This Post Will Make You Happier. Guaranteed.
I’m determined to help spread positivity because I recently ran a poll and the results were staggering: 83% of you said you’re feeling negative, unmotivated or stressed.
The thing is, even in the worst of times, we have the capacity to find happiness and positivity within ourselves. And we need to do it more than ever right now.
Our external stresses aren’t going away, so we need to learn to live – and thrive – within these changed times. And so I have a quick exercise to help you refocus on your own daily positives.
All you need to do is stop, and find 5 things that have made you happy over the past 24 hours. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But this exercise is mind-altering. Do it, and see how that coffee that you drank in the shade of a tree made you smile or how that one snatched moment on the phone with your girlfriend left you feeling warm for hours after.
Literally write a list, and then think about how your life is peppered with these moments, but it’s likely that you forget them in favour of the things that don’t go right; the mishaps, the miscommunications, the mess ups. That’s the thing about us humans, we’re default negative; we let bad things fester and the good stuff just disappear into the ether.
Make happiness appreciation a part of your daily, or weekly lives – this literally just take a few moments of reflection – and over time it will help you retrain those neural pathways to help you hold happiness closer. Do this, and you’ll become a more positive person, with better outcomes across so many work and life metrics.
Happiness and positivity aren’t about the big wins: the new client or the pay rise. They’re rooted in seeing the tiny moments of joy sprinkled all around. Retrain your brain to notice, and it’ll end up boosting your confidence and resilience too. Because happy people are successful people.
