How we achieve happiness can be different for each one of us. Our passions, expectations, life experiences, and even our personalities all contribute to the level of happiness we experience in our lives. Some find happiness in their careers while others prefer the bliss found in their marriages or other intimate relationship.

No matter how you define happiness for yourself, there are certain universal and time-proven strategies to bring, and sustain, more happiness into your life. The following 14 ways to live a happy life can be adapted and even customized to fit your needs. Over time, these strategies will become positive and life-changing habits that will begin to bring more happiness, joy and peace into your life.

1. Notice What’s Right

Some of us see the glass as being half-full, while others see the glass as half-empty. The next time you are caught in traffic, begin thinking how nice it is to have a few moments to reflect on the day, focus on a problem you have been trying to solve, or brainstorm on your next big idea. The next time you get in the slow line at the grocery store, take the opportunity to pick up a tabloid magazine and do some “guilty pleasure” reading. Take all that life throws out you and reframe it with what’s right about the situation. At the end of the day, you will more content, at peace and happy. Take the time to begin to notice what’s right and see the world change in front of your eyes.

2. Be Grateful

How many times do you say the words “thank you,” in a day? How many times do you hear these same words? If you are doing the first thing, saying the “thank yous,” the latter will naturally happen. Learn to be grateful and you will be open to receive an abundance of joy and happiness.

3. Remember the Kid You Were

Do you remember how to play? I’m not referring to playing a round of golf or a set of tennis. I’m talking about playing like you did when you were a child – a game of tag; leap frog, or street baseball when the bat is a broken broom handle and the bases are the parked cars. One way to find or maintain your happiness is to remember the kid you were and play!

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Staying motivated is problem that is both simple and complicated at the same time. It’s simple because the key to staying motivated is to find what drives you and connect that to whatever you do. It’s complicated because if that advice worked all the time, you wouldn’t ever fall into a slump.

Anyone who’s started a project longer than three weeks can tell you that motivation isn’t the problem. Finding something that drives you to get started isn’t hard. The difficulty comes when, several months later, you need to keep going. Where does motivation come from, and how can you make it last?

Static and Dynamic Motivation

The reason staying motivated is hard, I believe, is because we make the mistake that all motivation is the same. The motivation to get started and the motivation to get finished are actually quite different. Trying to pursue one when you need the other pushes you into a slump.

As a quick aside, I arrived at these ideas after reading Robert Pirsig’s book, Lila. It’s the intellectual sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and it’s definitely worth reading. In this book, Pirsig discusses the idea that reality is based on Dynamic and Static Quality. I’d like to extend his idea into the realm of what drives people.

The two types of motivation I’m referring to are dynamic and static motivation.

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Sometimes life is traveling along quite nicely, then – BANG – for some reason you fall into a slump. You know the signs: low energy, lack of motivation, a don’t-give-a-f attitude and maybe even depression. What is harder to know, however, is how to pull yourself out of such a slump.

Of course one option is to roll with it and hope it wears off. A better option, however, is to implement some strategies that will boost your mood and hopefully get you back on track. I am all too familiar with such slumps, so I would like to share with you the following 5 strategies that I have personally found to be most effective in counteracting them:

1. Ditch the Routine

I enjoy my daily routine, but every so often I need to throw it out the window for the sake of my sanity. Instead of waking at my normal time of 5am, I will turn off my alarm and wake up at my leisure. Or, I might leave my ipod at home and just enjoy the sounds of everyday life as I travel to and from work. Sometimes I even find that acts that are seemingly against best practice – eg getting drunk, eating greasy takeout or lying on the couch watching mindless television – are for some reason psychologically beneficial.

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One of the most popular articles I’ve ever written covered the subject of building self confidence. The chief criticism of this article was that you can’t just decide to be confident. You either have confidence or you don’t.

This type of thinking is flat out wrong and harmful to those who subscribe to it. The reason you CAN choose to become confident is the confidence feedback loop.

You might not be able to control your level of confidence, but you can control your actions. You can choose to act in ways that confident people act, even if you aren’t confident. I’ve experience that simply acting confident helps, but an even more important factor is the perception of others.

As one astute commenter pointed out, there is no outward difference between a truly confident person and a person who is posing as confident. The outside signals are the same, so observers perceive both people as confident. They treat both people with the admiration and respect commanded by confident people.

This is the confidence feedback loop. Once others start to treat you like a confident person, you start to believe it. The confidence you were faking before becomes real, leading to more positive feedback, leading to more confidence. It’s a virtuous cycle.

