Happiness Habits, review

I got too busy and distracted to do constant updates but I did keep the plan in mind. I didn't do each thing every day though.

Weekends continued to be a challenge for remembering the experiment.

I missed exercising many days although now that it's getting warm and I fixed my flat, I'll be biking to the office many days, so my exercise will happen automatically.

I feel like I did ok and continue to do ok at trying to be in the moment semi-regularly.

I probably need to step up my random acts of kindness. They're fast and easy and make me and the recipient feel great right away. I'll put a daily reminder on my calendar to do them!

I think I feel happier overall although there's so many variables it's hard to know if this is why. It can't hurt though and I feel really good about doing this and trying to keep these habits in my life.

Good experiment!

Next experiment- I'm trying to see if I can get some partners to do HIIT workouts for 3 weeks.

Happiness Habits, day 7

The past few days haven't been good. I'm been tired, which makes me grumpy, and I haven't been keeping up with these habits. On the up side, I had a really fun hackathon with my friend on Saturday and went for a jog!! Amazing!

The weekends tend to be hard for me to keep up with any kind of regularly scheduled thing because I have a random schedule and often don't look at my computer for a day or 2. I think I'll try setting a daily alarm for this coming weekend to help myself stay on track.

I'll try to resume my normally scheduled happiness routine today. Here I go!

Happiness Habit, Day 3

I got distracted last night and didn't do everything. I did get in some exercise biking home from work and had a few nice moments of mindfulness and presence. I also got in an act of kindness. So still a good day.

I want to incorporate my gratitudes and journaling into my schedule earlier than I've been doing it. I've been getting to the end of the day and going "Oh shit, I need to do that." I thought about doing it when I woke up yesterday but I was too groggy and not in the right frame of mind. I'll try linking the behavior to lunch. That's not always the same time, but I'll try to remember that right after I eat lunch, I should do those things.

Happiness Habits, day 2

I'm grateful that I could buy a new computer when my old one broke. The new one works so nicely in a hundred little ways that it almost seems like magic.

I'm grateful that I have a boss who's a great listener and talker.

I'm grateful that I live in a beautiful neighborhood filled with friendly people and no honking :-)

I relived playing music with my friend Dave. We do this once in a while and it's always fun. Tonight was a blast, especially since we played so many songs I know well.

I realized at 1:30 this morning that I hadn't done my exercise and did 5 minutes of it even though I was really tired. Go me!

I forgot to be present/mindful when sitting and drinking but I did get in some good mindfulness when walking around so that was good.

I sent a nice email to my brother.

I'd like to try doing this stuff in the mornings instead of right before I go to sleep. It might put me in a good frame of mind to approach the rest of the day.

Day 2 down, 19 to go.

Building Happiness Habits

Based on a TED talk, I'm going to spend the next 21 days trying to form some habits which I hope will make me happier.

Every day I'm going to:

• think of 3 things I'm grateful for,
• relive in my mind one good experience I had in the past day,
• do at least 5 minutes of exercise,
• "meditate", and
• do one random act of kindness (ARK from Evan Almighty) like sending a nice email to someone.

When I say meditate, I'm adapting that a bit to mean being mindful and present in the sense that David at raptitude.com talks about. I tried the sitting and opening doors scheme briefly and it didn't quite click, although to be fair I didn't give it much time. But I feel like trying something similar for this: whenever I sit or drink something, I'll try to be fully present.

I'm not sure if this counts as meditation in the way Shawn describes in the video, but I like the idea of it and this is my experiment so I'm going to do it!

I'm going to try to make each of my "things" unique each day. For example, I won't reuse things I'm grateful for.

My wife and cousin in law have talked about doing this too. We'll see how that goes!

If I feel like it, I'll write a short post each day with what I did that day.



Today (April 3) was the first day.

I'm grateful for my wife being so patient with all my crazy plans and ideas, especially when they cause her to change the way she does things.

I'm grateful for living in a place where we have law and order. I walk around without worrying about being hurt by other citizens or my government. I conduct business and know I'll be paid fairly and that I don't have to worry about my money being stolen.

I'm grateful that I'm never hungry. At any time of the day there's an unlimited quantity and an almost unlimited variety of food available to me for so little money. Whatever I happen to be in the mood for, I can eat. Amazing.

I relived my lunch. I had a really nice lunch with my friend at work. It was beautiful out and we had some really nice and fun conversation.

As has become usual for Wednesdays, we had our workout group at the office so I definitely got in more that 5 minutes of exercise.

I forgot to be mindful when sitting and I just decided on the drinking part of it at the end of the day. I'll try again tomorrow!

For my ARK, I gave change to a guy on the subway. Somehow that doesn't seem like it should count, maybe because that's not unusual for me. Ah whatever, I can use it for one of my days :-)

Day 1, pretty awesome! 20 days to go.