There are literally thousands of articles and books on how to be happy. People scour self-help shelves looking for the magic key to happiness. They believe if they find just the right book or listen to just the right audio recording, they will be happy forever. Someone out there must have the answer to what will make us happy, right?

The truth is no one knows what will make you happy, only you do. It’s also not some elusive thing that you need to search for the rest of your life. As human beings, we often make things much more complex than we need to and finding happiness is no exception.

If you find yourself feeling unhappy, go through the following steps and then use one of the 5 minute processes below, depending on where you are and what you are doing at the time. They each take only 5 minutes and some of them, even less.

1. First of all ask yourself the following questions. Why am I feeling this way? Just exactly what am I unhappy about? What happened that changed my mood? If you can’t seem to find a logical reason and the feeling of unhappiness seemed to come over you out of nowhere, go to #3.

2. Once you identify what made you unhappy, ask yourself what thought or thoughts were you thinking that shifted your mood? Often it’s just a case of having the wrong perspective on what someone said or did. In that case you can easily shift your mood when you look at things logically andchange your thoughts. Let’s say for example, someone said something that rubbed you the wrong way or made you feel inadequate and that’s what put you in an unhappy mood. Change your thoughts by realizing that people are people and they sometimes say inappropriate things. If you feel they purposely said something to hurt you, remember that what they said is really not about you, it’s their own emotional imbalance or insecurities talking, so don’t take it on. Also, make sure you didn’t blow things out of proportion or took what they said the wrong way. In that case, you can thank them for making you aware of an insecurity that you have so that you can look at where it’s really stemming from.

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