The Single Best Thing You Can Do To Be Happier

What if I told you that you could significantly boost your level of happiness by doing a simple exercise each day. The exercise is totally free, it and takes less than a minute. Are you in? Watch the video to learn more!

The single best thing you can do to be happier is to practice gratitude. Each and every day. The research on gratitude suggests major benefits, yet most people completely misunderstand it, focusing on “big” sources of joy and minimizing the little ones. Research suggests that we can become saturated when we take this approach.

As humans, our brains are wired to focus on the negatives. They are like sponges for the negative and Scotchguard for the positive. If we let our brains do their own thing, they’ll miss 90 percent of the goodness around us! If we want to be happier, we have to practice gratitude, each and every day, challenging our brains to see the good, no matter how small or insignificant.

As you saw in the video, these points of gratitude don’t need to be major. In fact, the smaller the better. Perhaps you’re grateful for the close parking spot you got while running errands, the light traffic on the way to work, or the kind exchange you had with a stranger at Starbucks. Maybe you’re grateful for the extra snuggles with your little one this morning, the coworker who noticed your recent efforts on a project, or the Beyoncé jam that came up right as you were ready to call it quits at the gym.

Think of gratitude like a muscle, the more we work it out, the stronger it gets. By challenging our brains to notice and name the good, we boost our brain’s ability to do this more naturally, leading to a happier you!

So here is my challenge to you. Each day for the next three weeks, name three new things per day for which you are grateful. By “new,” I mean you can’t say what you said yesterday, and you can’t say what you said a week ago. Your three points of gratitude have to be unique to each day, no matter how small. This may be tough for the first week or two, but after a while, you’ll start to notice tons of goodness that your brain was simply missing before.

This gratitude practice has transformed both my personal and professional life, and I’ve seen so many of my clients experience profound joy with this exercise. Are you in?

Remember, it’s not about being grateful; it’s about practicing gratitude. PS: Want more happiness inspiration? 9 Quotes to Prove You’ve Got Everything You Need to be Happier.

This video/post originally appeared as an invited guest post on Veronika’s Blushing. I loved it so much, I wanted to share it here as well!