Last year I read The Happiness Project. It’s a quick, fun read written by Gretchen Rubin. Rubin and I both feel best when we are intentionally working on growth and she deduced a catalyst to help cultivate growth, or creating healthier habits. She picks eight or so habits to do every day for a month and formatted a chart so she can reflect on how well she did that day. The book is full of anecdotes on bad days, her family’s response to her changes and how she adjusts her habits as she figures out what works and what doesn’t.
In the middle of February I started my own happiness project. I bit off a little more than I could chew with eight, time consuming, or requiring a lot of self-discipline, things. It was a little much and I just ended up feeling burnt out. Four days ago I started a second happiness project, and it’s already going better. I loved several of the habits I tried to enforce in February but there were too many. I wrote a letter to a different person every day, tried to censor my thoughts and words, tried giving one person a genuine complement each day… every idea was good and healthy but all of them together was exhausting.
This month my goals are simpler. Listen to ten minutes of music a day, write down one thing you’re grateful for, write down thing you like about yourself, write tomorrow’s agenda every night, read a chapter of the Bible, hug three people. Counter a complaint with a positive statement, and write a blog post every day. I’ve chosen not to publish every blog post I write but the habit of writing every day is my real goal.
It also helps that I have little sticky gems to mark my success. I made my little chart using Microsoft word. If you can, I would suggest reading The Happiness Project, and perhaps doing a mini project of your own!