How To Plan For Happiness
A few weeks ago I was in a rut. The long evenings of summer were tricking me into thinking I had all the time in the world, and I ended up wasting it on recorded TV and not the best food. I was lethargic and, frankly, lazy, becoming increasingly frustrated with myself but not quite having the motivation to heave myself out of it. The housework piled up and my ideas and projects festered as I lay cocooned on the sofa.Thankfully during that time I was also reading a lot of blogs, and this one from Kate La Vie pricked up my ears/eyes. Now if there’s one thing I love it’s a crutch, and The Happiness Planner seemed like a perfect one - especially as I’m always nostalgic about paper organisers as opposed to the cold hard practicality of my iPhone calendar.Now, this is not a post sponsored by the Happiness Planner and I’m not going to wax lyrical about it this whole time. I am, however, going to take the concepts about it that made it so useful to me and lay them out here so that it can help you kick off your simple living journey.
1. It got me to really think about what I wanted to achieve, and why
At the beginning of the planner are 20 or so pages to set out your ‘Happiness Roadmap’. It concluded in your classic ‘where do you see yourself in 5 and 10 years’ kinda stuff, but the first pages were really useful at drilling down exactly where I was going wrong and where I wanted to be.
My Favourite Happiness Planner Exercises:
Write down ten things that make you happy. Then give each one a score out of 10 for how good it makes you feel. Based on those scores, how often should you do that thing? If, like me, walking makes you 9 out of 10 happy, then surely you should try to do that every day? Or if, also like me, you like fun little adventurous days out, maybe you should try tp do one twice a month. Once you have it all laid out like this, it becomes surprisingly easy to know what to do with your hours.If you’re striving towards a more simple and authentic life, try this exercise with the things you want to take up or let go.
Write down the habits or qualities you would like to improve, and then write how you’ll do it. Easy!Sometimes it just takes seeing it in black and white to show you it’s not so hard. I wanted to get back on track with my eating habits, and the way to do that was to cook more from scratch, decrease my portion sizes and eat more veg. Of course. Once you’ve written it down it exists; it becomes a promise to yourself that you don’t want to break.
2 Don’t try to do too much
The actual schedule pages themselves are quite brief - 6 To Do tick boxes and six un-timed lines for your schedule. At first I was little put out, but actually it’s kind of perfect. Ironically enough, I’m actually pretty organised at work, it was my evenings and spare time I really wanted to focus on.Given that I have 3-4 hours in the evening to get through my 4-5 to dos, it helps to really focus on the time you have available and not waste it. It also shows you what is possible, and crucially, what isn’t. If you’re itching for a change of lifestyle, don’t try and do it all in one evening because you’ll fail. Be realistic about the time you have available and break your answers to the exercises down into achievable chunks to affect real change.
4 100 Days is doable, right?
I have the 100 Day planner, mainly because I started in August, and also it gives you a deadline. 100 days can’t be hard, and by then habits will have set in that will keep me going. 100 days feels reassuringly far and yet near, right? As you plan your own transformation, give yourself little deadlines like this to keep your focus and to keep the journey grounded.If you’re interested, you can find out more about The Happiness Planner here, where you can also find their free printables if you want to dip your toe without the investment.
Also, everyone please say hello to this crazy guy who can't bear to not be the centre of attention!
Have you tried the happiness exercises? I’d love to know what came up on your list and how you’re fitting them into your life. Hey, maybe we can all do them together.