How to Celebrate Thanks-Giving Every Day
“I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude”. -Brene Brown
When I ask people what they want more than anything in life, the top answers is always, “I just want to be happy”.
We spend our life chasing happiness and hoping someday we will finally figure it out. In reality, we are the architect of our own happiness. Studies show that only 10% of our happiness is contributed to the things (good or bad) that happen in our lives, 40% of our happiness is genetic and 50% of our happiness is how we process the things that happen to us. So, the good news is, much of our happiness is under our control. That bad news is, that if only 10% of our happiness is due to the people and things that happen around you, it’s pretty hard to blame others for our unhappiness…. (Darn…that would be so much easier.)
The tool I like the most to intentionally increase my happiness is called “Three Good Things”. It is simple, easy and only takes a couple minutes a day.
For 21 days before you go to sleep, reflect on three good things that happened to you during the day
Write them down in a journal (include the emotion/s you felt with these memories)
Reflect on why they happened
THAT’S IT, go to bed and let the magic happen.
Study after study has shown that doing this simple act for 3 weeks days prior to bed improves your happiness levels and decreases depression (by as much as taking a medicine like Zoloft) for at least 6 months.
Why does this work? We know that when we are sleeping, our brain continues to strengthen neural networks AND it strengthens those networks that were our focus within the 2 hours prior to sleep more than anything else. So, the idea with the Three Good Things is that if we focus on positive things in our life before we go to bed, our brain hardwires them during our sleep.
So, why not give it a try! As a warm-up, consider doing a round of 3 Good Things at the start of Thanksgiving Dinner with family and friends. Maybe you could even incorporate it as a bedtime routine with your kids, spouse, or partner. And after experiencing 3 weeks of the magic of increased happiness, at that point, why would you stop?!
Blog Note: My thanks to friend, colleague, and PeerRxMed buddy Corey Martin, MD, for his guest blog this week. Corey is a family physician who is absolutely driven through his work to help improve the mental and physical health of our colleagues and care teams. As the founder of Innovations in Resilience (www.innovationsinresilience.com) and Bounce Travels (www.bouncetravels.com), one of the ways he does this is by facilitating wellbeing retreats across the US and throughout the world based on the work of Brené Brown, Parker Palmer, and the experience he has gained in working with thousands of colleagues.