How To Live A Life Of Joy Using These Quick And Dirty Tips - Tip 3
/Living a life of joy isn’t always easy, but it can be simple. We’ve explored two quick & dirty tips that help clean up our thought life so you can live a victorious, joy-filled life. Why a clean thought life you ask? Well…
When you select your thoughts, you shape your future.
Let’s do a quick review of the first two tips.
Quick & Dirty Tip 1: Filter Your Thoughts
The first step to filtering your thoughts is to filter out the negative.
What in your life are you filling yourself with that is cause you to think negative? Is it something you’re watching, someone you’re hanging out with or maybe posts you’re scrolling through? Start filtering it out.
A filter doesn’t just filter out the bad stuff, it also allows the good stuff to flow through. So, our next step to filtering our thoughts is to “soak up the positive.”
The best way to soak up the positive it to spend time with Jesus each day. As you spend time with Him, you soak up Him and His love for you. You soak up His word. This is what changes you.
Quick & Dirty Tip 2: Flip Your Thoughts with the 5 -Second Rule.
When you’re mind heads down that negative slop, you need to head it off fast. A quick way to take action is to flip your thoughts with the Five Second Rule. All you need to do is count down - 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - Go.
If you missed these past two posts you can check out part 1 by clicking here. And, click here to read part 2.
So now that we’ve filtered our thoughts and learned to flip our thoughts, let’s bring some joy to our life by having fun with our thoughts.
Quick & Dirty Tip 3: Have Fun With Your Thoughts
Have fun with your thoughts using Happy Triggers.
Trigger: sets off an action or response.
By finding what sets off joy in your life, you are purposefully cleaning up your thinking.
Happy Triggers trigger a happy response.
To create Happy Triggers list 5 things you can do each day to make yourself laugh or smile.
Do your kids do something cute and innocent that make you smile? Does your dog chase his tail?
A few of mine include:
Looking at pictures of my family.
Movie quotes with my husband.
Disney World - I’m a huge Disney World fan. I can’t go to Disney World every day (and yes I would if I could), but I can go visit it anytime I want on YouTube. My husband, Bob, and I created a Disney YouTube channel – A Bunch on Disney – so we can trigger more joy in our lives whenever we want. You can click here to watch our channel if Disney World is one of your happy triggers too.
Write your Happy Triggers on a 3x5 card and keep it somewhere you can see it regularly.
Here’s a couple Triggers to get you started:
Smile
Have you ever noticed it’s hard to think about something negative when you’re smiling? Try it.
I remember people used to randomly tell me to smile. Now, I purposefully smile and it instantly starts to change my thinking and my mood.
Thankfulness
When you wake up in morning you could think of 3 things that you’re thankful for. It’s a fantastic way to start your day in the right direction. Or, start a daily, gratitude journal.
Thankfulness is one of the best ways to clean up your thoughts fast.
Find out what your Happy Triggers are and trigger them anytime you need to get yourself thinking on things that are lovely, pure, or just plain fun.
So we need to filter our thoughts, filtering out the negative and soaking up the positive and we can flip our thoughts with the 5-Second Rule. And we can purposefully have fun with our thoughts using Happy Triggers.
Philippians 4:8 NIV
Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.
“First we make choices and then our choices make us.” - Andy Andrews in the 7 Decisions
When our son, Evan, gets upset or down, we ask him, “Evan, should we choose to be sad or choose to be happy?” Happy. “How do we choose to be happy?” Be thankful. “Evan what are you thankful for?” He then starts listing things he’s thankful for. By the time he gets to the 4 or 5th one, his mood starts changing. We keep this up until he’s pulled himself out of the negative spiral.
Anyone can do these simple quick and dirty tips to clean up your thought life.