Are you having a bad day? A bad Week? You can fix that!

To improve your life in any meaningful way, you have to work on your Happiness Quotient. At any moment you are feeling somewhere along the line of the H.Q. barometer. Unlike your IQ, which you're kind of stuck with, the HQ can be changed instantaneously! That's Good News! Here are 5 ways to start that barometer moving upward

1) Assess why you are feeling unhappy.

Unless you are truly in the midst of a life crisis event, you can pull yourself out of the feeling of unhappiness by a few easy techniques. Sometimes we get into the habit of feeling unhappy when we could make ourselves feel so much better if we knew how. So first let's get clear on why you are feeling so dreary. Ask yourself right now, "What is it that is making me unhappy" . Know that no matter what it is, you can find a solution instead of carrying around that heavy, hopeless burden.

2. Figure out what you can do right now to relieve pressure around the problem

Before we go deeper to address your unhappy feelings, we need to alleviate immediate stress. Ask yourself if there is anything you can do right now, today or this hour, to alleviate the source of your unhappiness.

Let's look at an example based upon the frequent causes of unhappiness from our poll above.

If your unhappiness is because of a problem in a romantic relationship you are not alone. We tend to choose others on the basis of whether we believe they can fill in the gaps in our life, or prop up parts of our personality that we subconsiously feel are weak or missing. Then we hand over our happiness to their safekeeping. To make ourselves feel whole, we should be working on strengthening our weak or insecure areas ourselves, but instead we have given that task to our partner. When she falls short, we are unhappy. Our unhappiness pushes her buttons because she has given the task of her happiness to us and we are making her feel insecure. This can result in a downward spiral of resentment and anger between you and your partner. You are both trying to control each other to provide happiness for your individual selves. This can never work. The quick fix is two fold:

First, remind yourself why you are with this person. Is the big picture a plan to create a future or a family together? If not, and you are not in it for the long haul, why put up with unhappiness? It might be time to find a person more suited to you. If you are in it for the long term, your best move to secure your happiness is to forgive your partner and make amends.

Second, remind yourself that the relationship needs to come first, not the needs of either individual in the relationship. If you are protecting yourself and not the relationship itself, you will lose it. You must realize that there are three entities to consider in any couples relationship, which are 1)you, 2)your partner and 3)the entity of the relationship. This 'us' factor must take precedent over the individual needs of either you or your partner if the relationship is going to be a happy one. You need to be the one to make amends if you want peace and happiness. Even if the other person is wrong in your eyes, so are you wrong in their eyes. You need to decide if you would rather feel right or happy. Often you cannot have it both ways.

Once you can establish a truce with your partner, it gives you some time to look at the situation in a deeper way. Are you really with the right person? What are the consistant annoyances that get blown into serious problems? Will your partner work together to solve relationship problems? I will be writing another hub on this subject, so stay tuned! In the meantime, keep reading to see how to make yourself happier today.

Now that you get the idea about alleviating immediate stress, you can apply it to any of the other problems or situations that are 'making' you unhappy. Is there an action you can take right now to ease your financial fears, or begin to correct your health issues? Taking even a small action in the right direction will act as a release valve, easing your mind and allowing you to work on the larger task of defining the underlying causes of your problem so you can eliminate it once and for all.

3. to Feel More Joyful, Get a new perspective

We tend to be narrowly focused when we are unhappy. The reason for our unhappiness seems to expand and take over our entire mind. Our thoughts spin about our problem gathering reinforcing thoughts and soon we are caught in an ever growing vortex which consumes us. We allow it to color everything in our daily lives.

Here is an exercise to help you gain a new perspective.

Find 5 or 10 minutes to spend undisturbed. Sit or lie with your eyes closed and take a few deep breaths and relax. Bring your problem up in front of your eyes and try and visualize it as a vortex of moving light and energy. It may seem that it completely surrounds your awareness of yourself and in fact that it feels like it is the totality of you. Notice the colors in it and its speed of movement and its shape. Notice how it makes you feel physically. This is the energetic picture of your problem that is making you unhappy.

At this point, mentally begin to reduce it, making the vortex smaller. As you do this you are taking control of your problem instead of allowing it to control you. Before it didn't seem you had a choice except to be trapped in your problem, but now you can see that you are not your problem but the one who is experiencing the problem. Then leave your problem still mentally spinning as a smaller vortex within your energy field, and expand yourself. Pretend you are floating on the ceiling looking down at yourself sitting in the chair or lying on the bed and then pass through the ceiling and look down at your house. There it is with you inside it, your mind seemingly captured by a whirling vortex of negative energy, when there really is alot more to your life than that. Expand further to see your community, then fly out beyond the Earth to see all the planets and stars around you. You live in a vast and amazing Universe and the possibilities for experiencing are many. Who created all of this and who created you? Who are you really?

Who is the being that can think these thoughts, and can mentally distance herself from a cloud of negative energy that seems to have taken over her daily life? It is not the same small being that feels helplessly trapped in a vortex of energy which is actually just one small portion of a lifetime of experience. For that smaller, trapped version of you is not the real you.

Enjoy your feeling of expansion into the universe, and when you are ready, go back to Earth. Notice how beautiful it is, and how much it has to offer you. Go back to your house and look inside it to the being sitting or lying there. With your new perspective you can offer help to that being that is you. Have compassion for yourself as you go to mentally rejoin your body. Notice the whirling vortex of negative energy that represents your problem. Mentally decide what to do with it. You can energetically reduce it even smaller if you choose to, or clear it by slowing it down and bringing bright light upon it. You may not be used to dealing with energy in this way and it may seem silly or foolish, but actually you are using quantum physics to heal your energy field, and it is profoundly practical and effective. So do it and just wait and see the results for yourself. Never forget that your mind is an amazingly powerful tool.

