One small step to create a huge optimistic perspective in your life!
I am not aBeatles fan but I love John Lennon. I think he is a legend. He left behind an amazing legacy not only his music but speaking out about the things he believed in. He was certainly a gifted musician but he didn’t just speak to his fans through music. As described on the official website “Lennon came to view his life as a work of art in which every act shimmered with potential meaning for the world at large.” My favorite John Lennon quote is:
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
Keep this quote in an 8.5×11 frame to recall it every time you feel detached from life.
Aren’t we all looking for happiness in our lives? Happiness can mean different things to different people. We all have subjective happiness measures and I do believe we sometimes forget about our main aim while we are striving after our “measures” of happiness: career, money, success, status… What does all that mean? Which is why I try to teach my kids that the most valuable experience a man can get from his life is “happiness” and “enjoying what he does”.
Happiness Journal
is an idea from a book called “The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin”. This journal serves you as a reminder to look optimistically to the whole life and helps to improve long-term happiness in a way. All you need is to get a journal, a pen and write down things that make you happy. That is it! If you want, just draw pictures or smileys. No rules! It’s your happiness journal, your blank page to make you happy. Do not forget to use it with your kids, your wife, your spouse, your partner, whoever you share your life with. Keep it by the table you mostly use therefore you can remember to write down your happiness and your little kids can easily reach it to write in or draw.. You would be amazed to see what makes your children happy and you’ll have many masterpieces (your kids’ drawings) to present in custom frames in the end.
Having a happiness journal makes us grateful even for the simplest things: for sunshine, yummy food, a hug from a friend, a smile from a neighbor, a call from a relative… endless things to be grateful for. But we do sometimes need a reminder to think this way. Right?
Don’t get yourself stuck in unhappiness. There are many ways to direct our mind away from what makes us unhappy, to what makes us happy. Happiness journal is just a tool. What is your tool then? A happiness journal? Some custom signs with quotes in which you put in many spots in your house like a reminder?
Just remind yourself how to be happy; this will heal your soul!