A good day is created, not hoped for

Hey Bloomers! 🌼 Today’s blog post is inspired by Anthony Robins’ book, “Awaken the giant within”. This book has a lot of valuable lessons in it but the one that we will focus on today centres around the idea that a good day is created, not hoped for. 

Make this list a reality; develop a plan for pleasure for each and every day. Don’t just randomly hope that pleasure will somehow show up; set yourself up for ecstasy. Make room for it! 

Anthony Robins

People always say that knowing yourself is important. However, they don’t always go deeper into explaining WHY it is important to know yourself. One reason is because self-awareness is a major key to happiness. And as we say on this blog, “happiness is the main priority”. What does knowing yourself have to do with this, you may ask. Well, you need to know how certain things in this world affect your state of mind, so that you can be able to create good days for yourself. 

Some people wake up wishing that the day ahead will be a happy one. But something as important as happiness cannot be left to chance. This may sound foreign, but you can MAKE your days happy. There is actually an element of control involved in your daily happiness. 

Anthony Robins’ idea then becomes relevant here. He states that you should compile a list of things that you can refer to daily, which you know make you happy. It’s helpful to take your time with this list and make it as long as possible! You can even add things that you don’t necessarily know to make you happy, but that you’d like to experiment with. You don’t know if going for a swim will be a positive boost to your mood? Well, now’s the time to find out. Let’s unpack this idea of a list a little more. 

The List

The list is the reason why you should know yourself. You must know what makes you happy and what makes you sad, what makes you energetic and what drains your energy. That way, you can consciously do things that are good for you, things that allow you to be happy as well as energetic. Things that bring you peace and make your days worthwhile. In the same way, you will also try your best to avoid things that you feel will result in you having a bad, unproductive day that is filled with chaos and negative energy. 

Examples of things you can add to your list

Your list should not contain things that will require a lot to carry out. Instead, it should have things that you can EASILY do at almost any given point in time. The following will be examples of things you can add to your list. Remember, this list is yours. These are simply ideas. What you add to the list are things that you know will make you happy and improve your mood. 

• Listen to music 
• Read a book 
• Watch a series/movie 
• Self-care (like doing your nails or putting on a face mask)
• Wear a cute outfit 
• Pray/read the Bible 
• Journaling 
• Playing an instrument/singing 
• Spend time with family/friends 
• Go for a walk 

You can never be sure what you will get out of life, but you can attempt to have a plan of how you will react to it. It’s important to focus on things that are within your control, instead of things that you can’t do anything about. Therefore, having what can be classified as a “bad” day could be completely out of your control because you are not fully capable of controlling how events will pan out and how people will behave. That’s therefore not something that you should focus on.

What you should focus on, instead, is what is in your control. And that is your reaction to these events and people’s behaviours. You cannot put your happiness into the hands of other people depending on how they behave, or in the hands of uncontrollable events. As earlier stated in the article, happiness is far too important to leave to chance.

For that reason, if your day suddenly takes a wrong turn, you can refer back to your carefully constructed list. And there in front of you, will be a lot of ideas on how you can get yourself to be happy again and turn the day back into a better direction. For instance, using the list above, you could decide to listen to your “feel good playlist” and instantaneously feel better. So although something could have gone wrong, you are now doing something within your control to make yourself feel better. 

Using the science of smiling to your advantage

While on the topic of creating a good day, did you know that forcing yourself to smile even when you feel that there’s absolutely no reason in the world to do so can lift your mood and lower stress? Smiling can trick your brain into believing you’re happy which can then spur actual feelings of happiness. The brain doesn’t even bother to sort out whether you’re smiling because you’re genuinely joyous, or because you’re just pretending. Absolutely intriguing! So as absurd as it may seem, use this simple technique next time you’re feeling down. Force a smile on your face and trick your brain into thinking that you’re actually happy. 

However…

In the midst of it all, please remember that it’s still okay to have a bad day. Not all your days have to be above average. There are ups and downs for a reason, a season for everything. What matters is consciously making an effort to have more good than bad days, by taking notice of what is in your control. You have more power than you realise, and you can harness this power to improve the quality of your life. 

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