Everyone wants to have a happy and successful life, and to feel as though they are heading in the right direction, manifesting their full potential in the world, and are simultaneously also enjoying the ride.

Of course, plenty of things can happen to set us back and put us in situations where we don’t feel so happy, successful, or positive, at all. We can hit dead ends in our careers, our “dreams” and “goals” can seem to be leading nowhere, and unexpected circumstances can radically shake our perceptions of what’s possible.

Here are a few principles for a happier and more successful life that may help you to get onto a more productive track, and feel better about things, too.

Stand up for yourself, and don’t put up with being exploited and mistreated

If you allow other people to mistreat you on a regular basis, it’s no wonder that you would feel displeased about life as a whole, and the way you are living it, specifically.

While it’s not always very easy or straightforward to stand up for yourself, getting in the habit of standing up for yourself is, in fact, vitally important when it comes to developing a sense of well-being and self-respect.

This can manifest itself in various forms. If you’re involved in an accident that wasn’t your fault, for example, contacting The Jones Firm for legal representation could be an example of standing up for yourself. Likewise, leaving a job where you are frequently passed over for promotion and pay rises could be another example.

It’s very difficult to stay positive, and to have a sense of hope and potential, if you don’t stand up for yourself.

Once you know the direction you want to head in, focus on your daily habits and systems – not the goal itself

You hear, all the time, that goals are extremely important, and that if you are not as fulfilled as you’d like to be in your professional life, or aren’t really moving things forward in a productive direction, what you really need is a clear goal to get invested in.

Writers such as James Clear, though, have done a pretty good job of pointing out some of the problems of being very goal-focused. For one thing, when you’re always focusing on goals you want to achieve, you’re always looking at the world from the perspective of someone who hasn’t got what they want or need, in order to be happy or satisfied.

It’s important to have a sense of the direction you want to head in – and once you have that basic sense, it may be more productive to focus on your daily habits and systems instead of your goals themselves. After all, if you’ve got the right habits in place, you will move in a good direction pretty much automatically.

Work on optimising your health and energy levels first and foremost

It’s difficult to be happy if you’re in a state of poor health, and it’s certainly difficult to be productive and feel successful if you are experiencing chronically low energy levels.

Work on optimising your health and energy levels first and foremost – by catching up on your sleep, quitting any negative lifestyle habits, addressing any nutrient deficiencies such as not getting enough magnesium, etc.

Generally speaking, the better your health and energy levels become, the better you’ll feel, and the better you’ll perform.