4. Be grateful for what you have

If you have read any books on metaphysics you know about the Law of Attraction. This is a law of physics not a law some psychologist made up. You can choose whether to believe it or not, but it is a universal law you cannot ignore if you want to be in control of your happiness. It is a universal law just like gravity is a universal law, but the Law of Attraction is more subtle, so unless we are looking for it we can miss it.

The Law of Attraction is very simple. It states that what we think about and put our attention on will increase as it attracts like thoughts. It does this because our thoughts are vibrations and vibrations of like kind attract each other. Put a tuning fork next to another tuning fork and they will attune to the higher vibration. Lower vibrations are not as harmonious as higher vibrations. Lower vibrations held in our thought patterns manifest negative emotions and outpicture in our lives as disharmony, lack and disorder; in other words they outpicture in circumstances that cause us to feel unhappy.

Looking around at the good things we have right now, brings up our HQ on the Happiness Quotient barometer faster than almost any other method. It forces us to look at what is right in our life instead of what is wrong. We all have many blessings that we just take for granted as we walk around in a cloud of worry or unhappiness about one specific area that we are focused upon.

Here is an effective exercise. Instead of just grudgingly admitting that you have some good things in your life, make a list. Write down all the good things you can think of and post them where you can see them each day. Notice how gratitude makes you feel inside your body. You can physically feel your heart opening. The more you can hold onto that feeling the more like vibrations you will attract and soon you will see those vibrations out picture in your life as happy circumstances and events. It will happen. It is law.

5. Lighten up and give yourself a break

Life is suppose to be fun and filled with joy, not something to struggle through. Here are some suggestions that never fail to raise your H.Q.

~ Get outside and take a walk. Nature is soothing and healing. Notice the harmony of the trees and flowers and birds and how they are given what they need to live and grow and thrive. If they are taken care of, doesn't it make sense that we should be too? Clear your mind and allow your spirits to be lifted and carried instead of binding them to complex earthly struggles. This is a time when great ideas and new solutions and inspirations are given room to form in your imagination. Many genius philosophers and inventors got their best ideas and solutions at times when they gave their minds a rest from the normal thought process.

~ Repeat some affirmations that you know make you feel good or even write them out. Affirmations are very powerful ways to get your thoughts moving in the right direction. Some examples are:

*THIS TOO SHALL PASS *THE EARTH SENDS ME GIFTS EACH DAY, * I AM NOW SUCCESSFUL IN ALL MY WAYS, *GOOD THINGS BEGIN TO HAPPEN TO ME STARTING RIGHT NOW, *I AM ALWAYS AT THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME FOR MY GOOD TO COME TO ME. Make up your own that suit you and when your mind tries to focus on something negative, draw it away with your affirmations.

~ Watch your words. Negative words, calling yourself names, complaining, blaming others and labeling things and events as bad all bring your H.Q. down. Make it a habit to use uplifting words to yourself and others and in a very short time you will see an amazing turn around in your affairs.

~ Don't watch negative television programs, either the news or dramas, as they can literally crawl inside you energetically and drag all your thoughts down and contaminate your inner landscape with fear and anger. Notice how dark you feel inside when you listen to tales of horror, war, political arguing and more. There is a part of you that craves the drama, but know that you pay for it if you give those negative vibrations your attention. The Law of Attraction does not stop while you become focused on a negative TV program . Keep yourself clear of that kind of energy.

~ Rent or go to see a funny movie. Laughing is truly healing. It releases all that heavy energy we carry around with us.

~ Do something simple for someone else, even a stranger. When you are kind to others, notice the feeling of your heart chakra warming and opening. As you are nice to others you are gathering more good things for yourself! Amazing.

~ Do something creative. Paint, write, garden, play tennis, do what you love best to do. That is what life is for. Leave some of your 'to do' list undone and do something fun. Let some of those 'to do' chores take care of themselves, or wait another day to do them. Your peace of mind is more important.

~ Keep your mind in the present moment and be aware of what is going on around you. Do not think about what happened in the past or what you will do in the future. Those thoughts will distract you from your life, which can only be experienced right now. Don't let your mind chatter at you, but go beyond your thoughts to the peace behind them that is always there in the present moment.

~ Think and talk about solutions not problems. Learn to stop telling yourself and others of your sad tales of life. If you love to spin negative dramas out of your life's events, you will create more of them. If you have a habit of doing this, you will weave an identity from your sad stories which as we know from the Law of Attraction attracts more of the same. You will see yourself as a poor soul who's bf left her, boss fired her, cat has huge vet bills, and car got side swiped. You love to repeat the sad and dramatic stories to yourself and friends over and over, and as you do you attract more and more of the same thing.

~Write a new story of your life, that turns your troubles into opportunities. Write a story of someone who can finally find the job she loves, and a new boyfriend who is better suited, and can feel so grateful to still have her cat alive and healthy and who found a great dent repair guy to take her car to, and had it fixed cheap. Turn your dramas into opportunities!

I hope some of these ideas are helpful to you and give you some tools to use when you get down. We all deserve happiness and I wish you good luck in finding lots of it!

Violet