Habits for Happiness
At this time, more than ever before in my lifetime, we need to
find ways to cope through this pandemic. We are heading into the winter
months and it appears life is going to get more difficult for all of us with
further lockdowns and isolations looming across the globe. I feel like
the general consensus was that the first lockdown was a bit of a novelty for
many. We got to stay at home with our families and for many, despite
working from home, enjoyed their time away from the work place. Yet, a
few months on and it doesn't feel this way now. It feels different as we
move into the second wave of the virus. We know from history that the
second wave hits way harder than the first so many are fearful for their own
health and that of their loved ones. Many are also fearful of losing
their jobs, businesses and livelihoods which is causing great anxiety and
stress in people's lives. Long term we are collectively growing more and
more concerned about the impact this will have on the economy. The thought
of further isolation from family and friends is not something we look forward
to considering much of this year has already been lost to this virus. So,
we need to accept where we are and look forward to brighter days ahead and find
little habits that we can incorporate into our lives to help us get through the
winter months and find a different kind of enjoyment of life we have
experienced before.
Small habit changes impact our happiness. Our own happiness
and enjoyment in life is within our control, to some extent at least.
These small habit changes are not only going to get us through the next 6
months but they have shown to have lasting positive effects on our lives.
We spend so much of our lives working towards something that we believe will
make us happy but it usually never does. When I get that job I'll be happy,
when I buy that car I'll be happy, when I get married and so on. Life is
short and we need to learn to find happiness in it now. The small habit
changes I'm going to suggest to you in this blog will allow you to do just
that.
Astronauts can teach us a great deal about successful
isolation. When they go to space they set up a positive habit schedule to
help them keep their spirits up throughout their mission. This involves
some simple habit changes incorporated into their day to day tasks that enable
them to think positively and ultimately feel good. Astronauts spend a
great deal of time on a mission confined to a small space away from friends and
family for large periods of time with limited, and sometimes no communication
with them. So, NASA trains them prior to the mission to set a schedule to
enable them to make use of the time they have in their day. This includes
the usual stuff, getting washed and dressed, eating, brushing teeth etc. but
NASA, along with positive psychology researchers, recognised the need to add
additional elements into their mundane schedules to help the astronauts to keep
their spirits up. This includes simple habit changes such as thinking of
three good things about their life that they are grateful for while shaving
each day, or imagining family life at home before going to sleep at night when
they return from their mission creating a positive image they can look forward
to returning to.
Here are some simple habit changes you can incorporate into your
life today to help you make the next 6 months enjoyable and remind you of the
control you have over your own happiness and mental wellbeing.
1. Avoid watching the news. A study published in the British
Journal of Psychology called, 'Is the News Making Us Unhappy? The
Influence on Daily Exposure on Emotional states' found that it
is. Another study found that negative news makes people catastrophise
their own problems making them feel more stress and anxiety. You may have
noticed the news is rarely positive. Notice how they tend to hold the one
positive story they have until the end of the news programme dedicating the
rest of the programme to report the negative things going on in the
world. If you enjoy watching the news limit your viewing to once a day
and remember this is the media and they relish in sharing the 'bad stuff' with
us but it is up to us to give them our time.
2. When you brush your teeth use this time to think of three good
things in your life - if you brush your teeth twice a day make sure you think
of three different things each time you brush your teeth. Making yourself
do this initially takes focus but once you've developed the habit it will just
become part of your norm but the impact on your wellbeing will be immeasurable.
If you are a parent, get your children to do this too, they also need to learn
happiness habits.
3. When you wake in the morning before jumping out of bed or
ruminating about the day that lies ahead of you develop a habit of pausing at
this time. I find this the best time to practice mindfulness.
