How to Bring Happiness Back Into Your Life After Tough Times

Coping with adversity becomes difficult when so many problems appear at the same time. However, whatever the situation, you're always able to work on your happiness.
How to Bring Happiness Back Into Your Life After Tough Times

Last update: 26 November, 2021

There are times in life when you feel as if everything’s going wrong for you. At these moments, it’s hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel. However, if you make the effort to bring happiness back into your life, you’ll become calmer and you’ll be able to get through this difficult situation.

Life is made up of cycles. Some are more positive than others. The only irrefutable truth is that it’s virtually impossible not to face frustration, disappointment, or sadness at some point in your life. However, whether you choose to get carried away by despair, or do some work to bring happiness back in your life is up to you.

Why does happiness get lost?

We all have a different threshold for emotional pain and some people are better equipped than others in facing their difficulties with optimism and hope. However, naturally, when certain aspects of your life aren’t going according to plan, it’s normal to feel sad.

Support the couple to regain joy

There are mainly four areas that determine your degree of life satisfaction:

  • Family. Having good emotional ties with your relatives. Feeling that you belong, that you’re accepted, supported, and loved.
  • Friends. Successful social relationships are really important for good physical and mental health. You need to have real friends who both value and understand you.
  • Partner. As a rule, establishing a relationship is one of the fundamental pillars of your life. It involves having someone with whom you share feelings of love, respect, and commitment.
  • Work. Finding yourself in a job that you hate can significantly undermine your mood because it’s where you spend most of your time. On the other hand, being unemployed is another serious emotional blow since it takes away your independence and sometimes affects your sense of personal worth.

Misfortune overload

Generally, when your personal situation is okay, you know that if something should go wrong you can count on the support of those around you. For example, if you were to end your relationship with your partner you’d be able to rely on your friends and family. On the other hand, if a family problem were to arise you’d have the support of your partner.

However, a difficulty often arises when you experience issues in several of these areas at the same time. For instance, if you lose your job at the same time as your partner leaves you and you don’t have any friends you can trust, you might experience feelings of genuine anguish.

Your mind will begin to wander and you’ll start to think of everything that didn’t turn out the way you planned. In fact, you’ll become so confused and disoriented that you won’t really know how to carry on. This is when your negative emotions take over and you feel powerless to fight them.

Walk down a road

How to bring happiness back into your life

  • Keep calm. Use some relaxation techniques to achieve it. When you control your breathing, your mind becomes calm at the same time. Being in a panic won’t help you under any circumstances, so always try to maintain a low level of arousal.
  • Accept reality. Fighting against the current will only exhaust you and make you feel even more desperate. Accepting that things are the way they are will allow you to broaden your perspective. You can accept that things are difficult now but know that they’ll get better.
  • Accepting doesn’t mean giving up. It means recognizing where you are and starting to act from there. Therefore, make the decision to change your situation, but don’t try to fix everything at once. Take things one step at a time. Feeling a little closer to your goal every day will encourage you to continue.
  • Start appreciating and being thankful for what’s left in your life. Although some things may not be working, others surely are. Learn to appreciate the little things in life and find happiness in them. In this way, there’ll be no room in your mind for negativity.
  • Take care of your thoughts, as they generate your emotions. Swap your self-defeating inner dialogue for one that reminds you of your strengths, one that motivates you to continue.
  • Take care of yourself. Don’t get carried away by apathy. Every day, do little activities that are rewarding for you. At the end of the day, remember that life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you have to keep moving forward.

All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.


  • Librán, E. C. (2002). Optimismo disposicional como predictor de estrategias de afrontamiento. Psicothema14(3), 544-550.
  • Fernández Peña, R. (2005). Redes sociales, apoyo social y salud. Perifèria: revista de recerca i formació en antropologia, (3).

This text is provided for informational purposes only and does not replace consultation with a professional. If in doubt, consult your specialist.