We can make ourselves happy with the strategy SELF extracted from The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose and Getting Over Life's Imperfections, by Lucy Danziger and Catherine Birndorf, MD.
1. Filter yourself
It may be a childhood or your teenage years are so happy. Family warmth or various relationships or past events make you miss the past. If you need to go back to those times, because they tend not to like the current situation. This kind of desire naturally arises. Freud called it screen memories, namely that we tend to filter our lives through various memories in the past. Stop thinking of the past. Live for the present. Your life is now not the past, keep that in mind so you are happier.
2. Self reflection.
Read, see yourself deeper. Get to know what you are like now. Also ask the opinions of trusted people in your life, about yourself. What they think and feel, Self-reflection teaches you to follow intuition, and even sharpen it. Get to know yourself honestly. The key, take a positive message from yourself and from other people's opinions about you.
3. Dare to change
If you don't find happiness with the current relationship, or various things about your life, work or whatever. Make changes to yourself or the issue you want to change. If the issue concerns an unpleasant relationship, find a solution from yourself and the relationship. Make adjustments, increase tolerance, improve relationships or leave relationships if they feel more unhealthy. All you can do is change yourself and that relationship. That is, you cannot make other people (in the relationship) change according to your ways and desires. The key, happiness you will feel by making changes to yourself instead of changing others.
4. Building relationships, not uniting
You certainly often hear, the existence of you or someone else who is loved, is complementary. You are actually complete, intact as an individual. You don't need to be equipped by someone else. What happens is, you and others who are in a relationship, can be lovers, husbands, friends, tasked with building relationships. The goal is not to complement or unify differences. Like a circle, you and others are whole circles that meet and form venn diagrams. You and your husband, for example, do not unite two different individuals, but build relationships that are overlapping. Your character and partner can collide with each other, but find happiness from this difference by connecting. The key, you and others who build relationships need to patch each other, not complement or unite. Whatever problem you face, by applying this method, you will feel happier because you are able to accept the conditions and overcome them with positive energy from within.
5. Stop or reduce narcissism
Making yourself as the center of attention can be interpreted as negative and positive. Your perception of yourself is not always true. Overconfidence and pride in yourself does not make it easy for you to establish relationships with anyone. Also included if you are too hard on yourself. By feeling sorry for yourself, criticizing yourself or just seeing weaknesses in yourself. This negative self-focus emotion does not necessarily facilitate relationships with others. Immediately get out of the trap of excessive negative and positive narcissism, if you really want to feel happiness as an individual.
6. Make peace with yourself
Try to understand differences, conflicts or other inconveniences in various social and environmental relations. Make peace with yourself when facing problems, conflicts or difficult times. Tolerance is an attitude that can be learned. Practice this attitude and never let conflict or disagreement have a negative impact on you. Make yourself happy by tolerating the problem, accepting it as part of the life journey that you must experience. Try to keep you from becoming weak due to various problems.