4 Cheat Codes That Give You An Unfair Happiness Advantage In Life, According To Psychology
What makes a happy life is relative, but we all want one.
Sandra Seitamaa | Unsplash Does 'true happiness' ever seem like a far-fetched possibility to you? Like a rigged carnival game that keeps you striving for an unattainable prize, you finally get one area of your life smoothed out when another area starts to wobble. Striving for happiness can feel like a constant battle, and no one wants to live like that. Happiness is a game, and you’re simply missing some cheat codes. There's usually a pattern to why happiness eludes you.
Here are 4 cheat codes that give you an unfair happiness advantage in life, according to psychology:
1. Enforce clear, healthy boundaries
You can name all the healthy boundaries you want, but until you enforce them, they won’t help you. You'll make it worse as the boundaries repeatedly get trampled.
You must know what you'll say and do in response to someone stepping over the line or invading your space before it happens, as demonstrated in a paper from Stanford University. Be willing to ruffle a few feathers or lose a few 'frenemies' in the process. Toxic friends and family members are not part of the truly happy life recipe, and well-enforced healthy boundaries provide a good way to discover who has your back and who doesn’t.
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2. Use rock-solid self-confidence
Enforcing healthy boundaries takes true confidence. Deeply grounded confidence to stand up for yourself and ensure you're treated the way you want. Otherwise, you'll never feel truly happy.
You may know you're great at your job or rocking your parenting skills, and that's great. That reflects what I call 'conditional confidence.' Self-confidence is different. It's a solid belief in yourself, regardless of circumstance, accomplishments, or what others think or say.
A study from Psychology of Personality of personal boundaries and their influence on an individual's psychological well-being demonstrates if you don’t have a sturdy foundation of self-confidence, you won’t uphold the boundaries you set. Chances are, you'll violate your boundaries first by inviting the wrong people into your life.
The bottom line is you must feel intrinsically worthy of the treatment you ask for to get it even from yourself.
3. Have a deep relationship with yourself
When you truly know who you are: Your strengths, weaknesses to improve, dreams, talents, values, lessons learned, etc., you feel more grounded, more worthy, and much more confident.
If you are like most women, you’ve unconsciously looked for approval from others your whole life. As such, you've likely never even asked yourself the types of questions you'd ask a first date to get to know them better.
Now you can see why breakups and divorces are rampant. Most people don’t have a healthy self-relationship, yet your relationship with yourself is the standard for all your other relationships, as explained in a 2023 study from the National Library of Medicine.
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4. Free yourself from past pain
Your subconscious mind stores every experience you’ve ever had, so if you start to repeat a painful one, it will warn you to keep you safe in the here and now. That’s very helpful in many cases, but by the time you become an adult, there are a lot of stored-up emotional experiences that keep you stuck, as suggested in an American Psychological Association study on temporal orientation and long-term psychological distress.
The way to release them is through energy work. That entails relaxing your conscious mind and sweeping out the clutter from your subconscious mind. Or, you can think of it this way: You were born with new software, and now you need to do a virus scan and load in some upgrades.
Updating the mental programs that keep you safe (and replacing the ones that keep you feeling stuck and stressed) with new ones to better support your success is essential to a good self-relationship and, ultimately, living a truly happy life.
Kelly Rudolph is a Certified Life Coach and Hypnotherapist who helps her clients manage stress and experience personal growth through greater confidence.