully enjoying what is really the most important time. Now.

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More Awesome Benefits of Being in the Present Moment

Being present in moment after moment can have a huge amount of positive benefits besides sparing you from all the suffering of living large parts of your life in the past or future.

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Improved social skills

This may be one of the first things you discover when you start experimenting with being present. It was for me. If you have the problem that you get nervous/shy and dont know what to say in a conversation then presence is one solution. When you are present then your head is no longer filled with past scenarios (what did she mean when she said that?) or future scenarios (what will they think if I say this?). You let go of self-consciousness. You are just here. With your attention focused outward towards the person(s) you are interacting with. You just let things flow out of you. And in a way the tip of assuming rapport is a way to tap into your presence in conversations. Assuming rapport means that you pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction with any person in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one. When youre with your best friends you are probably not thinking ahead that much. You are just enjoying the interaction, the present moment and all of you just let things flow naturally. Page | 18

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Presence can also help you with listening. It helps you to decrease the bad habit of thinking about the future and what you should say next while trying to listen. If you are present and really there while listening then that will also come through in your body language. This gives the person talking a vibe and feeling that you are really listening to what s/he has to say. Being present also improves your focus and allows you to better tune out possible interruptions or distractions in your surroundings.

Improved creativity
If you write or do some other creative work you may have found that your best work flows out of you when you are not thinking that much. You just write, paint, play. You enter a headspace where things just come to you. Then later you can come back and edit your work. This one is similar to the first reason. Writing is for instance similar to a conversation. When you are present in a conversation or while writing things its often best to not think too far ahead or you start to get self-conscious and you second-guess yourself. You create mental blocks that stop your creativity from flowing unhindered.

Less worry-warting and over-thinking

If you are a chronic over-thinker that goes round and round in circles in your mind before you ever get anything done then being present is a great release from that habit. Im not saying that you wont slip back into over-thinking. But being present just for a while can help you. It can allow you to stop worrying about what may happen and to just take some action to get started. To actually see what happens.

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. Albert Einstein

My 3 Favourite Ways of Connecting with the Present Moment

OK, so those benefits sound good. So how can you become more present in your daily life?

Focus on whats right in front of you

Or around you. Or on you. Use your senses. Just look at whats right in front of you right now. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel the fabric of your clothes and focus on how they feel.

Use guided meditation

I have been using guided mediation CDs called Paraliminals many, many times over the last year. One nice benefit of these CDs is that they put you in a centred and calm state of mind with very little self-talk in general for maybe five hours to half a day after you have used them. This makes the transition into being present during that time a whole lot easier. Read my full review of the Paraliminals here.

Focus on your breathing

Ive already mentioned this one. Breathe with your belly and just focus your mind on your inhaling and exhaling. Do this for a minute or two. This will align you with the present moment once again. Very simple and effective.

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

"If you want happiness for an hour take a nap. If you want happiness for a day go fishing. If you want happiness for a year inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime help someone else. Chinese Proverb

5. Help and Make Other People Happy

It is vital to look beyond yourself to experience a larger sense of happiness. Because we are all social creatures and by helping each other we feel happier. This may sound like an empty clich but it surely works. One of the best ways to become happier is simply to share your love and make other people happier. When you do the right thing and make people happy you: 1. Feel good about yourself. When you make someone else happy you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you. 2. Get what you give. Since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. And so the two or more of you keep building an upward spiral of positivity and happiness. So focus on giving happiness instead of zeroing in on receiving it. Its better for everyone.

Give Value
So how do you give happiness? One of the most awesome ways is giving more value to the people around you. In your daily life it may be things like: Bringing a positive attitude and vibe into interactions. Page | 21

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Offering useful advice or knowledge to someone. Just offering a listening ear to someone who needs it. Cheering someone up. Hugs. Helping someone out with moving, cooking, cleaning up etc. Taking the lead and creating a fun situation for your friends such as a picnic or a night out on the town. Being totally present in conversation and focused on the other person. This is a quality that I believe is often mentioned about networkers that are great at creating new relationships like Bill Clinton.

