Hack your happiness

5 ways to bring more happiness into your day, in less than an hour.

2020 has left many of us feeling afraid. Afraid of slowing down, afraid of keeping up, afraid of holding on and afraid of letting go. The way we live our lives and plan for the future has been rocked to the core destabilising our foundations and making uncertainty and disruption our new companions. There’s an internal battle going on. Do you feel it? That resistance between unrealistic expectations of what you should be doing (based on the way life used to be) and creating the space to adapt to whatever this new normal is.

The struggle is real, many of us have deprioritised our happiness at the expense of productivity. Happiness Poverty is alive and well. It’s the state of having an insufficient amount of joy in our lives. According to happiness researcher Shawn Accor the more positive we are the more intelligent, creative and effective we become. The fact is that enhanced productivity is a by-product of happiness. Our brains operate more effectively when we create the space for joy and do it often.

According to the research undertaken by Happiness Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky 50 per cent of your happiness is genetically determined which means it’s fixed, you are born with it, 10 per cent relates to your circumstances, and the remaining 40 per cent? Well that’s up to you!

This is where the concept of hacking happiness comes in. When we hack happiness, we give ourselves permission to let go of the preconceived notion of happiness being an end goal (e.g. When I have that thing I will be happy.) Instead we embrace happiness as a way of being, it’s a practice. It’s allowing ourselves the opportunity to experiment daily with simple hacks that enable us to amplify our happy moments. Let’s take a look at some of my personal favourites, all of which take less than 15 minutes but deliver lasting impact:

1. Dabble in rose, bud, thorn:

I love to do this with my 10-year-old son. Each day over dinner we share a rose: something that bought us joy today, a bud: something we are looking forward to, and a thorn: something that wasn’t so great today. It’s a beautiful way to make the practice of gratitude a focus. Equally there’s no reason you can’t enjoy this practice alone.

2. Do something brave:

Give yourself permission to believe in yourself through the practice of micro bravery. Resilience is born out of leaning into fear and experience tells me micro bravery is one of the best ways to build it. Micro bravery is doing small things each day that make you feel uncomfortable. It can be as simple as having a difficult conversation, signing up for an online class to learn something you know nothing about or sharing something that makes you feel a little vulnerable with someone else. Small acts of bravery practiced over time build the courage and confidence to lean into bigger acts of bravery enabling you to unlock potential and possibility you never imagined.

3. Remove the word busy from your vocabulary:

A psychologist once said to me “a busy mind will go to anxiety it’s just a matter of time. Busy perpetuates busy and the feeling of being stuck on a hamster wheel running a million miles an hour”. I made a choice a few years back to remove the word from my vocabulary and the impact on not only my mindset but on the conversations, I have is huge! When people now ask me how I am I share I’m “positively engaged”. It keeps me accountable to ensuring that I spend my days positively engaged as opposed to busy and cultivates some curious conversations.

4. Gift yourself the start of the day:

Give yourself permission to gift yourself the start of the day. This one may feel the hardest because so many of us are programmed to believe that if we finish all the stuff on our to do list we will have time for joy at the end of the day. So, we start the day doing…checking email, sorting kids, looking at social media… Try getting up just 15 minutes earlier each week day (you will need to also practice going to bed a little earlier for this to be sustainable). This is your sacred time so don’t check your phone, don’t go near it, instead gift yourself the start of the day by doing one small intentional thing that sets the tone for the type of day you want to have. It must be something that brings you joy…journal, read, write, move (do a short yoga practice or walk around the block). Whatever works for you. This is by far the single thing that brings me the most joy. Words cannot explain what a treat this can feel like especially if the rest of the world is still asleep.

5. Ground yourself:

Grounding is quite simply physically connecting yourself to the earth. Take off your shoes and walk on the grass, touch a tree. Whilst a relatively new area of science there is emerging evidence that connecting physically with nature helps us sleep better, can reduce pain and bring more joy.

Penny Locaso is the world’s first Happiness Hacker on a mission to teach 10 million humans how to intentionally adapt in order to future proof happiness. She is the author of Hacking Happiness (Wiley $29.95). Visit www.hackinghappy.co

A psychologist once said to me “a busy mind will go to anxiety it’s just a matter of time. Busy perpetuates busy and the feeling of being stuck on a hamster wheel running a million miles an hour”.