1 Easy Way To Increase Your Happiness

I got pinched by the parking police yesterday, thereby turning a $15 birthday gift into a $40 one because I lingered too long in the damn store.

This happened after my sock rode down around my heel while I was on the elliptical at the gym, and I was so engrossed in the book I was reading that I couldn’t be bothered to pull the sock up. What’s the worst that can happen, I reasoned. It turns out the worst that can happen is really annoying and also required an emergency trip to the grocery store to buy band-aids. While at the grocery store I thought I might give a healthy dinner a go, so I purchased some chicken too.

Then, as I was drizzling olive oil on the chicken, before popping it into the oven, I dropped the olive oil cap, and it fell – of course – right onto the raw chicken before me. I scrubbed the cap and my hands within an inch of their lives and still ended up throwing the olive oil away. Because I’ve never had salmonella, but I’ve had, oh, everything else this year so it didn’t seem prudent to run the risk.

I am kvetching, yes. These things are minor annoyances in the grand scheme of life. Their occurrence on the same mishap-prone day is frustrating, but I was far less annoyed about them than I would have been a month ago, and here’s why: my gratitude journal, which I started a week ago.

I read Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project last year. (Click this link to go to amazon.com for more information about "The Happiness Project".It’s chock full of ideas about how to increase the happiness quotient in the average person’s life. I love to read stuff like this but do not love to implement the suggested ideas because they’re too time-consuming and hard to remember. But the gratitude journal is neither of these things!

Every night before bed write down 4 or 5 things that you are grateful for from that day. They should be specific and real. Of course you’re grateful for your kids. This is not an item to write in the journal because it’s too vague. Your kids are not going to be reading the journal so you don’t need to worry they will feel offended that you wrote how grateful you were for that yummy Panera sandwich at lunch but neglected to mention them.

Life moves fast. It’s easy to get caught up in it. We always recognize the days when we hit every red light in town. We’re less tuned into the days when we hit every green light in town. The gratitude journal is a way to recognize the green lights in our lives. Keeping one will put you on the fast track to a happier existence, one in which you’re more appreciative of the fact that you’re on the road at all, especially given the age and condition of your car (which, happily, started today, despite the 10 degree temperature outside). And yes, that’s gonna be #1 in today’s gratitude round-up.