Happiness in 15 minutes

Happiness in 15 minutes

I was talking to a client recently, and she lamented that despite trying to make a particular change in her life she was not having much success. Tearily, she explained that “every night I go to bed telling myself that tomorrow I’ll do the right thing; surely I can be happy and relaxed for just one day!”

On the surface, her intentions seemed more than reasonable and there’s no doubt her goals were admirable. She was indubitably motivated to achieve what she’d set out to achieve and just as importantly, had the requisite skills to do what she wanted to do.

On reflection, however, I realised that for someone who engaged in a particular behaviour numerous times each and every day it was possibley too large a step to take to go straight to zero (i.e. not doing it at all for a whole 24 hours).

Accordingly, I encourage her to break her day down into more sizable chunks and we ultimately agreed on 15 minute sections. Henceforth, her goal changed from “just one day” to “just for 15 minutes”…and what do you think happened? Almost overnight she felt more confident about achieving what she’d set out to achieve and even though she didn’t succeed every 15 minutes she was able to give herself a tick for quite a few of them; and so what happened then. Gradually, her confidence grew, her happiness increased and she moved closer and closer to her desired outcome.

What’s the lesson here? Maybe happiness and success comes down to what we do every 15 minutes!  Maybe happiness and success comes down to what we do in each and every moment rather than across a whole day or week or year! Achieving happiness almost certainly comes down to practising a few simple disciplines each and every minute so determine what actions you need to take to find more happiness and focus on doing them as often as you can in every 15 minute period throughout the day!

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