You are most likely pretty smart. After all, you are reading this quality article... So what could you possibly learn to improve your life? Well maybe ask yourself this:
Are you as happy as you could be?
Or better yet: Are you as happy as you should be based on every statistic? That is your salary, everything you own, all the comfort and all the luxurious things in your everyday life.
Thinking about and appreciating all the good things in life sounds like easy (and cheesy) advice. It is true - we do have more comfort than all the generations that came before us combined. Yet we don't see a lot of people walking around with huge smiles on their faces - at least not outside of Amsterdam Disneyland.
So what’s going on with that?
Well, my guess is that you can blame evolution for it. Your ancestors (like mine) probably didn't waste a lot of time sitting in the sun thinking about what a great time to be alive it was.
So how do you get more appreciation for your everyday life?
There are almost as many self-help - “how to become happy” - books out there as people. So chances are we haven’t figured it out yet. But here is one thing that really changed my perception.
You probably heard about it - might even have tried it. It’s called “the five good things of your day” (or something similar like that.)
And the trick is to write down good things or things that you are grateful for every day.
This system is designed to make you aware of all the good stuff that is already happening in your life without any major changes.
Stay with me as I will walk you through the specific steps to really land this habit.
Now it's one thing to say: “Oh yeah thanks for the tip I’m going to do that…” it's another to actually do it - consistently. That’s why one of my favorite mantras is:
“Losers talk strategy winners talk logistics”.
Because we all know the feeling when you technically want to do something (like eating healthier, working out, etc) but just “don’t feel like it”. And that's our starting point.
You won't let your dopamine-deprived selve make the decisions. No! You are going to set up a bulletproof system to knock out three to five good things of the day EVERY DAY.
And you are going to do it through three simple things:
Habit stacking
Bulletproof Steps
Rewards
Let’s go through each of them.
Imagine yourself in the not-so-distant future. You already successfully picked up this habit and made it a part of your everyday routine. Great. Now - When exactly are you doing it? Each morning after you wake up? Each night before you go to sleep? After lunch? After dinner? While (or better after) brushing teeth?
It has to be attached to another activity that you (almost) never skip on a daily basis.
This is called habit stacking and it’s one of the biggest game changers in breaking bad habits and accumulating good ones! (Credits to James Clear and his book Atomic Habits)
By the way, I will be sharing my personal routine at the end - so stay with me.
I need you to pause for a second and really think about what the best time for you would be to write down the good things about your day.
Go ahead I’ll wait… Please imagine a funny meme or video clip here…
Now that you figured out a specific daily habit of yours, that you are going to attach your new writing habit, let's walk through the bulletproof steps.
Let's say you picked the time right before you go to bed. Here you need a good trigger to avoid the obvious danger of just falling asleep. Say you want to use a book to start writing stuff down - diary style. One idea could be to place the book on your pillow in the morning when you make the bed. Therefore when you go to sleep at night you have to remove the book from your pillow and - boooom - it's already in your hands - waiting for you to fill it with the beautiful, positive encounters of your life.
The obvious pitfall with this one is: What happens if you forget to place the book on the pillow in the morning? Remember the mantra from above - let’s kick in some logistics!
For example, put a sticky note on your bathroom mirror and while you brush your teeth - go check and make sure that the book is there. If you're not a big fan of sticky notes (which probably disqualifies you as a potential candidate as my best friend - I mean what kind of monster doesn't like sticky notes?) you can use the good old alarm function on your phone. Not sexy but effective. Make sure to set the alarm(s) at a time when you are definitely going to be at home…
The purpose of this exercise is to remove potential pitfalls, create reminders, and not have to rely on your memory to function properly
The key to bulletproof steps is to set them up for the worst case. For the annoyed, forgetful, sleep-deprived version of yourself.
Alright, so you go to sleep, and ta-dah there it is the book (and pen) that will change your life. Great so let’s start writing… but what was so good about your day? Don’t challenge yourself too much and try to put in things like “I finally got that star wars collectible I was looking for” - I don't know about your life but that doesn't happen enough for me to build a daily habit.
Go for the little things:
You had a tasty lunch and it even was kind of healthy - great put that down.
You woke up and only snoozed three times instead of your normal rhythm of six - great there goes another one.
The weather was alright today and you actually had some time outside. Boom - already at three. Done!
Now you could stop - or keep going if there is more you want to put down but in any case, you should reward yourself. Do it directly after the habit. Pause for a second and tell yourself: “Wow I’m really taking this habit thing seriously I’m a man (or woman) of my word and a very disciplined person” In addition to that affirmation feel free to treat yourself with a piece of candy or whatever it is that gets you motivated.
And that’s it. Habit stacking, Bulletproof Steps, and immediate Rewards.
The nice thing that will probably keep you going - besides the considerable effect on your perception and your happiness - is when you take a look in that book after a while, you will see not only your discipline but all the good things that happened in your life - Already! - On a daily basis! - Without any change on your side! And that truly feels GREAT!
Now as promised here is the simple routine that did the trick for me:
First I ordered empty business cards. Each day after dinner - I take one out of my phone case (and immediately put a new one in).
I think about my day and anything positive that comes to mind lands right on the card.
After that, I place it in a business card box and check again if I have an empty card in my phone case. This easy system kept me going consistently for a long time. The great side effect is that the business card in your phone will act as an additional reminder every time you open your case. (Logistics! - remember?)
Whatever time and method you have picked I strongly suggest that you give this idea a try and at least stick with it for a couple of weeks. I vividly remember when I did so. In the beginning, it was incredibly hard to come up with anything. It got easy pretty quickly and before I knew it I had to leave stuff out because I was running out of space.
The best thing, however, is that now when something positive happens I go- Oh great this will be on my card tonight. I take notice and I cherish the moment way more than I ever did before. I guess that this change of perception and focus on the particular moment is one reason this technique works - at least for me.
And with that, I’m leaving you for today.
Have a successful day
GNF
Bonus: More Rewards. Whenever you reach a goal that you set you should reward yourself. A reward could be something as simple as a piece of candy or something special that you reserved for this very moment. When you fall off the wagon that’s completely fine - no hard feelings and no self-induced punishment. Reward yourself for restarting and not giving up. However, there is a special technique that is very effective for long-term motivation, and it’s called the “reward lottery” (or at least I call it that). The idea is to combine the excitement of a lottery with potential - but not certain - reward. You know what - I might have to do another post on rewards and motivation in general.
My "5 good things for today" are only three good things until now. Every time I leave the house I ask myself "What are 3 good things that happened to you or that you are proud of today?". So, I got the habit stacking combined with it :) It might also be that I just say: "It doesn't rain" as a good thing.