Guest post by Vlad Dolezal: Lately, I’ve seen an unusually high amount of posts in the blogosphere extolling “being happy with what you have”. They’ve been springing up like mushrooms after a mushroom soup factory explosion. Unfortunately, most authors leave out crucial details. Like the fact that being fully content with your current situation for an extended period of time is utterly nonsense.

This is a guest post from Paige Burkes: We subconsciously think that, if we simply do all the right things in the right ways (whatever “right” is), the happiness fairy will magically appear to us, touch us on the nose with her sparkly wand and we’ll suddenly be happy forever.

Happiness is the byproduct of other things. It is the natural effect of the way we live, the way we think, the way we act and believe. Come take the Happiness Pledge as a commitment to those characteristics that add to happiness and start the process of living with more joy than ever before.

For many, the Holidays are not happy times. They are filled with stress, anxiety, loneliness, despair, discouragement or a sharp case of the holiday blues. But they don’t have to be. There can be so much more joy in the Christmas season than you think. There are, in fact, specific steps you can take to have a happier, more meaningful Christmas this year, even if circumstances are not ideal.

Are you happy? Really happy? Do you want to be? Most of us have at least had moments of happiness, fleeting or infrequent. We’ve experienced joy in spurts, like a whisper or a puff of smoke. Others seem to almost always to be happy. What’s the difference? Come see and begin today to improve the quality of your life.

Gratitude, like other attitudinal traits, takes practice. It requires consistent reprogramming of your brain until it becomes a natural, automatic response to life’s circumstances. It is at that point that gratitude ceases to be a thing practiced, and starts to be a natural expression of an inner condition of the soul.

Happiness is the natural result of habitually living and thinking in certain ways. As a matter of fact, happiness is something that is quite predictable for almost all people as we develop certain habits of thought, belief, action and character. Some people are unhappy. Others are mildly or moderately happy. Some are even pretty happy. The following, however, are those principles that produce highly happy people.

There are times when the right thing to do is not the happy thing to do, at least not in the short-run. At such moments, a moral people have to decide what’s most important. More short-term happiness or more long-term decency? To protect the one at the expense of the other is a sacrifice with far reaching consequences.

Guest post: While it’s not possible to live a 100 percent stress-free life, you can help reduce some of the day-to-day stress you experience – leading to a happier, healthier you. It doesn’t necessarily take a major life overhaul. Just a few small changes can lead to a major overall impact. Click on in to see how!

A guest post by Steliana van de Rijt-Economu: I’m convinced there’s a place in our heart and soul where we can withdraw and be happy for just the simple fact of being. In my case, I find that place when I hold my little one and sooth her when she is crying. I also feel it when I open the window early in the morning and feel the fresh caress of spring air cooling my cheek, reminding me that there’s a new day … a day full of possibilities. Some people call it happiness, but I would like to leave it undefined.

There are things that matter and things that don’t. Some of those beliefs and ideas that don’t matter can actually poison the soul and kick us where it counts. Here are 4 things that don’t matter. But they can also lead to destroyed lives of waisted potential and deep sadness. Avoid these pitfalls for a much more rewarding life of happiness and decency.

When we live lives disconnected from those things that truly matter, sidetracked by the unimportant, lost in the frivolous, distracted by the superficial, our lives start to ring hollow, empty and vacant. But when we fill our lives with weightier things, our lives feel bigger, more meaningful and happier.