7 ways in 7 days to be happy: Day 6

Another thing you can do to make yourself happier is to exercise. I know, I know…you are too tired when you come home from work, it's hard to get motivated to do it, and it takes time. All of these things are true but the benefits to your mental and physical health far outweigh the costs.

The analogy I give to patients is that stress is like steam in a teapot. You are the teapot. If the steam in the teapot continues to build up with no way to escape, what is going to happen? The teapot will explode. Similarly, if you let stress build up and do not have a release for it, you might explode out of anger, you may get depressed, you may get a serious physical illness, or all three.

You do not have to exercise every single day to get benefit out of it. Even if you can just do some exercise a couple of days a week, that is still better than nothing at all. And it does not have to be lengthy exercise -- even a 20-minute walk is sufficient. I used to exercise almost religiously, but as I have aged and have more responsibilities, this has become almost impossible. But I still make sure I find some time every week to do some exercise and tend to use the exercise bike or talk a walk. I try to do this on the nights I am least tired.

Motivation is the biggest barrier to overcome for most people. I often hear people say, "Once I am doing it, I am fine, but it is hard for me to motivate myself to do it in the first place." Many people fail to realize though, that this type of statement is actually the way to solve the motivational problem. That is, if you can tell yourself that you know from past experience that you will actually enjoy doing the exercise either during or afterwards, you can use that very fact as motivation to get yourself started. In other words, that knowledge can be used to overcome the other reasons you are telling yourself not to exercise or do whatever it is in life you don't feel like doing at the moment. Try it some time, and let me know how it works. Go here for Day 7.