How can planning help with being happier?
(just click on the pondering pic to enlarge if needed)
When people talk about planning then it’s often as a way to be more organised or productive - which it obviously can be and that’s great… but I also think there’s much more to it than that. For me, planning is a way for us to get the most out of life - and to help us make sure that we’re doing things that make us happy!
That’s why all of the Planning Club sessions include a mention of the ‘10 Keys to Happier Living’ from Action for Happiness - we can’t necessarily get all of them into our lives every week, but I think that just being reminded of them regularly can be helpful…
What are the 10 Keys to Happier Living?
Just as there’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ with planning, the same is true of happiness… what makes us happy will be different for each of us, but Action for Happiness is an organisation that’s on a mission to create a “happier and kinder world” and they’ve identified 10 things that the research suggests can potentially help to make life happier and more fulfilling. They’re in the picture below and together they spell out the acronym ‘GREAT DREAM’…
Find out more at https://actionforhappiness.org/10-keys
How can we use the ‘10 Keys’ to make life happier?
The 10 Keys are really just a starting point - we can include any of them in our lives however works for us and it doesn’t have to mean making big changes. ‘Living life more mindfully’ could mean a 30 minute daily meditation practice - or it could just mean pausing to look at the sky next time that we go outside… ‘Doing kind things for others’ could mean volunteering for a local charity each week - or it could just mean helping that person you see struggling with their suitcase on the train… (and if you’re looking for ideas then Action for Happiness actually have calendars for each month that give lots of suggestions for small actions to try).
So, how can planning help?
We often know that certain things can make us happier - but in the hectic day-to-day of life, we just forget… or something more urgent comes up and derails us. That’s why planning can help us to be a bit more intentional about making sure these things happen - thinking about the ‘10 Keys’ in each Planning Club session is just a little reminder to intentionally plan these things in and then to have a think the following week/month about whether or not they happened. Keeping some kind of record can be useful for some people too - for instance, someone at my monthly AfH group came up with this great ‘daily kindness chart’ idea…
You may have heard of the ‘red car theory’ - this is the idea is that if we decide we want to buy a red car then we suddenly start noticing red cars more, because we’re paying attention to them… and so the same is true of kindness. If we’re trying to spot the moments of kindness in our day in order to put them on our chart then we’ll start noticing kindness (and opportunities to be kind) more - which will hopefully help us to feel better about the world and potentially start some kindness ripples too!
