Creating consistency with your happiness goals
When you’re going through a hard time, sometimes it’s easy to have 1 or 2 good days where you feel happy and then fall back into a familiar pattern of feeling like the days blend together and nothing brings a good level of excitement. As a result of this pattern happening in my own life, for the past month I've been tracking what brings me happiness every day in my Happiness Tracker.
~ Happiness Tracker ~
So what I did is I made a list in the notes app on my phone and each day I write down the activities I did that made me happy.
This is similar to finding 30 minutes to move your body every day to improve your health or meal prepping your food to stay on track with your diet or making your bed every morning to maintain a clean house. It’s an intentional act that is scheduled into the day to produce a desired outcome. In this case, you are prioritizing your happiness.
There’s a saying about motivation that goes, you can’t wait for motivation to come to you, you have to create it yourself and the act of starting, will snowball into more motivation. I think this can also relate to happiness – sometimes happiness comes to you naturally but sometimes it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, you can’t sit around waiting for it to fall on your lap, you have to get up and create it for yourself!
"There's no path to happiness. Happiness is the path." – Buddha
How This Works & Where to Start:
What makes me happy? The first thing you want to do is ask yourself what makes you happy and make a list of things that bring you happiness. Your list can be as short or long or extravagant or simple as you want – it’s totally up to you!
Create a defined, manageable goal. Think about how much time you can commit to this and be realistic based on your life currently so you are more likely to meet your goals. My goal right now is to do 1 thing that brings me happiness each day. Sometimes my happiness activities are planned and come from my list and sometimes they are spontaneous, like a friend asking to hang out. One thing a day may or may not sound like a lot depending on the season of life you’re in. If you’re struggling to feel happiness at all during the day, this can feel like a huge hill to overcome every day so judge based on your life and what would help you. For me right now, one thing a day feels like a lot so I just try my best.
Plan for personal happiness time. Look at your schedule and your free time and think about how you can fit certain activities into your daily routine. Some activities are more like a daily thing you can do and some things are more of a special occasion or less frequent activity but they all contribute to your personal happiness.
Schedule happiness time in your calendar. Start blocking happiness activities into your weekly schedule. Similar to exercising, it helps me to add it into my schedule so I can visually see the commitment and don’t forget about it as the week goes on and distractions come up. This helps me to stay focused and committed to my goal.
Keep track of your daily activities. At the end of each day or every couple of days when you have a couple minutes to spare, go to your list and write down whatever you did that day that brought you happiness. Sometimes I just have 1 thing to write or if I had an off-day maybe no things and sometimes there’s 2-4+ things if I had a really good day! Creating the list is the key to helping you stay on track so that you can refer back to it and see your progress and so you can remind yourself of your commitment to your personal goals. I find that whenever I make a list to look back on progress over some weeks or months, it gives me the confidence to keep going because I can visually see all the work I have put in so far.
"Self-care is not self-indulgence, it's self-preservation." – Audre Lorde
The Benefits of Creating a Happiness Tracker:
#1 – Improved Happiness! Improving your happiness in small ways helps you to show up better for yourself and others.
Increased balance in your life. If you’re like me and put a lot more focus into working hard and your never-ending to-do list, having a goal related to fun and happiness can help balance out the work/responsibility-focused mindset. The happiness activities are more laid back and passive and create space for just pure fun! This helps to remind you that you deserve to have fun and be happy without any obligation attached and that your happiness shouldn’t be overlooked just because there’s other work to do.
More social life. Building fun activities into your week might encourage you to see your friends more or develop some passions that you've put off to the side. And don’t forget, you don’t have to do the activities perfectly or every day for them to have a place in your life. For example, maybe you like to paint once a week and feel that little burst of happiness but that doesn’t mean you have to paint every day for 2 hours to feel like it’s worth your time – progress over perfection.
Prioritizing yourself. Making a Happiness Tracker helps to stay on track with finding daily happiness and building this routine into your life.
New possibilities! When you start having fun with this and trying different things that make you happy, you might stumble upon new passions or have little ah-ha! moments where you just feel some peace and contentment that you weren’t expecting. The possibilities are endless!
Helpful Tips and Reminders:
Be graceful with yourself. You don’t have to meet the mark and find that happiness activity everyday. As long as you try your best and remember tomorrow is a new day to try again – don’t get too discouraged if you are not doing it perfectly, because realistically no one is!
Set a daily reminder. Set a reminder on your phone everyday to remind you of this commitment to yourself when life gets busy.
Make it easy. Pick things that are cheap and easy so it feels like it will be easier to follow through with the activity.
Stay open-minded! Try this out as an experiment for a month and see where it takes you! You don’t have to plan everything out perfectly, leave room for newness and unexpected things to come into your life and see where they take you, try to stay open minded!
"You need your own love to save your own heart." – Rithvik Singh
The lesson I’m learning through this is to create happiness for myself that doesn’t have to come from another person or an external source. This is about finding your own happiness and connecting back to yourself.Challenge yourself to try this for 1 month and comment below what kind of fun ideas you come up with!
Wishing you all the happiness this week. xox
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