Practice happiness and you’ll be happy!
Anybody in recovery will instantly recognize the value of listing things that make you happy: We all get told that right off the bat. And psychological research consistently supports the idea that doing so habitually will help you develop an attitude of gratitude, leading to a constitutionally happy mood.
Specifically, studies show that listing just three things that made you happy today will improve your mood, and at bedtime listing three that you are grateful for that day will help you sleep better.
This is nothing new: The Buddha was teaching it 2600 years ago, when explaining how he reached enlightenment.
Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders healthy states, one has abandoned unhealthy states to cultivate healthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to healthy states. (MN 19)
Practice happiness, in other words, and you’ll be happy!
My lists are rarely 30 items long, and they are more things I’m grateful for than things that make me happy, per se. I do the happy thing as Pockets of Joy (Adams, 1990), separately.
Merriam-Webster defines gratitude as “thankfulness” happiness as “a state of well-being and contentment” (Definition of HAPPINESS, 2024). There’s so much overlap, though, between the conventional definition of happiness and gratitude that I’m going with a gratitude list for this prompt.
Today’s Gratitude List
- teaching
- reading
- binge-watching the original NCIS
- towering cloud formations
- music
- my pets, all three of whom were adopted, and
- gratitude to the people who gave them to me
- word games
- social media
- the waterbed
- writing
- a roof over my head
- food on the table
- medical insurance/care for life (thanks to my late husband’s job)
- the ability to work from home
- my wild garden under the trees, and all the wildlife that visits
- pretty sunrises, sunsets
- night skies
- my scooter, and
- my sweet little van to lug it around in
- taking pictures makes me happy and I feel
- gratitude to my sister every day for giving it to me
- my Teachers
- my BuJos (Bullet Journal™)
- good friends
- YNAB (You Need a Budget®)
- summer breaks
- thunderstorms
- naps
- coffee
Sources
Adams, K. (1990). Journal to the self: Twenty-two paths to personal growth. Grand Central.
Definition of HAPPINESS. (2024, July 26). https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/happiness
Gratitude Definition & Meaning—Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Retrieved July 30, 2024, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gratitude
MN 19: Dvedhāvitakkasutta—Bhikkhu Bodhi. (n.d.). Retrieved August 3, 2024, from https://suttacentral.net/mn19/en/bodhi?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false
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