Everyone knows the benefits of cooking at home vs. eating out, but when it comes to preparing meals, people are never short on excuses. ‘I don’t have the time’ and ‘I don’t know how’ are the most popular. After reading this article you won’t be able to claim either.

Eating out takes a lot longer than you think. Between looking through menus, placing orders, and waiting for delivery, the process usually takes 30-45 minutes. If you follow these basic steps, you’ll be able to prepare healthy meals at home in 15-20 minutes.

Stocking Up on Food

I hate going to the grocery store, so when I do I load up for 2-3 weeks. Although I love eating fresh produce, it goes bad quickly. Buy as much fresh produce as you can eat in a week, along with a bunch of frozen and canned food.

Some types of canned or frozen food tastes terrible, while others are surprisingly good. I absolutely hate canned vegetables, but find frozen veggies taste great. Things I buy frozen include peas, broccoli, green beans, and other vegetables. Canned foods I eat include beans, lentils, and tuna.

With meat, I generally buy massive economy packs of chicken, beef, pork, or fish. When I get home, I open up the packages, separate the meat into single meal portions, place them in baggies, and put them in the freezer. This is a great way to save money and stock up for weeks.

Perfecting your grocery list takes a bit of practice, but it makes your shopping and cooking very efficient.

Food Preparation

Preparing meals efficiently depends on a few core principles:

• Routine – Eating the same meals on a regular basis will allow you to master the process.
• Simplicity – To cook quickly, you’ll need to eat simple meals that don’t require elaborate preparations.
• Multi-tasking – Having multiple cooking processes going on at once is the key to efficiency.

The Microwave is Your Friend

The fastest and easiest way to cook is popping something in the microwave. Most of the foods I’ve mentioned above (canned/frozen vegetables and grains) don’t need any other preparation. Note that this is much different than eating pre-made microwavable meals.

A Sample Meal Walk Through

To give you a concrete idea of the process, here is a step-by-step walk through of a typical meal.

1. Start by defrosting meat in the microwave. This takes approximately 5 minutes. While the meat is in the microwave, get everything ready for the next step by pulling out vegetables and beans and preparing them for the microwave. Also, turn on your Foreman Grill (a great way to minimize clean up time) or start heating a pan on the stove so it’s already hot when the meat is ready. If you’re cooking rice or pasta, you’ll want to start boiling water a bit earlier. Personally, I’ve been hooked on beans (and much leaner) ever since I tried the slow carb diet.
2. When the meat is done defrosting, start cooking it. Immediately place your frozen vegetables in the microwave (3 min). When the vegetables are done, throw in your beans (1.5 min), or take the next step in preparing your pasta or rice, since the water should be boiling. It’s easy to do this stuff while tending your meat at the same time.
3. Throw it on a plate. By the time the meat is done, all your vegetables, beans, or grains should be ready or close to it. Apply which ever seasonings you like and enjoy.

The total preparation time should be around 15 minutes, possibly a bit longer if you decide to make pasta or rice. The resulting meals are not only easy to cook, but they’re also remarkably nutritious and inexpensive. To cut down even more on prep time, cook the meat for multiple days at once and microwave it later.

If you can enjoy simple meals and don’t mind eating the same food most of the time, you can save tons of time and money by mastering a process, multi-tasking, and utilizing the speed of microwaving.

What are your healthy and efficient cooking tips?

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In the past couple weeks I’ve had the privilege of doing 2 very interesting interviews on developing a passionate career.

The first is with our very own Peter, over at his personal site, The Change Blog. The site recently got a new name and a brand new design. Head over and check it out.

Career Transitions: John Wesley talks about the Social Media, Taking Risks and Chasing Your Dreams

The second is with Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Nonconformity. The group interview includes several well known bloggers include Darren Rowse, J.D. Roth, and Leo Babauta.

Follow Your Passion? The Blogger Roundup 

The choice between having a career or making time for love is an extremely personal and individual decision. There are many factors which can affect your choice, and there are many people who have discovered how to achieve a healthy work life balance that allows them to have both.

Careers and love fulfill us in different but important ways. Having a solid career gives us a sense of accomplishment and self worth, aside from the practicalities of paying the bills. Many people develop their entire identity based upon what they do, elevating their career to a level of great importance in their lives.

Then there are those who measure their success in terms of having a pleasant and rewarding home life. They develop their identities based upon the accomplishments of their children, and derive their self worth through the love and support of a spouse.

