5 Ways to Make Your Days Less Crappy and More Happy

No matter what we want in life, we are after a feeling. And what is that magical feeling? Happiness of course! Feeling good feels good, and feeling badly feels badly, and we want to deal with the latter as little as possible. On one hand, being happy requires zero effort–feelings are always available to us no matter what is happening. We can always cultivate a particular feeling regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Crazy but true. Lots of people do this all the time, and they are the stuff of envy for sure!

On the other hand, we usually have to put a little bit of effort into this endeavor because we have gotten pretty far off track, and have become very entrenched in certain ways of thinking and being, that definitely don’t support warm, fuzzy feelings just flowing to us naturally. And that’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up too much for not being able to go all Pollyanna at the drop of a hat. Take heart though..if you do some work on yourself, you’ll see this is actually possible, and you’ll be able to do it more frequently. You’ll be less at the mercy of things outside of you.

Anyway…as someone who is clearly very interested in personal development, and becoming my ‘best self,’ I have given quite a bit of though to this whole happiness thing, and I have made great strides in bringing this most-coveted feeling into my life in greater quantities for longer stretches. Today’s post is a focus on things you can do on a day-to-day basis, and not the more general internal work.

But first, check out this short video discussing a bit more on this whole ‘making our days brighter’ thing.

Make a ‘Do This’ List

I came across this suggestion in a blog post I read recently by Helen Butler on Tiny Buddha, one of my favorite sites, and I just loved it so much. I think writing things down, whether it is our hopes and dreams, or a list of things we need to do for the day, is a great way to set order in our minds, and keep us on track.

Normally, we are making a ‘to-do’ list containing myriad chores, responsibilities and what have you. It usually isn’t very fun, but this stuff needs to be done, and we want to make sure we don’t forget any of it. This list helps remind us where we need to focus our attention.

And because lists are great for helping us focus our attention, and prioritize our day, a ‘do this’ list is a great tool for helping us make time for all the awesome stuff we know we should be doing because it will help us improve our mental and physical well-being, and just make us happier overall.

Us humans are quite a strange bunch in that we make very little effort to do things that make us happier and healthier. We lament how busy we are, that we don’t have time. Um..no. There is always time for all that jazz. We just need to shift our thinking, and get our minds off auto-pilot , where we are moving through our days without deliberately thinking about how we are spending our time. Don’t be one of those people who takes a weird pride in living a super-stressful life devoid of any pleasure, and how much ‘crap’ you can handle.

So, I implore you to make a ‘do this’ list. Write down all the awesome stuff you keep saying you want to do, but don’t, or haven’t been doing consistently. You’ll be amazed at how effective the simple act of writing down your intention to do these things is. And when you skip out, it’s okay, don’t beat yourself up too much. Just always make an effort to get back to it. Every day is a new day to begin again. Just focus on making these choices one day at a time as they are presented to you.

Work on Being in the Moment

One of our greatest sources of angst in our waking hours is that insane brain of ours going in all sorts of directions. We are thinking about the past; we are worrying about the future; we do our work less efficiently because we are not fully focusing on the task at hand, but also thinking about the next five things we need to do. We start off our day in a horrible rush, and that yucky energy gets us off on the wrong foot energetically.

As someone who took notice of how my crazy brain was impacting my sense of well-being throughout the day, I made a serious effort to work on being in the moment. By doing our best to just focus on the task at hand, we can see an amazing shift in our energy. By taking things one step at a time, we are calmer. We get things done faster and better. Feelings of stress and anxiety are greatly reduced.

Now, you probably won’t turn off all the other thoughts, and that’s okay. Don’t make that the goal. It’s okay if you don’t reach a Buddha-like control of your mind. But, when you really make this effort to be more mindful of the present moment, these thoughts don’t feel as intrusive; they don’t grab at you with the same intensity. They feel further away.

And when these thoughts feel weaker, the resulting emotions that may get stirred up, are weaker as well, and will change how you move throughout the day. Your body won’t feel as tight; your stomach will feel less ‘sour’ with anxiety. Your heart won’t be racing. Your body will feel less tense. It will be easier to concentrate.

