This document outlines habits that can promote happiness, including awareness and authenticity, acceptance, gratitude, compassion, deep breathing, purposeful action, challenging negative thoughts, and managing one's environment. The instructor discusses each habit in 1-2 pages and provides activities clients can do to implement the habits. The overall goal is for clients to adopt habits that contribute to recovery from addiction and mood issues.

1. Happiness Habits
Instructor: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes PhD, LPC-MHSP, LMHC
Executive Director: AllCEUs Counseling CEUs and Specialty Certificates
Podcast Host: Counselor Toolbox, Happiness Isn’t Brain Surgery
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2. Objectives
 Learn why these habits contribute to recovery from
addiction and mood issues and techniques to help
clients implement them
 Habit: Awareness and Authenticity
 Habit: Acceptance
 Habit: Gratitude
 Habit: Compassion
 Habit: Breathing
 Habit: Purposeful action and Long-Term Goals
 Habit: Back-Talk
 Habit: Thought Conditioning
 Habit: Be Sense-sational
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3. Awareness and Authenticity
 To get your wants and needs met, you first need
to be aware of them
 Practice Mindfulness
What do you need
What vulnerabilities do you currently have
 How can you mitigate them
 How can you prevent them
 Why is it important to prevent them?
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4. Awareness and Authenticity
 Living authentically means living in a way that is true
to yourself.
 Define what happiness means to you:
 What makes you happy?
 How will your thoughts and outlook change when you are
happy?
 What is the impact of happiness on your health and body
(energy, sleep, weight, pain, illness…)?
 When you are happy, who do you see in your support system
and what will your relationships be like?
 What will be different in your day to day life, hobbies and
activities when you are happy?
 How can you start making these things happen? (Principle of
Reciprocity)
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5. Acceptance
 Fighting against things that are unchangeable (or not
realistically changeable by you) wastes a TON of
energy.
 Feelings
 Other people
 Certain situations
 Accept the situation by saying “Okay, what now?”
 Decide whether you will…
 Change part of the situation to make it more tolerable
 How can you do this?
 Change your reaction to the situation
 How can you do this?
Breakup
Fight with a friend
Disease diagnosis
Death of a pet
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6. Gratitude
 It can be easy to focus on all of the things you don’t have
or what is not going right
 An attitude of gratitude helps you
 refocus on the positive
 appreciate the simple things
 Let go of envy and jealousy
 Even if one area of your life is a mess, it is likely that you
have other things to be grateful for.
 Activities
 Keep a gratitude list. Add at least one thing that went well each
day
 Look around and compare yourself to others who are not doing as
well and/or the you in the past
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7. Compassion
 Compassion means sympathetic awareness of others'
distress and a desire to alleviate it
 People may have compassion for others but not for
themselves
 Many of us were raised to think that if we are
compassionate with ourselves it means we are lazy,
weak or a failure.
 Activity
 Think of three times you have been compassionate in the
past week. To whom? Why? How did it impact them?
 How are you compassionate to yourself? How could you
be?
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8. Breathing (and Laughter)
 Deep breaths help oxygenate blood and reduce
fatigue
 Slow deep breaths also help lower heart rate and
trigger the relaxation response.
 Laughter not only makes you breathe deeper, but
it also releases endorphins.
 Activity
 Practice deep breathing after each meal
 When you are stressed, take a few deep breaths
 Schedule in 10 minutes to laugh every day.
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9. Purposeful Action and Long-Term Goals
 When you see that you are moving closer to your long
term goals it inspires hope.
 Each small step toward a rich and meaningful life can
make you feel happier.
 Purposeful action means
 Using your energy to do things to achieve your goals
 Focusing on things you can control
 Activity
 Define what a rich and meaningful life means to you
 Identify 3 small changes you can make today to move closer
to that life.
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10. Back Talk
 Your internal critic and ingrained habits can cause
you a lot of distress.
 Choosing happiness habits means quieting the
negativity and changing behaviors
 Back talk means
 Telling the critic to be quiet and pushing away negative
thoughts.
 Telling yourself “No” when you start to engage in
unhelpful habits (Stress eating, smoking, engaging in
unnecessary conflict)
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11. Thought Conditioning
 Most of us are not in the habit of always seeing
the bright side or the silver lining.
 Just like conditioner softens your hair, thought
conditioning softens your thoughts by helping you:
 Look for the positive
 Walk the middle path
 Eliminate cognitive distortions
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12. Be Sense-ational
 Your moods are largely impacted by your
environment.
 What smells make you happy? (Essential oils, memory-
related smells)
 What sights make you happy? (Pictures, colors, organization)
 What sounds make you happy? (birds, music, water)
 What feelings/touch makes you happy? (warm fireplace,
thick angora sweater, cool silk…)
 How can you integrate these into your:
 Home
 Car
 Work space
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13. Peer Pressure
 Surround yourself with positive people
 Positive people can often help you condition your
thoughts, provide support and are more encouraging
 Negative people tend to drain energy and enhance a
feeling of helplessness and hopelessness.
 Energy in conversations and relationships is contagious.
 Think of a person you know who is extremely negative.
 How do you feel when you see they are calling?
 How do you feel after spending time together?
 Think of a person you know who is extremely positive.
 How do you feel when you see they are calling?
 How do you feel after spending time together?
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14. Forgive
 Resentment, regret and guilt are natural responses to
a threat
 Holding on to these feelings drains your energy.
 The feeling is telling you
 Something bad happened
 You need to fix it and/or protect yourself
 Activity
 Think about something you are resentful about.
 How does holding on to the resentment help protect you?
 What would happen if you let go of the resentment?
 How can you forgive the person, or yourself, so it stops
draining your energy
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Someone broke your trust
You broke someone else’s
trust
You lost your temper

15. Project Happiness (Fake It ‘Til You Make It)
 When you walk hunched over, looking at the
ground you
 Feel more depressed
 Miss some of the simple pleasures
 Miss opportunities to positively engage with people
 Sit and walk sitting up
 Look up from your phone
 Make eye contact and smile
 How else can you project happiness so others can
tell you are happy?
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16. Summary
 Happiness doesn’t magically happen.
 By choosing habits that promote happiness, you
can start feeling happier.
 Your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and
environment all contribute to your mood. Choose
happy!
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