Ready to start 2024 with an interesting Happiness Challenge? Then we got you covered! Here at Optimal Happiness, we pride ourselves on doing everything by the book. No half measures. No “go for a walk-in part, make a painting, or bake a cake”. This sort of advice you will hear from people who don’t know what they are talking about. Instead, this year we propose a Happiness Challenge that consists of the following 10 steps:
1. Make “Happiness” Your New Year Resolution
Stop suffering and start living! In 2024, make sure you say “I want to feel happier this year” or even better “I want to make sure this year will be the best year so far!”. The bottom line is that you can be happier, you don’t have to deal with the negative emotions that are haunting you. You deserve to be happier. You were not born to suffer!
There are tools you can learn today that you can use to transform your life into a wonderful adventure. You just need to make sure that you say that you want to make “happiness” your 2024 new year resolution!
2. Subscribe to Optimal Happiness University
One of the best tools you can use to transform your life into that wonderful adventure is Optimal Happiness University. This year we invite new students to join our courses, which are designed to provide our students with the tools they will need to make their year (and lives!) the happiest yet.
In Happiness University, you will learn that no matter who you are, what life situation you are in today, you can be happy! In fact, you can reach your happiest potential in a lasting way. This is the A to Z of happiness and the fastest and surest way to achieve your happiest self. Are you ready to make this long-awaited transformation? Then subscribe to Optimal Happiness University today!
3. Make 7 Days No Negative Thoughts Challenge
The 7 days no negativity challenge is a variation of the 24h no negativity challenge or 30 days no negativity challenge. In fact, you can put whatever amount of time you want into this challenge. No negative thoughts for a lifetime? Why not? However, it is also true that most people don’t believe that they can go without negative thoughts for 30 days, a little less their lives. As such, we propose that you progressively increase the amount of time to reach these 7 days (or lifetime) mark.
To do so say “I won’t have any negative thoughts today” and if you have any negative thoughts that say “this is not me” and “I won’t think this way today”. Then reframe your thoughts by stopping to think in a negative way by simply thinking about something else positive. It is that simple! Make sure you complete the first 24h first, then the next 24h, then in no time you will complete the 7 days challenge. After that, if you want, try to reach 30 days, then 2 months, then 6, then a year, then 2, then your lifetime! I guarantee you can do it!
4. Do Something You Are Anxious To Do
Have you been postponing something interesting that you always wanted to do? Perhaps it is a hobby, or maybe you always wanted to attend an event. Maybe you wanted to learn how to ride a bike. Stop postponing this hobby this year and make a happiness resolution to achieve this goal this year no matter what. No more making excuses as to why this year you won’t be able to do it again. Just do it! You only live once and the next year you will have something even better you might want to do. So what is that one thing you always wanted to do?
5. Start a Happiness Journal
I always wanted to create a Happiness Journal for Optimal Happiness, but somehow I never got around to doing it. Maybe I can make this my 2024 New Year resolution? Either way, a Happiness Journal doesn’t have to be difficult. Just write down 3 things every day:
- 5 things you want to achieve today (morning)
- 2-3 things you are grateful for today (evening)
- Any negative thoughts that you had today (evening)
If you keep this simple Happiness Journal up for a long time, I guarantee, your life will transform itself!
6. Make Something Good for Someone Else
Altruism and happiness go hand in hand together. In fact, interestingly, egoism and unhappiness go hand in hand together, too. It has to do with our evolutionary psychology, whereas back in a day when people used to live in small tribes of about 150 people, and group survival depended on everyone chipping in for the good of the group, while individualism was highly discouraged and it was even considered dangerous! As such, by helping others you are actually helping yourself. Certainly, you become happier because of it. As such, make sure that this year you do something for someone else!
7. Go to a Meditation Retreat
Meditation is an amazing tool for happiness, but it is often hard to learn and apply it in our day-to-day busy lives. As such, going to a meditation retreat can be that extra commitment you can do to make sure you learn and apply meditation in your lives. Certainly, I try to attend a meditation retreat every year, with amazing results. I hope you can do it too, so you can attest to the magical power of meditation on your overall happiness.
8. Get Some Headspace
A simpler way to learn how to meditate is with an app called headspace. This is a guided meditation app you can use today from home and it is free to start using it. This app won’t replace a meditation retreat, but it can make a big difference especially if you practice meditation for 15-30 minutes every day.
9. Go traveling
Several of our clients have complained that due to COVID, they are stuck at home and are unable / unwilling to go traveling. However, little do people realize that if you get your vaccines, you are good to escape the routine life created by the pandemic. As it happens, traveling is actually easier and more accessible due to COVID. This is because no one else is traveling.
There are fewer people in the major traveling destinations in the world and more opportunities to actually see the world without having to come in contact with other people. It is an opportunity and actually it is healthy for our mind! So take this happiness challenge and go traveling! What would your next destination be anyway?
10. Throw Something Major Away
Clearing your head also means clearing your surroundings. As such, while I do recommend trying a smaller happiness challenge of throwing away something small every day, for these of us who are just starting, it could be nice to see what old stuff we aren’t using we could throw away today! It has to be something big thought! Sofa, an old laptop, or old traveling beg. If you aren’t using it then throw it away!
Make Your Commitment to Happiness Challenge Public
Telling others about your commitments makes it that much more likely that you will go through that commitment. In the case of happiness challenge, tell your friends, family, or coworkers that you are going to go through with this commitment. Write in a comment session that you at in for the 2024 Happiness Challenge and even send me a message confirming that you are in for this adventure! The more social commitment you can do, the better!
I hope you have a wonderful 2024!
6 thoughts on “2024 Happiness Challenge: Energize Your Life for the Happier”
Interesting! I’ll try to find time to look into this by the end of the week.
Of course, please do!
In your perspective, why do negative thoughts take away from happiness?
By definition, happiness encompasses all positive emotions such as joy, pleasure, and love, while negative thoughts are its polar opposite, also known as unhappiness. It is also known from science that we can either think positive or negative thoughts moment by moment, but never both at the same time. So, one moment you may be positive and the next negative, and then positive again, and so on. Essentially, it is an exchange, almost like a percentage of time you are positive versus negative. Ideally, we want to be as positive as possible most of the time.
That’s fair! Are you saying that negative thoughts always make people feel unhappy?
Negative thought is by definition unhappiness. Again, we should avoid it as much as possible because there are clear scientifically proven benefits to being happy, which are significantly better than being unhappy. This being said, there are techniques we can use to make sure that we are 99% of time positive, which in terms will affect the benefits that we are getting from positivity.