05 Mar 3 Simple Swaps To Boost Your Happiness
via Forbes by Jodie Cook
Improving your everyday involves making swaps to upgrade your experiences, ramp up your output and set you up for success and happiness.
A habit is defined as a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is considered to be difficult to give up. Which are the habits that don’t serve you? What are you doing that is making you feel tired, irritable and negative? It’s time to identify these habits and swap them out.
Consider that the first thing you do upon opening your laptop might put you in the wrong frame of mind. Your morning coffee might put you on edge more than it gives you focus. Even the way you always brush your teeth might be suboptimal. The same for the way you train for a marathon or how you unwind in an evening or how you shop for groceries. Doing the same things in the same way leads to the same results. If you want a different result, make a change.
It’s more effective to replace habits with new ones than stop old ones all together. It’s why vaping has helped many people quit smoking and why a change of scenery can spark an epiphany. Make a list of the habits you have that stop you living the best possible version of your life.
Here are 3 swaps to make to instantly boost your happiness:
1. Fearful thinking
Worrying about the future is the opposite of contentment and, therefore, happiness. Reading into someone else’s actions or words and assuming the worst is a form of self-inflicted torture. Think of all those bad things you once worried might happen. Chances are that most of them never came to pass, and the ones that did you overcame heroically. Worrying is like visualising a future that you don’t want. It’s a complete waste of time and energy.
Swap it for:
Negative visualisation. Write a list of all the worst possible things that could happen, and then write down how you’d handle each scenario. There’s always a plan you can make and there’s always a way through any problem. Back yourself to get through whatever is thrown at you and realise that worrying doesn’t make it any more or less likely, so there’s no point doing it.
Meditating. Worrying either means you’re anxious about something that happened in the past or something that might happen in the future. Either way, your head isn’t in the present. See if you can be present and focus on what’s actually happening in the room rather than in your head. Separate the two. Listening to guided meditations might help you see the difference and stay in the here and now.
Making a success plan. There are some things you can control and there are things you can’t. Out of your control: other people and what they say, do and think, the weather, and so on. In your control: what you say, what you think, how you act. Make a success plan along with daily, weekly and monthly actions you’re going to take and measure the inputs instead of the outputs. Focus firmly on what is in your control and let everything else go…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE