Happiness Habit #9 Start Small

Change Old Habits into Happiness Habits One Tiny Change at a Time

If we want to increase our level of happiness, something has to change. Otherwise we are staying in the same place and not growing. The best way to change is to create new habits or make adjustments to our old habits.
Changing our habits is difficult even for the most disciplined people and changing lots of habits at once is almost impossible. The secret is to start small. Find one habit you can change a little bit and then focus on that until the change becomes part of your natural routine. For example if you want to exercise more, don’t start by training for a marathon. Your willpower is limited and can easily get used up making yourself run long distances 5 times a week. Instead, start your exercise by walking to your neighbor’s house or half way down your block each day. Just a little walking each day will only take a few minutes and will take a minimal amount of will power to complete. If you feel like walking farther you can, but only put pressure on yourself to walk to your neighbor’s house and back. Once that has become part of your routine for 30 days or more, then you can walk down a few more houses. Often you will find you have extended your walks without even thinking about it. Later you can add jogging for a few houses. The point is to start small and work up to it in small increments so it becomes a habit rather than something that drains your will power each day and you dread having to do.

If you change and grow you will be happier, especially if the change lasts and you can then move on to other small changes so you are always getting a little happier.

Happiness Hack #4 – Practice Autonomy

Happiness Hack #5 Make Time To Exercise

Happiness Hack #6: Find Flow

Happiness Hack #7 Keep a Happiness Jar

Happiness Hack #8 Finding Meaning

About Ray White

My Passion is helping people become successful and happy. I have found that many people want to be successful but just don’t know how. More importantly, people want to be successful because they feel that reaching some success pinnacle will result in them becoming happy. The research and my experience has shown that just the opposite is the case. Success does not lead to happiness. Happiness leads to success.