05 Jan 7 Small Joys You Should Make Sure to Add to Your Daily Routine in 2022
If you’re looking to enjoy more happiness in 2022 then you should be looking to include more joys in your daily life.
There are many different types of joys, or ways of experiencing happiness, so if you want to discover more varieties then check out this article by Minda Zetlin via Inc.com …
What will you focus on in 2022? Whatever your other plans and ambitions may be, one of them should be this: to be happier this coming year. The pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 have been tough, and just when things were starting to look better, the highly contagious Omicron variant appeared to interrupt our holiday plans, as Bill Gates tweeted yesterday.
With all this going on, and especially if you’ve lost a loved one, or a relationship, or a job this year, trying to be happy may be the last thing on your mind. It shouldn’t be. For my book Career Self-Care coming out this summer, I interviewed Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project and other bestsellers, who’s studied the whole question of happiness more than anyone I know. She reminded me that even back in the 19th century, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”
He had a point because, as Rubin has noted, research shows that happy people are more responsible, more successful, and less likely to commit crimes. They maintain relationships better, are more likely to volunteer, and more likely to give to charity. In other words, if you’re happy, you’re probably both more successful and more liable to make the world a better place.
I hope I’ve convinced you that whatever your priorities are for 2022, your own happiness should be high on that list. How do you become happier? There are many, many answers to that question. For now, I’d like to focus on one way we don’t often talk about: changing our daily lives and daily routines. Obviously, on any given day, most of us do things because we have to. We brush our teeth so we won’t get cavities. We do our jobs so that we will get paid. We clean house at least a little, prepare or purchase meals, and so on.
Mixed in with all these obligations should be lots of things we do for pleasure, things that make us happy just by doing them, small joys that may be insignificant by themselves, but that in the aggregate can lift our spirits, help us function better, and ultimately make us happier. Here are some things that I believe fill that bill. I invite you to try them out, or to make a happiness list of your own.
1. Savor your favorite morning beverage.
Something like 80 percent of the world imbibes some form of caffeine every day. Maybe that’s you, or maybe you prefer herbal tea or even just water. Whatever it is, that first drink of a hot (or cold) beverage each day is a small but definite pleasure for most of us. Take just a few moments and just be in the moment–don’t rush through that small pleasure. Even if it’s just for a few seconds, pause, sip, and ease yourself into the day. Of course, if you can take a few minutes to sit down and really enjoy your drink, that’s even better…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE