If you want to be happy and live a longer life I've got great news for you. You've spent your life mastering new skills. Everything you can do now was once a new skill that you've mastered.

Happiness is a skill like any other and you can master it too, starting right now.

What it happiness.

Is it a feeling?

Is it something that just happens to you?

Is it something that you can choose?

Is it a skill?

Happiness is all these things.

The fact that you can choose happiness is great news for you.

The fact that happiness is a skill that you can develop and improve at is even better news.

Just imagine if you decided to, from this moment on, always decide to be happy, and to practice the skill of happiness until you became an expert. Just imagine that. Wouldn't that be an exciting life? Worth having? Worth working at?

Happiness is also a skill, and you can practice being happy, and you'll be surprised to learn that it's not difficult to become skilled at being happy.

The following four things will help you develop you skill of happiness.

So, what four things would I recommend you do in order to get more out of your life. I would recommend the following. These really really work incredibly well.

Write it out

Write down all your goals and all the things you would love to do in life. Then break these down further and further into small initial steps.

Always have small initial steps, because small steps are easy to do. You don't have to write all this down in one go. You can just spend as little as five minutes at a time working at it. You don't have to do it all the stuff on your list at once. Just on a daily basis, do some of the stuff on your list. And have fun writing your goals and dreams down. Use pictures of the things you want, scatter your favourite jokes around your list, or turn it all into a game

The Positive I Spy Game

Learn to think positively. Whenever you realise you are feeling down, just pick any object e.g. HEAD and spell that out in positive words e.g. Happy Exciting Amazing Delightful. This technique is great fun, and has helped me think and feel more positive than any other technique. Let me know what words you manage to get for the letter X and Z. Now there's a challenge!

Remember To Feel Great

Just remember, that if you remember a time when you were happy you'll start to feel happy, or if you remember a time when you were laughing your head off you'll start to laugh your head off. You can take complete control of how you feel all the time, just by remembering to remember good times.

Say Goodbye To Worry

Whenever you start to worry ask yourself these questions: i) What are the good aspects about this bad situation? ii) What about this situation is not just the way I want it yet? iii) What do I have to START doing to make it the way I want it? iv) What do I have to STOP doing to make it the way I want it? v) How can I enjoy the process of making it the way I want it? Get into the habit of using these four questions and you'll almost make worry a thing of the past.

A Final Word

If you want to be healthy and live a long life. Happiness has long been linked to good health and good health leads to a longer life. If you are mostly an unhappy person, you are more than likely to suffer ill health, due to stress, and ill health will cut years off your life. So - to live a long life, just get happy.

So enjoy practicing the skill of happiness, and let me know who you get on.