2020... whoa, what an eye opener! An eye opener to many things really... How much my children need to be with and see their friends, how much my husband and I need to be with and see our friends, how difficult being still and quiet can be for us Type A's, and the realization at just how chaotic the pace at which we typically run is not the best for our minds and bodies.
I don't know about you but I did a lot of reading this past year... like a lot. I wanted to make good use of all of the time we'd been given and use it to do some self discovery and identify areas in my life that I could improve. In my stacks (yep, stacks) of books there was one that really resonated with me, especially during this time of strange. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin is one that I have recommended to many of my colleagues and friends. It's a woman's story of assessing and improving various areas of her life one month at a time over the span of a year after she realized that she was rushing through life without really pausing to find joy in her day to day.
How many of you can relate to that??
The beauty of her plan is that instead of having one big New Year's resolution, she broke hers up into monthly chunks. I loved this idea so I decided to do a Happiness Project of my own.
Here's how it works...
Start by writing down all of the main buckets in your life that bring you joy or happiness. Over the course of a couple of days whittle your buckets down to a total of 12 main sources of happiness. Trust me, this will be much more difficult than you think! It helps if you have your main list and then group the similar items together to get a start on getting to your final 12. Once you have your top 12, assign them to a month where you will focus on all areas within that topic.
Here's what mine looks like:
January - Self
February - Health
March - Wellness
April - Marriage
May - Parenting
June - Friendships / Social Connection
July - Money
August - House
September - Leisure
October - Career
November - Travel
December - Reflection
Once you have your 12 topics assigned to their month, you will go through and list the things you will focus on within that specific topic. For example, for the month of March I will assess all areas of wellness in my life. For me, this includes assessing my nutrition, activity, mindfulness, sleep, attitude and perspective.
In the month of January I assessed all things self. It was a really really good process. I really took the time to evaluate my values, priorities, passions, and attitude. I then assessed how I live my day to day in comparison to those key areas. Guess what I found... some things are not aligned. Some areas of my life that are not as high up on priority list take time away from those that are. These are the things I will continue to work on to increase my happiness over the next year.
I can't recommend this process to you enough. If nothing else it will force you to sit and evaluate which key areas in your life bring you happiness and which areas don't even make the list. Then if you want to dive deeper you can, and most people end up doing out of curiosity.
Have fun with it and take your time!
Enjoy the process and good luck with your Happiness Project!
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