- In this video, I am talking
about some lists to make for a happier life.
These are super simple lists that you can make
that you can go back to over and over again
to increase your happiness, to change your thoughts
and to change your behaviors.
The first list to make is a list of questions for your mind.
In the words of William S Burroughs,
"Your mind will answer most questions
if you learn to relax and wait for the answer."
But to prompt your mind to answer questions for you,
you need to be serving it with questions.
Create a list of questions for your subconscious,
for your mind to work on in the background.
Your questions could be, how do I improve
my communication with my partner?
Or, how can I make self-care easy and enjoyable?
I think that there's something magical
about a night's sleep.
I think your mind is working for you while you sleep
so asking yourself a question before you go to sleep
is the best way to get it working in the background.
Go to your list of questions before you sleep,
pick a question, you might even wanna look up information
related to that question and really give your brain
a whole bunch of material for it to work with,
and then sleep on that question.
Don't expect an immediate answer you might not wake up
the next morning with a serious answer to your question.
It might come to you the next week
when you're taking a long drive or the day after
when you're having a long shower.
But let your mind relax with your question and make sure
that you have a list of questions in the first place.
You might wanna store this list in your bedside table
so it's easy to access at night,
or you could store it next to your daily planner
if you're someone who does daily planning over nighttime
so that it's actually helpful and you use it.
The next list to make is actually a list of questions
as well, which is a list of questions
that help you to reframe your thoughts.
In my big library of quotes I have at this one and it is,
"If you have problems, change their names into challenges
and find solutions."
That is a good example of a reframe.
That's just a better way to look at things.
And there are lots of commonly known reframes
so there's problems equal challenges,
there's nervousness equals excitement,
failures equaling learnings, but sometimes you need to dig
for an alternative reframe that really works for you
in whatever circumstance you're going through.
To help you to reframe your thinking, create a list
of reframe questions that help you to come up
with a bunch of different reframes until you come up
with one that feels right.
So, some questions that might help are,
how would a seven year old look at this situation?
And how would someone who really enjoys
being in this situation look at it?
What would you be missing out on
if you didn't have this situation in your life?
What advice would you give to someone else
who was going through this situation?
How would a person that you love
or a person that you admire
frame this situation in their mind?
Having a list of questions like this handy
is helpful for whenever you have a problem in your life,
and you have a really negative framing of it
and you really need to reshuffle
the way that you look at it.
Store this list somewhere easy to access.
In your phone so that you can find it
with a click of a button every time that you're struggling
with a negative frame.
The next list to create is a list of topics to journal on.
Journaling is a tool that can help you to clarify
your thinking, it can help you to process your emotions.
There are so many benefits if you do it in the right way.
This year I decided intentionally
that I wanted to journal more as part of my theme
for the year which is slow.
Trying to slow things down, to think things through,
be more intentional in my thinking, in my acting
and journaling was part of that.
But, I'd find when I'd go to sit down and journal
I couldn't think of anything to journal on.
I knew that there were definitely things that I wanted
to think on more but I just couldn't bring anything to mind.
So throughout my days whenever I found
I came across something that I was like,
hmm, that feels like a limiting belief
or that feels like something that I need to think on more,
I would write it down as something
that I wanted to journal on.
I don't always journal on something specific
but if I don't feel like doing a general daily journal
I have a list of topics that I want to work through.
You could journal on whatever routines haven't been working
for you or habits that haven't been working for you.
On this list do you wanna think of anything that comes
to your mind that it feels like something
that you need to dive deeper into.
Store this list somewhere that's near your journal
or even in your journal so that it's really easy to access
and you actually use it.
The next list to create is a list of things to do
in your free time that aren't Netflix
and aren't social media.
This is a list that you can refer to when you get home
from work or even on your weekends
or whenever you happen to hit a bit of free time.
You could even use it during your breaks from work.
If you work from home, you have a bit more freedom
in what you can do on your breaks.
Amanda Porter is an Ohio based psychiatric nurse
and she has talked on self-care saying,
"There is definitely a right and wrong way
to go about self-care."
If something makes you feel good now
but it'll make you feel bad later,
that by definition is not self-care.
When you get home from work, it is so easy
to glide over to the TV and turn on Netflix, or even easier
to scroll through social media for three hours
instead of putting on that load of laundry
that you know will help you tomorrow,
or working on your side project
that you've been telling yourself you would work on
for forever, filling out a page in your journal
or working on your Skillshare class.
And I think that you need something
that turns off your brain for a bit sometimes
especially in this freakin' wild world
that we've somehow created.
You definitely need time where you numb your brain
a little bit and you just zone out
with a Netflix show, with social media.
Really great if you have a stressful job
or you're an anxious person
or there's a lot going on in your life,
but to give yourself variety, create a list of things
that you can do that sit outside of the realm of media,
or if you want you could include media but maybe media
that you know will make you feel a little better
than a trashy TV show, a movie that you've been wanting
to watch for a really long time.
Something that makes you think a little bit deeper,
things that will make you feel good in the moment
as well as later on.
This one on this video is Skillshare,
one of the best ways to fill your free time.
Skillshare is an online learning community
with thousands of classes in it, so many different topics
from so many different amazing people.
You can explore new skills that deepen existing passions
and get lost in creativity on Skillshare.