You and Your Relationship with Yourself

Now, increasing the love and value you give isnt only about other people and what they give back. By doing positive things for other people you start to see yourself as a person who is better and more deserving of more love, good things and happiness in life. This is essential to avoid self-sabotage on your path to more success and happiness in life. If you dont think you deserve something you tend to sabotage for yourself in some subtle or not so subtle way. One common way to sabotage your relationships and your own happiness is to be judgemental towards other people. Here are three reasons to let go of those judgements to improve your own life:

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People dont like judgemental people. People dont like to be judged. So there will be a resistance towards someone who is judgemental. Waste of time. You can spend your time doing more fun, constructive and positive things. The more you judge people, the more judge yourself. What you see in other people is often what you see in yourself. So if you judge them all the time for their looks or intelligence then you probably judge yourself often about these things too. Letting go of judging others can lead you to letting go of judging yourself too. As you lift the limitations you put on others, you lift the limitations you put on yourself. So learning to love yourself more and creating more happiness is to a large degree about doing what you know deep down to be right.

Appreciate Yourself
Another good way to learn to love yourself more is simpler. You just make the conscious choice to be appreciative of yourself and to not just look at your flaws. You can do this by using the gratitude journal that I mentioned in chapter # 1 and write down 5 positive things about yourself every evening for a month until this kind of thinking becomes more natural for more. By appreciating the positive and good things that you think and do you can replace the need for approval from outside sources. You are giving yourself approval instead. This is a lot better than the alternative, because this is an unlimited source that you are in control of and this allows you to keep your self-esteem up and more stable.

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. Albert Schweitzer

6. Do What You Love to Do

Its easy to trap yourself in doing what you dont want to for many, many hours. And seldom do what you really love to do. And I guess this one ties into habit #1, to choose your happiness. You may not be able to choose to do what you want to do on a full-time basis right now. Or for many hours each day or week. But you almost always have a choice to do more of what you really want to do. There is always time. Or time you can free up by using the focus and action tips earlier in this book. You have a choice. I for example love to learn about things. Im quite curious. I also love to write and communicate helpful stuff. I have done so for over 10 years, by writing about music and movies and for the last few years about personal development in different forms. Still, some days arent easy and I just dont want to write or read another word. Loving something isnt like in a movie not in my opinion at least where everything is like some blissful dream. Its still life. But its a lot more fun a lot of the time.

How Do You Find What You Love to Do?

Asking yourself good questions can bring clarity to your life. Here are a few good ones for finding out what you love doing: What makes you feel alive? What activities make you feel the happiest? Page | 24

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

What do you do for free just because you are so passionate about it/its so much fun? What activities that you do make time just disappear? What stuff can you spend hours on and makes you forget about time, hunger and the TV? You may also want to think back and explore your past. If you are really, really busy with life family, long hours at work etc. then what were the things you used to do when you were younger and had more free time? And what things did you have a talent for or what skills have you developed throughout your life? Write all those answers down.

What value can you bring through these things?

If you just want to spend a few more hours each week with doing things you love then you can figure what those things are and then find time for them by applying the tips in the previous pages of this book. If you on the other hand want to work on it part-time or be able to do what you love fulltime then you need to start to look for job that lets you do that. Or you can start your own company on the side while you work a regular job or study in school. And then it wont be enough to just love doing something. You also have to find activities that will bring value to other people. Because when you can give value to other people then there will be an opportunity to make money.

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

"Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Sure, I like hanging out with friends and drinking a couple of beers. And that brings both them and me value because its fun, interesting and exciting. But I cant make money from it. But by sharing what I have learned about life and personal development on my website I can give value to tens of thousands of people at the same time. This also allows me to earn an income from the website and my writing. By using your talents and skills and at the same time helping people and giving them value in some way you can find the opportunities to both do what you love and to earn money to support yourself from it. But realize that it will probably take time to build your business if you choose to go that way until it is profitable enough to live on. If you have job now, dont ditch it right away to work on your newfound passion. You still need to pay the bills and possibly provide for a family. Work on your company at nights, early mornings and on weekends. If you want to learn more about where passions meet profit then two of the best resources I have found are The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself and The Empire Building Kit. Both of them were created by Chris Guillebeau, are very helpful and have been reviewed by me on my website (so check out the links above to read more about them if you are curious).