So what happens if you cannot or do not wish to make room in your life for both? While the happiest and healthiest people have managed to develop a work life balance that allows for both, it may not be for everyone. Consider these factors when pondering which is more important for you.

1. Your Career May be More Important When You are Young

Many people these days focus on careers first and family later. The reasoning is that, while you are young and unencumbered, you have the time and energy to fully devote yourself to a career. If you have lofty career ambitions while you are young, it may indeed be the time to start making progress towards those goals.

Once you get married and begin to build a family, much of your time and energy – by necessity – becomes devoted to your family. This is as it should be. You should not start a family unless you are willing to devote time and attention to your loved ones.

Many people who accomplish great success in their careers when they are young, and establish themselves in a secure position, are then more willing and comfortable later on to devote themselves to family. By the time they do settle down, they are more prepared to handle the responsibility.

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It is an oft repeated axiom that money cannot buy happiness. While this is certainly true, poverty will not buy happiness either. Some people become very wealthy, yet struggle to enjoy their lives. On the other hand, others manage to go through life with very few money problems simply because they are able to make the most of what they have.

Ideally you should try to combine both prosperity and happiness. To do this I recommend the following steps:

1. Learn to Value Simplicity

The aim of life should not be to accumulate as many possessions and as much wealth as possible. We should learn to be content with what we have and appreciate the benefits of simplicity. For example, if we clear out our unnecessary clutter we will achieve a greater feeling of space and freedom.

If you feel happiness is directly related to material possessions, you are making a mistake. Happiness can be gained just through being content with a small amount of possessions. Our inner wealth is not just about what we have, but what we are content to live without.

2. Do Not Be Attached to Your Money

Does it pain you to spend your own money – even if it is for something useful? Even someone like Bill Gates can feel uncomfortable spending his billions; it is said he used to always travel economy class because he didn’t see the need to spend more money on first class. The problem with this, however, is that if we are always reluctant to spend money we miss the whole point of earning it.

A good attitude is to see money as a circular flow – that is, spending money enables more to come into our lives. It is not like a big dam where we just try to hold onto it all. We need to let the money out by spending on useful and necessary things. It is no good having a stockpile of water unless we use it to generate power; similarly it is no use accumulating large savings if we we feel miserable spending it.

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One simple fact divides effective and ineffective people: effective people spend the majority of their time working on important rather than urgent things.

Have you ever felt like you spend a lot of time being really busy, but at the end of the day you don’t feel like you’ve really accomplished anything? I’ve felt this way on many occasions.

It’s not that I’ve been lazy or haven’t been productive. I’ve checked my email, responded to everyone, cleaned and organized my desk, filed everything and checked all the social networking sites. Basically I spent a lot of time doing things that kept me very busy and seemed important at the time.

But after finishing all of these tasks, I still had a feeling that I hadn’t really accomplished anything. I didn’t feel any real fulfillment. The reason is while I spent a lot of time working on urgent things, none of them were really important.

A Personal Example

Here’s an example of deciphering the important vs. the urgent. One of the things I’ve been struggling with recently is becoming an early riser. I know that if I wake up earlier, I can have more time to work on important projects. More often than not, though, when I wake up I have the urge to just push the snooze button one more time. It feels so good to go back to sleep for a few more minutes. An hour and a half later I will finally drag myself out of bed knowing that can’t push it any further. The whole time wishing I would have just had the willpower to get myself up when I said I would.

I know that working on my blog or going to the gym would have had more of a long term impact, but I sacrificed the urgency of wanting more sleep for the importance of having a greater impact. I’ve gradually been able to condition myself to wake up earlier over time. Not by using my willpower, but by raising my awareness of what’s more important to me.

The problem wasn’t that I didn’t have the discipline to wake up early, it was that I was conditioned to prioritize urgency over importance. My awareness alone has allowed me to get myself out of bed earlier, not grudgingly (okay maybe a little) but willingly – even cheerfully sometimes. That’s because I know that at the end of the day I’ll feel more fulfilled knowing I spent that time working to get closer to making my goals a reality, rather than getting a few more minutes of sleep.

So how do we raise our awareness of what is truly important? How can we recondition ourselves to have a greater impact? The following are 5 ways I try stay focused on important, rather than simply urgent, tasks each day:

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The internet is a vast ocean of information. The challenge is separating the valuable, trustworthy information from the spam. If you know how to find what you need, you can save yourself precious time and embarrassing factual errors.

These 9 websites that will help you do just that. Whether you need to research a paper, study for a test, or get help on a homework assignment, these sites are the best place to start.

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