Cultivating more joy in your life promotes self-esteem by building your confidence in your ability to experience mastery and pleasure. Creating spaces for recreational enjoyment is also a way of taking care of yourself. Since self-esteem and happiness are strongly correlated, and since increasing happiness probably increases self-esteem, it’s important that you know how to increase happiness by engaging in healthy pleasures.
Happiness seems to be a much more lasting and constant condition than pleasure, activities that promote healthy pleasures are also beneficial in improving happiness. However, if we choose healthy pleasures, we will create happiness in our lives.
Here are some tips on how to create healthy treats.
1. Be aware of the present moment. Live in the present moment as much as possible. This will help you not to feel overwhelmed by life and small difficulties. To be mindful, have your whole mind, soul, and being in each activity while doing it. Do not focus on anything else except what you are doing at that particular moment.
2. Practice gratitude. Happy people tend to be grateful for the little things in their lives. The pessimist tends to look at a half-full glass of water and wonder why it is half empty. The happy person tends to think of the glass of water as a beautiful, clear glass of water.
3. Have a sense of humor. Happy people can see the humor in everything. They laugh often and uncensored. They have a playful outlook on life and love life as a result. They don’t spend their time criticizing, but instead look for the comic in even the most mundane things.
4. Cultivate optimism. Optimism is another way to cultivate happiness, self-esteem, and resilience. Optimism is not the unrealistic expectation that everything will work out, that would be an overconfidence that is sometimes a recipe for disappointment. Rather, optimism is having a positive attitude towards everything.
So if you want to live a life that is conducive to building self-esteem, practice wholesome pleasures. They will give you happiness and help you see the world and the events in it in a much more positive light.
