Brevity is the soul wit. So let’s begin the list and start being happy in 2020.
1. Practice living in the moment
Every day I try to stop, look around and spend a few minutes enjoying the moment. Sometimes its along my walking path, sitting at a stop light, watching my students doing an assignment or during a meal with a friend. I’ve found that the more I do this, the more I find happiness in the simplest of things.
2. Don’t get trapped by politics
It’s a blatant lie that the current political climate is some new, never seen before, phenomena. Politics throughout history has been full of contention, strife, and turmoil. All societies go through political upheaval. It’s just us mere humans only have a short time span to live through it. If you look back over the last few centuries, you’ll see times like these happen more often than people think. All over the world.
If you want to be happier, unattach yourself from politics. Just try it for a month. You’ll thank me.
Chris Rither
3. Ditch your phone
Let’s face it, people got along without phones for millennium. And you can too. Here’s a few tips.
- Make a phone-free day once a week.
- Put your phone by the front door (do you really need to carry it around with you in the house?????)
- Put it away while you eat your meals.
- Do a phone fast. Fasting can improve your health, curb appetites and help people lose weight. Maybe a phone fast can do something similar, like making you happier consistently.
- Focus on people you’re talking to and ignore your phone (I promise it won’t hurt your phone’s feelings).
Emojis are no substitute for physical contact. Especially hugs and kisses.
4. Go old school
Unplug from all your gadgets and gizmos and do something old school. Like playing a board game, going on a walk to enjoy our surroundings, talk with people face to face, read a book, play outside, or doing chores around the house.
5. Build relationships in person!
Using digital tools is great for communicating information, but not so great at building personal relationships. Digital communication really lacks the nuance of face to face communication. Things like purveying romance, humor, emotion, or even sarcasm is hard via a text, email or through social media. For example, It’s hard to talk things out in the heat of the moment when you have the time lag associated with digital connections. It’s hard to read body posture, intonation, and emotional cues when you’re not actually in someone’s presence. And emojis are no substitute for physical contact. Especially hugs and kisses.