My Happiness Project: Five Minutes a Day to a Happier Year

Last January I took on a personal happiness project. These were the rules: it had to take less than five minutes a day and it had to be a practical, research-based technique proven to be effective for increasing happiness.

I was happily married with children, and I loved my career. Despite all these great blessings, I found myself complaining, overwhelmed, rundown, and irritable. Covid took its toll and I felt I was just missing something.

Would these three tools – giving, appreciation, and perspective – help me get out of my own funk?

All my extensive research on happiness leads back to three basic concepts: giving, appreciation, and perspective (which I have coined G.A.P). It was time to test it out. Would these three tools help me get out of my own funk?

I modeled my project after Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project where she experiments with various techniques to increase her joy. One month she purged her apartment of clutter, another was spent practicing gratitude towards her in-laws. In a diary-like format, she reviewed what worked and what didn’t. With my project, I incorporated ancient, time-tested Jewish traditions.

The root of the word happiness, “hap,” and other etymologically-related words such as happenstance and hapless, imply that happiness is found outside of yourself. Happiness revolves around luck and circumstance. Judaism believes that happiness is not found in external circumstances or situations; it can be found within you.

The Hebrew word sameach, happy, can be split into two words — sham and moach, which means: there are your thoughts. In Hebrew, “with happiness” and “thought” share the same letters. Barring major psychological issues, happiness results from inner thought processes and choices and is therefore within our control.

I divided the year into three parts. The first four months focused on giving, the next four on appreciation, and the last four encompassed techniques on perspective.

My favorite giving-based activity was spending a week focusing on giving extra hugs to my children. I had read a quote from psychologist Virginia Satir that states, “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth.”

I realized that with some of my children in school for most of the day, this was not an easy feat to accomplish!

This quote inspired me to make sure I was hugging my children multiple times a day. With this new goal of eight hugs a day each, my entire perspective changed. Moments that in the past had slipped by me, suddenly became opportune times for a hug.

After putting on their pajamas, passing them around the house and just sitting together on the couch became perfect opportunities for connection. I became a hugging machine. But I also realized that the extra hugging was benefiting me, as well. When I speak to my single students, I realize that they, too, are craving touch. Our society breeds an unmatched loneliness, and we all crave physical connection which is sorely lacking.

During the months I focused on giving, I surprised my children with small presents that I knew they would enjoy, heartfelt letters, and taking them each out for a date night. I found that with all these small gestures, I was enjoying being a mother in a deeper way. This project gave me a new daily focus, and something to truly look forward to.

During the months focused on appreciation our family went back to the NICU to thank the staff for saving our daughter, Emmy, who had spent the first weeks of her life in the NICU.

My favorite moment of perspective occurred when I was working on judging others favorably. One day, my daughter came home from school upset.

“Mom! One of our test questions today was to memorize our teacher’s address. How silly is that? I can’t believe she would make us waste our time.”

I answered her, “Look at it this way—she’s giving you an easy point, and helping you get an ‘A’ on the test.”

My daughter responded, “Yeah…I guess. You always judge everyone favorably.”

My heart sang! It was like a little love tap from God telling me that my work was yielding results for both me and my daughter.

I gained a lot from my happiness project and was pleasantly surprised by the results. I gained a newfound inner sense of satisfaction and calm.

Here’s a basic outline of my project. Create your own version and give it a shot. You’ll be surprised by the results.

Featured Image: Valerie Elash, Unsplash.com