Advice on starting new habits and reaching for new goals give steps on how best to proceed. Advice on becoming a runner, for example will stress what to do before you begin, how to begin and getting proper form. Weight-loss advice always starts with urging you to consult your doctor. Failure to follow the startup advice in any new endeavor would be foolish since it could lead to not only injury, but failure and disappointment.

If you’ve decided that you want to experience happiness, there are some steps you should take to avoid injury and ensure success.

Consult your higher source.

Just as health practitioners always suggest that you speak to an authority before starting any diet or exercise program, so should you consult your Higher Power before attempting to make changes to your life.

You may call your higher source by another name, but it is whatever force you consider greater than you are. Many people get in touch with this source through prayer or meditation. Tapping into this power for strength and guidance will put you in touch with the inner voice that will guide you. Some call this voice intuition, but what you call it is not as important as recognizing and using its power.

Since your life is an expression of this power within, you must become aware of it, set your intentions with it and align your action toward your goals with it. Otherwise, your outward efforts will conflict with your inner beliefs, and that will prevent you from experiencing the inner happiness you desire.

Connect with people who are where you want to be

Trying to go it alone is unnecessary and foolish. There is a place for solitude, but when seeking to make happiness your way of life, find and associate with other happy, contented, positive people engaged in activities they enjoy.

Members of a gym are motivated by exercising with others working toward similar goals. So will you find it easier to stay positive, set goals and make daily progress if you surround yourself with others with the same intent.

Get real.

Being happy does not mean you are immune from feeling sad or encountering pain and adversity. You certainly won’t spend all your days skipping through the meadow singing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.”

Being happy does not mean being a pushover for manipulative and toxic people and schemes. As a matter of fact, clear those negative people out of your life and refuse to be pawn for those who want to use you.

Happy people go after what they enjoy in their lives, but also are confident that they can handle the change and adversity that we all inevitably encounter. Happy people feel sadness and grief very deeply because they give themselves permission to feel. But they don’t dwell or remain in these states.

No matter what actions you take or people you gather around you, you won’t be any happier than you believe you can be and decide to be. Abraham Lincoln had it right “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”