👋 Welcome to Happy Habits
If you're new to Happy Habits, start here! This is a journey combining the best insights science has to offer alongside leading design methodology for lasting behavior change.
Previous issues
🖊 Happy Habit #1: Gratitude Journal
Describe three things you are grateful for and cultivate a feeling of warmth and appreciation.
👋 Welcome to Happy Habits
If you're new to Happy Habits, start here! This is a journey combining the best insights science has to offer alongside leading design methodology for lasting behavior change.
😞 Unhappy Habit #1:📱Compare Yourself to Others
As with all change, sometimes stopping a bad habit can be just as effective as picking up a good one. So here it goes for this week: Stop comparing yourself to other people (on social media and in life in general).
🤔 Happy Habit #2: Three Good Things
A 2002 study with a group of severely depressed people showed that just two weeks of recalling three good things at the end of every day lastingly increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms
⌛️ Happy Habit #3: Savor The Last Moment
One of the most reliable ways to increase happiness is to savor positive moments in your life by thinking that they are coming to an end.
🎭 Happy Habit #4: Invest in experiences—not things...
Spend your time and money on experiences with other people, not material objects. You're likely to become happier, more likable and more generous.
✍🏻 Happy Habit #5: Write a Letter to Forgive
Forgiveness is one of the key skills to build lasting happiness in light of emotional pain and rejection. If you feel pain by remembering someone who has hurt you, chances are you can get a lasting happiness boost by going through the process of forgiveness.
💬 Happy Habit #9: Chat with Someone in Line
Most people mistakenly think that having small talk with strangers will be unpleasant and won't make them happy, but the research shows that the opposite is true.
☕️ Happy Habit #6: Buy a Coffee for a Stranger
The research shows that small behaviors like buying a coffee for someone you don't know can provide a significant happiness boost. This works by releasing several chemicals in your brain.
🌬 Happy Habit #7: Three-Minute Breathing Space
Most of our suffering comes from dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. By taking three minutes to breathe and focus our attention on our current experience, we gift ourselves the peace found in the present moment.
🍂 Happy Habit #8: Forest Bathing (Shirin Yoku)
Spending just 30 minutes walking in nature has been shown to be a powerful way to relax and reduce negative emotions. Forest bathing is a technique coined in Japan to that describes...
🗣 Happy Habit #10: Speak to Yourself Like a Friend
During times of crisis, one of the most effective coping mechanisms is to create what is called 'self-distance'. One of the many ways to create self-distance is to speak to yourself like you would a friend: using third-person pronouns and kind, supportive language.
😞 Unhappy Habit #2: 💸 Fixate on Money
Fixating on financial success has negative consequences for various aspects of psychological well-being. I share a behavior hack that subverts the media's myth that money makes us happy...
😴 Happy Habit #11: Sleep 7-8 Hours Per Night
Sleeping 7-8 hours a night makes you happier, improves cognitive performance and increases your capacity for insight threefold. Here are some behavior tips for improving sleep hygiene...
⏯️ Happy Habit #12: Interrupt Your Consumption
The 'hedonic treadmill' describes a phenomena where we experience declining satisfaction over time. One way to subvert this downhill treadmill is to do something counterintuitive: Take a break.
