The 5 Stages of Happiness "One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy." – George Eliot Happiness is very intriguing, the reason why many philosophers who have gone before us have endeavored to explain it. Or why researchers like Jennifer Aaker has studied how we can calibrate what we think make us happy in five life- stages. Discovery during childhood and adolescence, pursuit in our mid-twenties, balance in our late twenties and early thirties, meaning in our late thirties and forties, and savoring from our fifties on. They say that our sense of happiness dynamically changes throughout life and to ever think at any stage that our progress is finished is a folly. Happiness is never static. Our contentment tells us how happy we are. And with changing wants and needs and varying levels of mental maturity, our happiness lies absolutely on us. Happiness is subjective. What made you happy before does not guarantee your happiness in the future. One must adapt and learn. And so in todays episode of Join Up Dots we talk about the five stages of happiness and how no matter what we think....happiness is a choice we make and it starts within in. So here are the five stages that we have gone through when we are at our happiest. 1: Try to remove all comparison from your life It is a killer in our search for happiness, that we spend so much time looking at what other people are doing on social media. And more often than not it's not true and they are only showing us the good stuff that they want us to to see. So don't worry about what other people are doing in their lives and just focus on your own stuff and believe me you will be so much more happy. 2: Free from your heart from hatred A happy heart is a loving heart, and the world will want us to fill it with hatred and anger, Someone cuts you up in your car, and then blames you with a rude finger gesture. Someone makes some cheeky comment that they thought was a joke, but you didn't like. Well to be happy in our lives we have to look at forgiving these things and just accepting everything for what it was. A moment of turmoil in your life and not worth dragging around for a second more of what its worth,....and thats nothing. 3: Live Simply Happiness and living happy can come together so much more quickly if we just look at removing ourselves from lives stresses. Do we need the car that has the monthly repayments or the cable tv that we hardly ever watch? Do we need to go out for meals twice a week, and then have a huge credit card bill each month to pay off? Probably not, and happiness can come together quite quickly when we decide to focus on the things that make us happy, dont cost a lot and are simple. It could be sitting in the garden with some friends, instead of going out in the evening to the pub. It could be just going to the movies, but not spending a fortune on cokes, popcorn and food as well. You will be amazed at how much you are spending that doesn't truly make you happy. Its just something that you are doing each month, day or week. Live simply and let happiness come to you. 4: Give More There is a truth in life that giving a present makes us happier than receiving. It's the giving that makes all the difference. So when was the last time that you did something for someone else, just to make them happy? Probably quite awhile ago, as we are so wrapped up in our own lives doing what we need to do first and foremost. So lets start looking for happy in our lives 5: Expect Less If you can operate in a world, where you accept what life is bringing you, instead of setting such high goals that disappointment is always lurking then the happier you will be. This is the truth, and it doesnt matter who you are, or what you have achieved in life...happiness is never connected with an outcome. We think it is, but that is wrong. So do your best, enjoy yourself and realise that whatever happens, it is exactly what you was supposed to be getting.