It's Time for a Road Trip to Happiness – Here Is a Trip Plan to Get You Going

More Americans are unhappy today than in the past several decades. Although we have had a life-changing pandemic, which is part of the reason, people were fairly unhappy prior to the 2020 pandemic. Life is hard and parts of life are bitterly painful. Happiness is not a simple function of positive thinking because if it was that easy, everyone would be happy.

As a happiness expert and life coach, I have deep compassion for how hard it is for many people to be happy. What I also know is that when people make up their minds to move toward happiness and take intentional actions to bring happiness into their lives, usually they are eventually successful. It's not an overnight process, yet it is fairly straightforward. My suggestion is that you take a road trip to happiness, and I will give you a trip plan to get you started.

Before you take a road trip or vacation, make a commitment for the trip or vacation, and then start making your plans regarding where you are going, your accommodations and what activities you will be doing. Your road trip to happiness likewise starts with a commitment. Be all in. If you only commit half-heartedly, then you'll get half-hearted results, if that. You could decide today, right now, that it's time for you to be happy. You could decide that. Or you can just wait for some other day. It is your choice.

Most happy people are not happy by accident. They are intentional about how they live their lives and they are committed to happiness, which means that happiness begins with intentional actions taken specifically to help you be happy. For most people that means change — changing the way they think, changing the way they live life and changing their habits or practices. Change is the thing that more people will flee from than run toward. For that reason, I highly recommend that you set up a personal reward system because that will provide a structure to keep you on track, stay motivated and give you some perks along the road trip. You will want something that is going to counterbalance your thrown way of doing life and your normal tendency to avoid change. A well-designed personal reward system will go a long way toward keeping you on the road to happiness.

What is common for road trips and vacations is that you go on them with other people. I strongly urge you to get a team or posse of like-minded people to go on the road trip to happiness with you. Taking people with you or having an accountability partner will increase your chances of success by up to 85% according to some reports. As a fan of fun and being playful, it will be a more rewarding trip if you make it fun and playful, which you can do by creating a name for your trip and holding events, parties and celebrations for the progress you make. Yes, that is exactly the kind of thing that I do and have done because it is so much more fun.

So, you have committed yourself and you have assembled or stitched together a team, then what? The next step is exploring what makes you happy and setting some goals. It might surprise you that many people simply don't know what makes them happy, which is both very common and reasonable. In the exploration of what makes you happy, what is likely to show up are the things that make you unhappy, which is very helpful. We know from the research that setting goals and then working on those goals can increase your happiness.

Setting goals in the areas of self-care, self-compassion, assertiveness, and growing your emotional intelligence would be a great place to start. While you are working on your goals, it will be helpful to employ a technique to boost your mood anytime you catch yourself being unhappy, upset or down because that takes advantage of the neuroplasticity of the brain and helps you to begin to rewire your brain for happiness. Yes, you can rewire your brain for happiness over time with the right intentional actions, which is only one of the benefits of neuroplasticity of the brain. The science field of psychoneuroimmunology adds fuel to the fire as to why this is very significant in terms of health benefits.

Even if you are facing significant and painful life challenges, you can take a road trip to happiness. While that might seem counter-intuitive, taking intentional actions to help you be happier when you are dealing with hardships is using post-traumatic growth to your advantage to become a better version of yourself and to have life be richer and more rewarding. The road to happiness is an open-access road available for anyone who is committed and takes the appropriate intentional actions. It's the most priceless road trip you could ever take because the skills and abilities that you will learn and grow along the way will stay with you wherever you go. I don't know about you, but that's my kind of road trip! Are you ready? Let's go!