How to be Happy

I watched a TED talk about happiness yesterday. I’ve already forgotten the guy’s name but here are the things he suggests doing every day for 21 days in order to be happy.

Note three new things that made you happy. I already do this. Here is my list from yesterday: Feeding the cats treats, John making the same points I did, not getting caught in the rain. I have a document on my desktop and it just takes a few seconds to update it every day.
Write about one of them. I do this, but not daily. I guess I could do this here, on my blog.
Exercise. I do this every other day, but I have been meaning to up the ante.
Meditate. I already do this.
One random act of kindness per day, if only a nice email. I’m sorry to say that of all the things on the list, this is the one I do the most sporadically.

The guy said to do it for 21 days and I started yesterday. I will report back on June 5th and let you know how it worked.

Happy thing: For the past year I’ve had this ongoing Q&A with the director of my choir, and he made some points in his last set of answers that were the same as some points I had already made. It wasn’t that they were earth-shattering or brilliant points, it just feels good to notice the same things as another human being. It’s that—”Ohmygod, did you see that??” “Oh yeah. I saw that.”—feeling.

Pretty flowers on 11th Street. What are these?

Stacy Horn

I've written six non-fiction books, the most recent is Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York.

View all posts by Stacy Horn →

4 thoughts on “How to be Happy

  1. That’s what Nora said, and with your post it’s now official. They are yellow wysteria. And yeah, they are gorgeous. They make the block!

  2. I loved this post Stacy! What a great idea. My first happy thing of the day was seeing a tiny dog in the dog park this morning humping the leg of another dog! Not the leg of his owner as most dogs do (mine for example) but the leg of another dog! It was 8 am and I think my laughs were heard all over town. I loved this post so much I mentioned it in my blog today and linked it to yours! What a great way to feel happy and grateful. I love the photo by the way 🙂

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