Last week, I touch upon the idea that Life Spring Cleaning was about curating our life by removing things but also adding what is essential to our being happy. I suggested that three things are fundamental to our happiness and mental health: pleasure, achievement and closeness. Pleasure is whatever makes you happy.
Achievement is anything you complete, however small. Closeness can be any kind of connection (partner, family, friends, community or nature).
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The idea is to make space and time for the three essentials and to use them as North Stars to declutter and curate our lives. Whatever we are doing or handling, we can ask ourselves these three
questions:
- Does this give me pleasure?
- Is what I am doing going to generate a feeling of achievement when it is completed?
- Is this connecting me to someone who matters, a community that matters, Nature, my soul or Spirit?
Conversely, when we are planning your week or day, we can decide on and schedule activities that will be sources of pleasure, achievement and
closeness.
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No guilt.
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If napping or watching a good series on Netflix is a source of pleasure, then schedule them. Obviously, you also need sources of achievement as well. For me, doing my brain
training every morning, household chores on Saturday and some journalling in the week, even just once, all give me a sense of accomplishment and whenever I complete something, I celebrate it as an achievement. Nothing is too small for celebration! I often unwittingly forsake closeness so I make an effort to schedule a walk to the park, messaging friends or seizing opportunities to share quality time with my loved ones.Â
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Balance doesn't mean spending an equal amount of time on these three pillars of happiness but making sure we have a bit of all of them in a week or even a day.Â
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As Gretchen Rubin wrote — in The Happiness
Project I believe,Â
"The absence of feeling bad isn't enough to make you feel happy; you must strive to find sources of feeling good."
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How are you going to feel good today, this week?