Meditation is a great way to develop mindfulness. Take a deep breath before you start each task, and make a mental note to just focus on the here and now. If you are concerned you will forget something, write it down.

Don’t Force, Wait for Inspiration to Strike

This is a ‘happy strategy’ that I have only adopted relatively recently, and it has been a real game-changer. You know how we develop a huge amount of resistance to taking a specific action when someone else is telling us we should or have to do something? I discovered I felt this same resistance when I was telling myself what to do.

My self-imposed declarations that I should be doing certain things at certain times,etc…would create this feeling within me that just made me want to do anything else at that moment but that thing. I was very good at convincing myself that other tasks really required my attention in that immediate moment, and not a second later, like folding the laundry that had already been sitting there three days, or scheduling credit card payments that weren’t due for another month.

But, then I realized that I could schedule my days differently, and not force myself to do things at certain times for reasons that were largely arbitrary. A couple of examples are insisting I do all my writing for clients first thing in the morning, and cleaning my whole house every Sunday.

When I felt like doing these things then, great. But, when I didn’t, it would make me uncomfortable because I felt that if I didn’t do it then, I wouldn’t do it at all. I felt I was procrastinating, and we are taught that procrastinating is bad, very , very bad.

I worried that if I waited to do things I didn’t feel like doing until I ‘felt like it,’ that time would never come. But, it did. When it comes to doing things that we feel we want, or need to do, like cleaning or meditating, there will be moments when we actually do feel inspired to tackle them, if we set an intention for this to happen. Trust me on that.

So, give this whole acting from inspiration thing a whirl; don’t think of it as procrastinating. It will get done.

Re-evaluate Your ‘Musts’

We spend a lot of our precious time and energy doing things that we feel we ‘must’ do, but actually don’t really need to do, either at all, or as frequently. Think about all the things you do in your day that are causing you some sort of angst. How many of these things have you deemed ‘necessary,’ but actually aren’t?

Is a lot of your free time being sucked up by the insistence you ‘must’ clean your house top to bottom three days a week? Are you a busy working mom whose limited free time is being gobbled up by volunteer opportunities at your kid’s school, rather than some quality bonding with your darlings themselves, because you feel guilty about being less involved than mothers who don’t work? Is it an absolute requirement you prepare organic three-course dinners seven nights a week?

Do you feel obligated to do something asked of because you do have the time, and feel guilty saying no? Are you motivated to do certain things to help craft a certain image of yourself, or out of concern about how others may view you if you didn’t do them?

Really giving this some thought, and making changes accordingly, can have quite the impact on your day-to-day happiness quotient.

Set a Goal and Take Steps towards It Each Day

It is really easy to get swept up in the humdrum of life—work, kids, bills, food shopping and what have you. Our hopes, dreams, hobbies and all that good stuff are constantly pushed to the backburner, and the further away we get from them, the harder it is to get back on track. We can always get back on track, but why make it more challenging than it needs to be? It is always best to act sooner than later.

In some cases, we have gotten so out of touch with ourselves, we may not even know what would make us happy, because we have spent zero time thinking about it. We buy into the idea life is supposed to be kind of sucky, and we settle for much less than we have to.

Don’t let this happen to you. Give some deliberate, deep thought to what you would like to improve in your life. It doesn’t have to be big, grand things necessarily , thought I highly encourage this line of thinking! It can be small things too—lots of seemingly little tweaks to our life can make a huge difference in our level of satisfaction, and how we feel day-to-day.

So, after you read this post, I propose you get out a piece of paper and a pen, and write down all the things you would like to do, be, or have. Pick one of those things, and commit to bringing it into your life. Figure out what you could do each day to help achieve this goal. It doesn’t matter how small the goal, or the actions you may take on an individual day. The point of this is to give you something good to focus your efforts on, and not get all caught up in the other ‘stuff’ required of you.

So, that’s that on my tips for improving all our days. Hope you liked it. Please let me know what you think in the comments. What changes are you trying to make in your own routine to support feeling happier? What are you struggling with? What point resonated with you the most? What tips would you give others for navigating their days more successfully? Looking forward to your comments so we can have a chat.