There are classes on things like video editing,
photography, journaling, introspection, productivity,
hand lettering, finances and more, including a class by me
called designing the life that you want
for exercises, for clarity and motivation.
Lately I've been watching
early adults class called productivity for creators.
It's really motivating and insightful,
it had a reminder that I personally like
getting from time to time.
That is, the phrase, "I can't because I don't have
enough time" or "I'm too busy to do that" is a myth.
If we're saying things like I don't have time for that,
it's very often that we are choosing not to make time
for that thing.
Skillshare is created specifically for learning
and there are absolutely no ads.
They're always launching new premium classes
so you can stay focused and follow it
wherever your creativity takes you.
And it is less than $10 a month for an annual subscription.
The first 1000 of my subscribers
to click the link down in the description
will get a free trial of premium membership
so that you can explore your creativity.
The next list to create is a list of affirmations.
And this can be an audio list, maybe if it's something
that you want to listen to in the car,
or it can just be a written list, a digital list.
I have talked about affirmations before.
I think that if you find affirmations helpful,
then they are helpful.
If you don't find them helpful, then they are not helpful.
Affirmations will be helpful to you
if you feel good about them when you say them,
but affirmations will not be helpful
if you feel unconfident when you're saying them,
if you feel like a fraud when you're saying them,
if they don't feel aligned with you.
So, if you are wanting to embrace affirmations in your life
if you think that it's something
that would make you feel good,
on your list put affirmations that feel in line with you.
Maybe use this wording
that you would actually use in real life.
So, don't go for affirmations
that feel unrealistic or unaligned.
Personally, I really like my affirmations
to be affirmations that I feel like are things
that I already know, that are nice reminders for my mind.
I don't like affirmations that are worded
in ways that I would never speak
or that are saying things that are blatantly not true.
Things like, I love going to the gym and working out.
I know that that's not true and if I started saying it
I don't think it would be helpful for me.
I like working out in other ways.
Absolutely not the gym.
A few of my favorites are, I trust my mind
to come up with creative solutions for me.
My mind is always working for me in the background.
I have a plenty of time.
I release attachment to all outcomes.
I am worthy for just existing.
Find affirmations that feel good for you.
You might need to hunt down different creators
and find people who have words that align with you,
make a list of them.
You might want to record them and listen to them
over morning, or on the commute to work
and use them as you will, you might wanna use them like me
and use them as little mental reminders
and little mindset shifts that you want
to bring into your life.
The next list to write, to create a happier life
is a gratitude list but we're gonna take it up a notch.
And whenever you write down something
that you are grateful that a person in your life did,
you wanna actually express that to them.
I've been writing a gratitude list for a long time.
It's been a part of my routine for like years now.
I've always done it really helpful on its origin,
but I find that doing this
amplifies the gratitude by so much.
I took this from the book 'The power of Moments'
by Chip and Dan Heath.
In the book they actually talk about a gratitude visit
where you'd write a whole letter to someone
and maybe you haven't expressed gratitude for something
that they've done, and you deliver it to them in person.
What they found from that exercise
is that it can cause your happiness
to spike for a whole month, which is absolutely wild.
Luke and I often do marriage meetings where we sit down
and we talk about stuff in the household
but it always kicks off with appreciations.
We say all of the things that we appreciate
that the other person did, said, didn't say,
and often because Luke ends up in my gratitude list
pretty frequently, I'd go back to my gratitude list
that I'd written and I'd be saying the things
that I had written down.
And I realized that just doing that made me feel extra happy
and extra grateful for those things
that I had already written down days prior
because I said them out loud and then Luke felt appreciated,
and I would feel nice because I was telling him
things that I appreciated him doing.
Not that that's the whole point, but you know,
it would just feel like a really nice interaction.
So, I recently decided that I wanted to start doing the same
with my general daily gratitude list.
And whenever I came up with something that a person did
that I was grateful for which is often,
I would actually express it to them.
Usually just via a message,
it's not like I'd have a little sit down meeting with them
but just doing that feels really nice.
And you get to make someone else happy as well
which is so nice.
The next list to create is a list of favors
for your future self.
Doing favors for your future self
feels like an act of self-love.
While I'm doing my future self favors,
I'm thinking about how much I am going to appreciate this
in the future, and how happy I'm gonna be that I do this
and I'm just thinking all of these nice things
about future me.
It's similar to the way that doing a favor for someone else.
It makes you feel, this makes you feel the same way
but about yourself.
There is just something different
about checking off a to-do, but with the mind frame off
this is something that future me is gonna appreciate
so much, she's gonna be so happy.
Personally, I like doing favors for my future self
when I'm feeling really blacked,
and I'm not really feeling opt to doing
maybe my normal tasks, the tasks that I've written
in my to-do list, I'm feeling low energy.
I try to think, okay, well, if I'm not doing those tasks,
like I just don't have the energy for it or the mindset,
what can I do that's like a nice little favor
for my future self?
And having a little list ready and prep to garb,
another act of self-love.
If you liked this video I actually have a few videos
that I bade on lists to make.
I'm gonna have that playlist linked on the screen as well
as down below, I've got lists to make to organize your life,
a list to make to uplevel your life,
list to make to make your next year amazing.
There are so many lists for you to create
and it's all really highly actionable which we love.
It's gonna be linked on the screen and down below,
I appreciate you so, so much.
I could just, ah, in a loving way.
kiss <3
And I'll see you soon.