Five Happiness Tips

 

Just One Thing - with Michael Mosley - Happiness Special – with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001ts5r

Health has four main pillars: eat, sleep, relax, move

We sometimes settle for the junk happiness provided by ice cream and video games. Alignment of inner self and self in the world, contentment and control lead to more core happiness.

Five tips for happiness:

(1) Say hello to strangers. Or at least smile or nod. Speak to the taxi driver or the barrister. Any / minimal positive social interaction is good for us.

(2) Use social friction as free therapy. Reframe this stuff to be calmer and less stressed. Lead with compassion. Ask yourself why. Put yourself in the shoes of others. If someone is grumpy with you, what might be going on in their life? Try not to get stressed by the actions of others as you can’t control them. If you depend on how others treat you for your happiness, you set yourself up for failure. Think of the dancer in the concentration camp who performed the same day her parents died. In her mind she was able to be free and in an opera house. The greatest prisons are the ones we create in our own minds. You don’t have to be the victim who resorts to sugar or caffeine or booze. You can take a measure of control and make choices.

(3) Think about your death bed and what you would want or regret. Write them down: I want to be surrounded by family and friends whom I love and who know that I love them. I want to leave the world a better place. What weekly habits would lead to a better death bed? E.g. eat with your family five times a week, make space for your passions (e.g. run and play the guitar), fit work around these things. Be more intentional. Prioritise the important. Be willing to say no. See further: Five Regrets of the Dying https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/

(4) Eliminate choices so that you have to make fewer decisions. Know what clothes you will wear, what work out you will do, what breakfast you will have. Decide the important stuff which matters to you.  Choose when it matters no you, not when it doesn’t so as to reduce stress.

(5) Think of your phone as a real person and change your relationship with it. E.g. if you and your spouse are in bed together both on your phones, are you having eye-affairs with two others? We have our meals together and we don’t use our phones at our table. Phones are addictive. Get a grip of phone free times and spaces. Do you want those notifications on? You are in control of your phone. Don’t be a slave to it.