How happy are you with your life? Did you know that anything that isn’t making you jump for joy can be fixed or changed? The key, however, is that only YOU hold that power to make your life joyous. It’s not up to your spouse, kids, parents, or boss. You are the only one in complete control of your life, so you deserve to live the life of your dreams.

It has been one year since global lockdowns began. You would think that would seem like a tremendously long time for all we have been through. And for some of you, it may have been. For me, it seems as though I was stuck in “Groundhog Day”, the movie where we live the same day over and over. After a while, you don’t even know what day it is. It stagnates the mind.

Mindset and mindfulness are buzz words we hear a lot about. They refer to those learned attitudes we hold about absolutely anything. We have a money mindset, a career mindset; in a business setting, you’ll hear terms like ‘fixed’ or ‘growth’ mindset. Starting with a mindset that works for you is certainly important to how we perceive life and being mindful of how we think affects what we get from life.

To make real and lasting changes in our lives, embrace the development of tiny habits.  Tiny habits combine over a period of time become automatic habits that we don’t have to think about. These automatic habits compound into many small successes, which can also help change our mindset. It’s a huge cycle but one which can be changed at any point.

How to Add Tiny Habits to Your Day

Since every person’s goals will be different, so will every person’s tiny habit choices. These are just a few ideas and certainly not a comprehensive list. Choose whichever tiny habits make you happy and more fulfilled (and moving toward your goals) and continue building on those.

To begin, decide what exactly makes you unhappy then think of a resolution. Now, what is one small thing you can do to start to change the situation? It’s not enough to just THINK about a resolution; you must then take action. Creating tiny habits one at a time will change your life.

Some general tiny habits that anyone can add to their routines include: meditation, yoga, cardio exercise, writing a gratitude journal, journal about all areas of your life or your goals, listening to empowering podcasts, praying, and healthy eating.

If you’re specifically unhappy at work:

• Spend 5 minutes a day looking for a new job; apply for a new position inside your current company; rewrite your resume; seek a mentor for advice; get active with business networking groups; upgrade your skillset; write down a daily work goal and cross it off the list when achieved.

If you’re unhappy with your relationships:

• Start venturing out with groups of friends; reconnect daily with spouse or partner; go on regular date nights where you don’t talk about work or kids; try a new hobby or activity together; reconnect with old friends or family members.

If you’re unhappy spiritually:

• Start keeping a Bible planner, such as My Bible Planner (click to see); create a meditative morning and evening routine; spend time every day doing self-care routines; seek advice from religious or spiritual leaders; listen to spiritual podcasts or music; volunteer to help the less fortunate.

As you can see, there’s no magic wand that can change your level of happiness. It’s up to you to take the action and to implement these tiny steps toward your ultimate goals. Need a system to work through this process of creating tiny habits to change your life? Here’s an excellent book that helps you define the exact process that works for you – Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by B.J. Fogg. You can do this! Time to get your life on track and come out of the fog (no pun intended, B.J.) of pandemic shutdown.

All you need to create a new habit is willpower.

No – willpower won’t get you there! In fact, I’ve found that willpower always fails me in the end. It’s hard to keep up willpower for any length of time. Yes, we can stick to a low-fat 1,000 calorie diet and go hungry for a week or two, but eventually, our willpower fades. And yes, we can do exercise we hate for a while… until we run out of willpower.

But what about getting up to take the kids to school every morning, brushing our teeth, or going to work every day. Those may not be our favorite things to do either, but we do them daily without the risk of running out of willpower. That’s because they have become habits. They are so ingrained in what we do and who we are that we do them without even considering skipping a day or a week. We don’t have to make a conscious decision each day to shower or drive to work. It’s just what we do – a habit.

When you start to think about it, there is an inverse relationship between habits and willpower. When you first want to build a new habit, it takes a lot of willpower to get it done day in and day out. As you start to establish that habit, it becomes easier and easier to do until you don’t even have to think about it anymore. Just being aware of this process helps us stick it out.

While we’re in that transition from willpower to habit, we can use tools to make it easier. Use a to-do list or set a reminder to help stay on track. Find an accountability partner so the two of you can motivate each other and help bolster that willpower when it starts to fade after the first enthusiasm wears off. Even something as simple as laying out your running clothes the night before and keeping your sneakers by the door will make it a little easier to go out for that run.

And that’s the simple version of creating a new lifelong habit. There is much more to creating new habits that stick. And there are tools and hacks to help get you there. Stay tuned…

As much as many of us choose to overlook it, there is a lot wrong with the way most of us currently live our lives.

We sit in chairs all day long gaining weight, we eat processed foods and we face constant stresses from work, from our relationships, and from our finances.

What’s more, we are constantly in demand and constantly ‘plugged in’ and ‘stressed out’. Our phones are always ringing, texts are always coming in, we get a new e-mail every two minutes… And even when most of us aren’t working or being bothered, we have a near addiction to technology that means we’re still unable to really decompress.

And while our attention spans are not really shorter than a goldfish, it is not surprising that our attention has become more demanding. We are always demanding to be entertained as we flip from one video to another or one app to another.

And all this amid a raging pandemic.

Is it any wonder that mental health problems are skyrocketing?

Using mindfulness to escape modern stress is probably a big part of the reason that mindfulness is so popular right now. Mindfulness simply means directing attention in a purposeful manner. Sometimes this will mean focusing on our thoughts (in an objective and non-judgmental way) but in other cases, it will mean simply being more present and focusing on our breathing and our environments.

Either way, the idea of mindfulness is to enjoy calmness and stop the incessant chatter of our minds. Instead of being completely engaged with the world around you, we need to learn to disengage with your thoughts, providing you with relief from stress and from fear and allow you to simply relax and recover.

The opposite of mindfulness is mindlessness. How many times have you realized you devoured the entire bag of potato chips while binge-watching your favorite Netflix series? Or how many times have you suddenly asked yourself “where did my day go”? Often before bedtime, we can’t even remember what we did with our time during the day.

I realize the damaging toll the pandemic has made on our lives. Everyone has suffered in some way. How are we coping? For many, we have tried to escape the reality of it all through overeating, binging on Netflix, or staying glued to our phone or iPad screen.

There is a better way.

It starts with being aware that we are not being aware.

Boiled down to its essence, mindfulness is the observation of one’s own thoughts and emotions. In other words, it means stepping back and then simply being aware of what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking and what you are experiencing. This can then, in turn, be used to help treat a wide range of different psychological problems and to generally improve your psychological health.

The reason for this is that it brings more attention to the way that we handle various different events and to how our thoughts and emotions normally control us. This then in turn allows us to anticipate them, to deal with them, and ultimately to prevent them.

Mindfulness is a broad tool to be used in a number of different ways. In almost every scenario though, the true end goal is to be aware of the present moment and to find an inner calm that often eludes us.

Ready to work on your mindfulness? Start with Designing Your New Normal Mindset to guide you in defining your best state of mindfulness. Available now. Available HERE.