The Top 5 Things To Make Yourself Happier Right Now That You Are Probably Not Doing

Greetings!

Experts often talk about actions that you can take to become happier, e.g. diet, exercise, outdoors, gratitude, but for the purposes of this post, I am going to assume you have already heard those recommendations.

I wanted to focus on lesser known actions that I have found also contribute to my happiness levels. These items have never been recommended to me, but I wanted to share them anyways. I would recommend giving them a try to see if they work for you too.

1) Set Personal Goals & Actually Work Towards Them Each Day

This one is important for me because it slows down time. As I get older, I realize that days seem longer, and years go by faster. When I look back on each year, a lot of days seem to blend together.

I am all for new life-changing experiences when you have the opportunity to get them, but the reality is, these type of experiences don’t happen each day. Practically speaking, life changing experiences don’t come daily.

Instead, what you can do, is to create memorable experiences through your goals, and work towards those goals each day, to make days matter.

Ultimately progress isn’t linear. Detours can happen for days, months, or years. That is all part of your story. You just need to get back on course.

If you are like me, you will find happiness across all stages of goals — the planning process & goal prioritization (future), your progress towards those goals (the present), and your accomplishments when you look back (the past).

Life is ultimately about the journey, but by intentionally setting and working towards meaningful goals, you control more of your journey and therefore more of your day-to-day happiness. This will help pass the time and provide happiness between those life changing days or experiences.

2) Give Time and/or Money to Help Others or to Meaningful Charities On Occasion

There have been many studies that show when participants spend money on others instead of themselves, they are happier.

My question is, if this is actually true, why don’t people want this effect as often as possible?

Smart people incorporate a focus on others or “larger purpose” goals, but even if you are a dick, you should just do this from time to time for your own happiness.

3) Develop A Consistent Sleep Schedule

You have probably heard that you should get at least 7–8 hours of sleep each night. And I am for that as well. But what you may not have heard is that those 7–8 hours should be at approximately the same time each night.

I have noticed that when I maintain a consistent & regular sleep schedule I feel better the next day.

Make no mistake, it definitely takes discipline to not stay up too late on some nights. But now I am smart enough to know it will impact my happiness the next day.

And yes, I am including weekends here, so you do the math.

4) Clean Up Your Living Space

Living in a clean and tidy place is important for mental health.

Clutter accumulates naturally over time and there can be a natural tendency to ignore clutter because it accumulates slowly. There is a period where you can still function in a cluttered environment to complete your “important tasks”.

Eventually though, you’ll hit a setback with those “important tasks”, and if your living space is messy, cleaning will be just one more task that you don’t want to deal with. Essentially, what would otherwise be a relatively normal task, cleaning, becomes overwhelming because it gets grouped in with your other “important tasks”.

I have found that the best policy is to.. “clean as you go”. I notice that I feel better after I clean, and I never want to build up too much “cleaning debt”.

5) Put Yourself Out There to Make New Friends At Whatever Life Stage You Are At

One of the most intimidating social things is to introduce yourself to a total stranger. There is a chance that you have no chemistry and you get stuck in an awkward conversation. There is also a chance that you do like them but they “reject” you, which will leave you embarrassed.

When you are a kid, you are not self conscious enough to care if this happens, and you just move onto the next shiny object. When you are in your early 20s, you can rely on alcohol as a social lubricant to start conversations, and if you get into a brief awkward conversion, who cares, because you are drunk. Additionally, at early life stages, most people are still focused on education so there is a lot of overlap in terms of life experience.

When you get older, you don’t have these crutches to fall back on, and unfortunately it becomes that much harder to make new friends. The unfortunate fact of life though, is that making new friends doesn’t become any less important.

The result is that you have to put in MORE effort to get the same output that you had earlier in life. You first need to put yourself in situations where you might find new friends regularly, and then you need to have the willingness and vulnerability to put yourself out there with a good chance of failure or rejection.

In addition to new experiences, relationships are an important aspect of life and happiness. You have probably heard that you should regularly maintain contact with close friends and family for your happiness, and I support this. To go a step further, you should also try to make new friends, at whatever life stage you are at, as well.

Thanks for reading :P