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Go exploring
Finding something you love to do that can also make you enough money to live on isnt an easy thing. I certainly dont have all the answers for this challenge. But Id like to add a final tip for finding out what you love: just explore life. Just try things out and see what you love. Its easy to have theories about what you may or may not like. But you never know until you have tried it for a while in real life. So go exploring.

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

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The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. Lao Tzu

7. Let Go
We often cling to possessions like its our life. We cling to people like we possess them sometimes. We cling to the past and cant live in the now. We cling to fears of what the future might bring as a way to feel comfortable and perhaps sometimes have excuses to not go do what we really want to do deep down. We often carry with us a lot of stuff. Not in our hands perhaps. But in our minds. It can become like you are carrying half the world on your back. Not very helpful. So you need to let go of things. Not only to move lighter and more freely. But also to be able to fully move forward in life. I believe that letting go is one of the most potent habits in this book and one I feel is often forgotten compared to for example doing what you love and improving on physical fundamentals like exercise and sleep. It is also deeply connected to other habits in this book. Letting go is, for example, an awesome way to reconnect with the present again. It also ties back to chapter 1, letting go enables you to drop irrelevant stuff and makes the choice to focus on the stuff that bring you happiness easier.

So How Do You Let Things Go?

A few tips that have made it easier for me to let go are these:

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Ask yourself helpful questions

Again, ask yourself helpful questions: Is this helping me or is it just some nonsense or something Im reliving from the past? Am I clinging to it because its what I have known for such a long time and it seems comfortable and safe even though it is holding me back? Who cares? (one of my absolute favourite questions)

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Accept it. Then let it go

I like acceptance. I like it because when you accept something instead of resisting it you stop feeding more energy into your problem and you stop making it even bigger. A bit counter-intuitive. This is also useful when it comes to letting go. If you first accept what you want to let go you arent so emotionally attached to it and still feeding it with your focus and energy. And so it becomes less powerful and easier to just drop. As long as you resist it then it will be hard to let it go. If something shows up again, then simply let go again.

Give up being right

Realize that you may cling to things because they might make you feel right as you replay an argument or conflict over and over in your mind. It gives you a certain sense of satisfaction as the other person is wrong. But you have to give up that kind of satisfaction to move on. Page | 29

by Henrik Edberg

What to Let Go?

Well, you can start with:

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

Let go of one thing from the past

Maybe an old conflict, an old argument or being wronged by someone. Let it go to start living more fully in the present instead of the past.

Let go of negative, small, petty, judgemental and unimportant stuff

If you dwell on that stuff like how someone cut in front of you while you were driving or something negative your boss told you and blow it out of proportion all the time how will you be happy? How will you be able to focus? And how will you be able to handle something really big when it comes along like a serious disease, a break up or getting laid off? Be smart about that stuff. Dont make yourself weak by making mountains out of molehills. Let that stuff go and focus on the more important and positive stuff you have and want in your life.

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by Henrik Edberg

Final Thoughts
Thats it. It may feel overwhelming so I would like to emphasize what I wrote in the beginning of this book. Dont try to do this all at once. Focus on one habit at a time for 30 days or more. It may seem slow and I understand that its easy to get wrapped up in the enthusiasm and the hope that you will give your life a total overhaul right now. Nothing wrong with that. But in my experience you wont be able to keep it up until your new habits are established and stable. Sure, you can live on your enthusiasm for a week or two. But sooner or later life interferes or the stress of doing it all at once causes too much inner and outer resistance and you give up. Changing a habit is a lot of mental effort. You have resistance from within as your mind tries to drag you back to the comfort it has known for so long (no matter if that familiar place isnt that healthy for you). You may face resistance from the outside as people question your change. Changing just one habit at a time may seem pretty boring. But do you want the excitement of the thought that you are completely changing your life but then have little to no results later on? Or do you want a real change in your life?

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

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by Henrik Edberg

Thank you!
Finally, I would like to thank you for reading this book and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I loved writing it. And thank you so much for supporting me and the Positivity Blog! If you would like to connect with me then Im on Twitter, Facebook and you can shoot me an email from this contact page. Now, go and have a happy and awesome life!

The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

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