Recently, someone very wise told me that gratitude is the foundation of happiness. If we apply it to everything we do, we will live a richer life. Tragedy will always inspire this mentality but what about just an average day, week, month, year? Make it a point to wake up each day and be appreciative of the fact that you are waking up to live another day.

I am not the preachy fake happy type of person but I have a lot to be grateful about and I have made a point of just trying to start each day with being grateful for waking up to live another day. Okay, okay, I am sure I lost some of you at my mushy-ness but seriously, here are few digital tips to be happier.

Pharrell was on to something!

1. It has been proven that Facebook can cause depression but it doesn’t have to. Ask yourself before you log on to Facebook if you are going to compare yourself to the perfect lives your friends portray on Facebook. If so, maybe you should avoid the network until you are in a better place yourself. Remember, the happiest people are the ones that are genuinely happy for other people when good things happen to them. This is easier said than done because jealousy is not something most of us can control but to offset any jealousy, try the gratitude approach.

2. Remove the negative influences from your social surroundings. Bullies on Twitter, Debbie Downers on Facebook, Kim Kardashian on Instagram. Embrace the friends that are experiencing happy milestones, achieving their goals and putting positive energy out their by supporting them. I am certainly not really friends with all of my friends on Facebook. To be honest, there are a few on there that I have never been fond of for one reason or another. Recently, one of those people ran a marathon and lost a good amount of weight. She was very happy about achieving her goal and therefore, I was happy for her. She may have heavily hazed me during my sorority days and I would easily classify her as a mean girl but I am over it. I am happy that she is healthy and I wish her the best. She posts a lot of positive and motivational quotes and I enjoy reading them.

3. Start putting your positive energy out into the Universe and it will come back to you…write a blog post about the things you are grateful for!