Build Happiness into Your Daily Routine

By Mark Kaplan / June 20, 2020

We can have happiness in two forms. We have happiness through good behaviors and happiness through behaviors that have negative impacts on our health. Liquor stores have reported higher sales during the pandemic so we know how many people are passing the time.

It is also possible to build in positive habits that negate our need to find solace in drugs, alcohol, overeating, shopping, and other forms of escape. Right now we face challenge and for many its desperation. Finding balance in times of unbalance is a test to our psyches.

What Are Good Habits?

When my daughters were very young, I once pulled out a whiteboard to explain good nutrition. We have laughed about it ever since. It actually would be more appropriate now in that we need the right behaviors to be happy and productive. Could we list them on a whiteboard?

How about:

Nutrition

Exercise

Learning

Creating

Socializing

Skill Building

Relaxation

What is a common characteristic of positive behaviors? They can stimulate the happiness brain chemicals of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. These are Nature’s drug and liquor stores.

Our brain rewards behaviors that enhance our potential to survive and thrive. This is how we have survived as a species. Providing for ourselves actually is a seduction or manipulation to induce us to thrive. This is why we have evolved from caves to traveling to Mars.

How to Build Your Day

My goal at the end of every day is to say that was a good day. My goals are to build my health, learn, create, and contribute. These are the four peak happiness brain chemical stimulating activities. If we include a challenge in the behaviors, our brain stimulates more hormones and neurotransmitters.

Extreme athletes are at the top of bliss pyramid in that their challenges are life threatening and their skills have to be finely honed. In the process of engaging they drop into a state of flow in which the body and brain coordinate their actions without thinking. The prefrontal cortex that creates judgment and doubt shuts down.

Can you engage in activities during the day in which you lose sense of time because you are passionate about your activity? When I write, learn, or exercise, I can be engaged and not think about the outside world. My mind is at peace because it is actively engaged in something beneficial to myself or hopefully to others.

If you build health, learning, creating, and contributing into your day, you can wind up feeling very satisfied with yourself at the end. There are the two good questions that get you started on the right path. What are you doing to build your value to your family, friends, community, career, and maybe mankind? How are you improving who you are?

Once you install positive behaviors in your day, you will start minimizing the time you spend worrying. A positive thought about how you are becoming more valuable replaces lots of negative thoughts about how the world is falling apart.

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