5 Daily Happiness Habits: Unlocking Joy Every Day

Simple, effective habits I practise everyday to transform my daily life into a more joyful experience.

Since this is the first blog on this website, I feel compelled to share why I'm writing this at all. About three years ago, I realised that I - a previously motivated, grateful and super energetic individual - now spent most of her day being grumpy, lethargic and slumped in front of a screen during any break I found in my relentlessly hectic day.

Hey, you can't blame me - I was a new mum of a 6-month old who was as bad a sleeper as they come. Along with this I was juggling a full-time job, a husband whose profession kept him out of home a lot, oodles of postpartum weight and a steadily fading social life that was once bustling with friends, endless mimosas and weekend trips with the gang to rock-climbing walls.  

This is when I realised that I had to do something and get the joie de vivre back to my life. I had so much to be grateful for - a baby who was exactly like the one I had always dreamed of, a husband who could be the lead in any Mills & Boon romance, a full village to help me with childcare and a job where I had complete flexibility to work around my baby's schedule. What the heck was I even complaining about?!

But isn't that true for many of us? We all have tonnes of great stuff going on in our lives but sometimes (usually due to life altering events), we tend to stop focussing on them. Our focus shifts to what is not going our way. Many times, we start comparing our lives to others. And that's when you know you need a Perspective Shift for happiness. 

And this is what I did and what I'm going to be sharing today and in the next series of blog - Reframing Negativity for Happiness. 

In this blog, I'm going to quickly share some really basic yet transformative Mindset Techniques that I've adopted in the last 3 years to help me bounce back and achieve the kind of personal growth and happiness I found myself longing for.  And don't worry, you're not going to find 'wake up at 5 am' here or anywhere on this website because that's just not a path to happiness for me. 

Also, I want to point out this is in no way advice for those suffering from clinical depression or anxiety. This is just an endeavour in sharing casual, lighted-hearted yet effective ways to feel happier. 

5 Tested Techniques to Change your Life with Reframing

1. Setting Daily Goals 

Every morning when I wake up, I do not meditate, practise deep breathing or have a cold shower. But I make sure I allocate 5 minutes to setting down my goals for the day. These are usually mundane goals. They include stuff like work tasks that I have to finish, menu planning for the family, any skincare routine I intend to undertake for the day.

I also try and assign a rough time-frame to each task. If you're a toddler parent, you'd know they're anything but predictable. This means it's often not possible to stick to a specific routine for anything - even a bath. However, you can assign rough time-frames. You could also avoid sticking to timings and go by a flow-of-the-day pattern for your goals. 

For me, it looks something like this: 

You might think this daily agenda is so mundane and quite frankly, drab. But it's exactly the kind of checklist I need to get the most out of my day. Having a bath and a clean scalp helps me feel like myself through the rest of the day. That 30-minute exercise slot may not seem like a lot but it makes me feel like I've done something for myself. One episode of Modern Family before sleeping? Yup, my husband and I used to love watching at least 30 minutes of television before we had a child. Scheduling this and making sure it happens and doesn't get taken over by additional work tasks make us feel like we're still connected and have preserved some of our pre-baby life. 

When I review this list at the end of the day, I feel accomplished. I feel like I got everything that I wanted to out of my day. I feel happy - and that my friends is the goal of this rather humdrum agenda. 

But guess what? The consistency of creating and ticking off all the items in this agenda has paid off. Those 30-minute workouts have resulted in 22 lbs of weight lost in the last 3 years. The daily reading ritual has contributed to my son's love for books and a fairly decent vocabulary at the age of 3.5. So yes, daily goal setting and attempting to fulfill those goals may seem trivial but it adds up, and how! 

2. Reframing Any Situation

This one is really effective and one of my main goals in the pursuit of happiness. If you just change your mindset from - "I have to" to "I get to", believe me everything changes. And I'll illustrate this with a few quick examples from my personal life in the below image:

 3. Exercising for 30 minutes 

This one really needs no explanation. It's a small yet impactful time investment that can truly transform your life. When I tell my friends I exercise every day of the week, they imagine me spending hours in the gym, drenched in sweat, doing intense workouts.

NO! I do a quick 30-40 minute session at home all 5 weekdays - I try to keep these weight-lifting sessions intense but not so much that they tire me out or overwhelm my already busy schedule.   

Besides the obvious benefits of helping me get into better physical health and shape, this ritual boosts my mood. It gives me a huge sense of accomplishment and joy. Prioritising your health empowers you, making you feel happier and more energetic. I feel better, I think that makes me look better and it really boosts my confidence and life satisfaction. 

4. Being Grateful 

This is similar to reframing negative emotions, but also a bit different. Instead of putting in the effort of reframing, this step is all about feeling gratitude for things you're already grateful for. Take the time to practice gratitude for those aspects of your life you're aware deserve your thankfulness. 

I don't keep a gratitude journal. But I do make sure I take 2 minutes at the end of the day for being grateful for everything in my life and also for day to day events that added to my happiness. For many, actually expressing gratitude to friends and family is also a great way to feel good. This can be as simple as giving your spouse a kiss and saying thanks for being wonderful or calling up your parents and saying a few kind words to them. Trust me, it will really add to quality of your life and reduce stress.  

5. Manifesting What I Want

My take on manifestation is a bit different and less methodical. I don't really spend minutes in the day with my eyes shut, visualising what I want. I'm not sure that has ever worked for me. 

But I can tell you what has worked for me - believing I deserve it. 

My husband is often amazed by how amazing, almost life-transforming things fall in place for me eventually (he likes to add himself to this list and he's not wrong). Despite the fact that I come from a humble background, am of average intelligence and appearance, I have always believed that I deserve the best. I don't let the realities of worldly success such as privilege, inherited wealth, above average looks come in the way of wanting what I want. Yes, it's not always that my belief leads to reality. The realities of how the world works often come in the way. But most often, I succeed.

I vacation the way many of my friends with hundreds of thousands of dollars in their bank accounts do. My son managed to get admission in a private school where mostly children of massive business owners or CEOs of large companies go. I don't drive a fancy car or buy designer clothing because those are things that don't matter to me and they're the perfect way to build up debt for a fake lifestyle. I'm talking about manifesting things that really matter. I make them come true for me by believing I deserve it even if the rules of the material world don't agree.