What does your happiness have to do with success? Here's a fact: Research shows happiness causes success, not the other way around.

This week's episode is the fourth of the 4-part series of LOVE AND HAPPINESS. I've entitled this podcast "Sustaining and Maintaining Your Happiness".

For this week's episode, I give you 5 practices

you should implement to KEEP your happiness.

1. Spend your resources on activities that produce positive emotions.You see, we gain the most happiness from experiences that create specific positive emotions:  joy, delight, contentment, peace, enthusiasm, curiosity, vitality, pride, interest, thrill, and even connection.
2. Don't become mundane and predictable in your happiness habits. This is why changing your circumstances (10%) is ineffective for sustainable happiness. By nature, we adapt to our routines, so we have to change even when our circumstances don't. 

1. Periodically tap into a social support system that will hold you accountable and support you towards your happiness goals. People with social support are even more likely to sustain happiness when they intentionally want to create more of it.
2. Make a commitment to take part in activities that make you a happier person.  You must commit to this goal of being happy for a long period of time, maybe even a lifetime.

#5. Repeat! Repeat these practices over and over again until they become second nature to you. When you repeatedly take conscious actions, you form habits. Habits form with repetition and practice until they become "habitual."  You don't even think about them, you just do them.  And that's the goal of sustainable happiness.

Assignment for this week: 1. Write down 3 blessings, or 3 areas of gratitude. 2. Perform a random act of kindness for someone. 3. Do something positive for yourself that makes you happy!

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