The last few days I focused on aspects that can have a negative impact on online communities. I want to shift to look at things that positively impact online communities, before I do I think it would be good to start with some thought regarding how we can be happier and what makes us happy. How we can help ourselves ratchet up our happiness level. 

First let's focus on committing to cultivate happiness in our lives. Happiness in most cases is related choices we make. Perhaps we can help ourselves make conscious decisions to be happier and create a new habit of having a more positive outlook. Would you be willing to commit to new habits if you were sure you would become happier? Our journey toward a happier version of ourselves is no different. We have to commit to happiness. Of course it isn’t as easy as saying to yourself that you will be happier from here on out. While that’s certainly helpful, it isn’t quite as simple as that. Before we can truly commit to happiness we have to define what makes us happy.

Spend some time today to reflect on what makes you happy and also what doesn’t make you happy. Dig deep. For example, if curling up on the couch with a good book makes you happy, think about why that is. Is it because it gives you a chance to escape and forget about your own life for a while? If so, try to pinpoint if you’re avoiding or hiding from when you dive into a book and what you can do about that. If getting up at 6am to go to work makes you unhappy, and changing to a later schedule isn’t an option, think about the positive things about getting up early. You get to see the sun rise, you get to come home at a decent hour and have time to relax with your kids or spouse before bedtime. Something as simple as implementing a relaxing bedtime routine and going to bed a little earlier may make it much easier to get up at 6am and improve your whole outlook on mornings.

We’ll dig a little deeper into what makes us happy and how we can go about cultivating happiness in this week's posts. For now, find your own personal definition of happiness and come up with at least 10 different things or people that make you happy. Then commit to using the coming days to work on becoming happier. You won’t regret it..