What is happiness for you?

Happiness is found in the small things, like a kind word or a smile. Or giving another person some real attention. Happiness is especially about your emotional experience. This blog explains what happiness is for you: how to increase your feeling of happiness and how to experience more happiness in your personal and professional life. (re)Discover your sense of happiness.

It's 2016. I wake up on Thursday morning, feeling tired. I stretch. My cat Rose is lying next to me. I give her a hug. My heart is heavy. I feel the pain of my separation, grief, mourning and questions. Didn't sleep well again last night, read articles until the small hours.

I sigh… and say out loud: how do I get my personal life back in balance? Time to get in the shower. While I'm in the shower I think about what appointments I have, and things I need to do that day. My head is spinning and now I'm even more exhausted than I already was. How do I get my life back in balance?

Balance in your life

These days I wake up feeling full of energy. I'm glad I wake up happy and keen to get started with my work, my coaching sessions and writing articles. I feel really alive and that my life has a true purpose. I have the privilege of helping and inspiring others with my personal stories.

The quest for personal happiness

Rediscovering my own happiness was a real journey. I thought I would find it outside of myself. I thought others could make me happy or that circumstances (the weather or buying clothes) could make me happy. I learned that real happiness comes from within. My definition for my personal happiness is:

Happiness is enjoying the everyday things you do. It is finding satisfaction in your life and living according to your personal values and standards. It is being satisfied with the current circumstances in your life and enjoying the things that are important to you. This makes you enthusiastic, motivated, and an inspiration to your environment.

What does personal happiness mean to you? How can you experience that feeling of happiness every day?

How can you experience daily (work) happiness regardless of the situation in which you find yourself? Allow yourself several moments a day to experience your emotional happiness. Here are some tips that you can apply right away:

• Enjoy the small things and details in your life.
• Go out and enjoy the outdoors.
• Learn to give, a smile costs nothing.
• Have fun and laugh. Don't take yourself too seriously.
• Let go of what others think of you.
• Breathe deeply in and out, relax. Live in the present moment.

Explore: what is happiness for you?

Happiness for you. Clarify for yourself what personal happiness means to you. Also look at what is out of balance in your life. Is this personal or professional? Once you have written this down, investigate whether you have any influence over it. Start creating moments of happiness in your life every day.

Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.
Look for the happiness in yourself.

- Chantal van den Broek, coach

Today, take the first step towards your happiness (at work) and have fun

I want you to have a happy, beautiful, well-balanced life. That starts by first deciding what personal happiness means to you, and by taking the first step towards creating more moments of happiness in your life.

If you come up against emotions, triggers and blocks, don't keep going around in circles; mail me at: info@empoweryourselfcoach.com.
In a free intake session I help you with the steps for what happiness means for you, so you can move forward.

Read more about my approach:

• Happiness at work in 10 steps
• Book: 10 Steps to Amazing Happiness at Work
• Step-by-step plan for personal coaching