Mindfulness is paying attention to your body, how it feels and paying attention
to your surroundings, the sounds you can hear, the smell in the house and so
on. Pay attention to how the bed feels against your legs, for example,
and just allow yourself to pause in the moment, allow your mind to not race
away with itself as it so often does - develop the habit to train the mind to
pause and be in the moment at the start of your day. I even started practicing
mindful driving on my way to work as I often found I'd get to work without
paying any real attention to my thought processes. Usually my head would
be filled with my endless to do list which created feelings of stress and anxiety
every day by the time I pulled up outside work. By training myself to
practice mindful driving I focused instead on how the steering wheel feels in
my hands, the sound of the radio, the trees outside, the taste of my
coffee. What that did for me was enabled me to feel calm and relaxed when
I pulled up at work and as a result I found my whole day to be more
productive.
4. Set a new habit at the start or end of your work day where you
start or end your day with a positive phone call, text or email to someone in
your life. This doesn't have to be work related, could be someone close
to you like family or friends. Setting up this habit is a great way to
ramp up your social connections and it has dual benefit to you and the
recipient. What's great about this one is once you have exhausted the 7 or 8
people closest to you you'll begin a scanning process where you start to scan
for other people in your life that you appreciate or are thankful for something
they have done that has made your life better in some way. You start
reaching out and connecting with people you are no longer in regular contact
with and since we have social media today we can do this much more easily than
our pre-social media days. This enables you to start or end your day on a
positive. Try it.
5. Each day when you take a shower or boil the kettle set a habit
to think of three things you are grateful for in the last 24 hours. This
habit makes you reflect on your previous day and filter out the bad from the
good. You might come across things that occurred that you didn't even
realise were good aspects of your day.
6. Have a jar in the kitchen and every time something good happens
in your day make a note of it and add it to the jar. When you are having
a bad day empty the jar and remind yourself of all the good stuff in your life
- sometimes we do need reminding.
7. Develop the habit of kindness and aim to carry out a set number
of random acts of kindness a day. Evidence tells us being kind to others
has a huge impact on our own mental health and wellbeing. A lovely habit to
include in your life and another nice one for children. If this is a
family habit this allows for a great topic of conversation at the dinner table
each night.
8. Look after yourself and make time in your day for you. Develop
a habit for this like during breakfast jotting down one thing today that will
nourish you, one thing that will strengthen you and one thing that will inspire
you. Add these things into your day somewhere. It doesn't have to
be difficult. A delicious breakfast might be the thing that nourishes you
today, a walk in the park after work might be the thing that strengthens you
and watching an inspiring video might be your chosen inspiration for the
day.
9. For me I would add mindfulness in the habits of your day and I
would do this at every opportunity. I know I have mentioned this before but
this habit suggestion is woven into every part of your day, not just first
thing in the morning. Remember being mindful isn't meditation, it is paying
attention to what you are doing in that very moment in time. Pay
attention when you are in the shower to the feel of the water on your skin, to
the heat and warmth it brings, pay attention when you eat your breakfast
connecting to the senses to really smell and taste the food you are eating, pay
attention as you drive to work, when talking to someone focus fully on what
they are saying and what you are saying. This makes a huge difference to
how you feel. What this does for you is allows you to stop the rat race in
your mind - it is our minds that make us feel overwhelmed remember. If
you train your mind to focus on the here and now it prevents those overwhelming
feelings it has become used to.
10. And lastly, jot down in a book before going to sleep at night
the best bit of your day. Take time to find it, there is always one, even
on the darkest days. This allows you to go to sleep on a positive thought
- so often it is when we go to bed and attempt to sleep that our mind defaults
to the negative thought cycle. This habit helps you prevent this.
There is no one size fits all with this, what works for one won't
necessarily work for another. What I would suggest is that you find your
own new positive habit changes that fit in with your life and the person you are.
If we do end up in full isolation over the coming months take a leaf out of an astronaut’s
book and create a schedule for your day incorporating the 'good stuff' in each
day rather than just the mundane elements like work, making tea and tidying
up. Incorporate the things you love too like, reading, having a bath,
exercise, facetiming a relative or friend or watching an old movie. And
remember a wise man once said, " To different minds the same world is hell
or heaven" (Ralph Waldo Emerson). The great thing is we get to decide how
we see the world we live in.
