3 Quick & Easy ways to pick yourself up when you’re down ❤️
Life can be tough and overwhelming sometimes 🥺
Here are 3 quick and effective strategies I use to optimise my well-being on a daily basis.
1. From “have ” to “get”
We love complaining about everything we “have” to do.
I have to go to work today.
I have to wash the dishes tonight
I have to reply to all of these emails.
All of these things may be true, but what if we re-framed it by just changing “have” to “get”?
I get to go to work today.
I’m so bloody fortunate to have a job despite a global pandemic!
I get to wash the dishes tonight
I love that feeling when my kitchen is super tidy, and whilst I wash the dishes I can listen to a podcast from any of my favourite thinkers in the world and grow my intellectual toolkit!
I get to reply to all of these emails.
So many people are reaching out to me and I have an opportunity to build a connection with each and every one of them.
It’s such a tiny shift in language, but it completely shifts my mindset from one of victimhood to one of empowerment. You don’t have to do anything — you’re lucky that you get to.
2. Appreciation voice notes
No matter how my day is going, I try to send 3 short (30–60 seconds) voice notes every day to 3 different people in my life. I often reach out to old friends who I might have lost contact with but have had such a strong bond with in the past, but also newer friends, someone you just met once at a party, it honestly doesn’t matter.
The voice notes are always different based on how I feel on the day, but my voice notes this morning sounded something like this:
Hey [name]. I just remember that time when [insert funny memory from back in the day that you both shared]. We haven’t spoken in ages but when thinking of you I’m reminded by how [e.g. generous you are], like that time when you [the time when they demonstrated that positive trait]. I’d love to catch-up and am curious to hear what’s on your mind these days. Sending you peace and love.
For me, this is such a great start to the day. My mindset is one of gratitude and I feel good about saying nice things to people, and who knows, the person on the other end may be having a rough week and this voice note is just what they needed to perk them up (I’ve actually been told that by 3 pepole in just the last 5 days!).
3. Practice Gratitude
I think about gratitude both on a macro level and a micro level.
On a macro level: we’re ridiculously lucky to be alive. There’s something like a 1 in 400 trillion chance of even winning the lottery to becoming a human being. Of those 1 in 400 trillion, I happen to be born in the late 20th century in an economically developed country where I’ve never had to fear for my life whilst walking to school due to a civil war, I’ve had the freedom of speech to say pretty much what I want when I want without much repercussion, and scientific progress has meant that my life expectancy is twice as much as my ancestors from just a couple of hundred years ago.
Not bad.
On a micro level: think of all the amazing people in your life who care about you, all of the things you get to do and people you get to see on a daily basis, the beautiful memories you’ve accumulated with so many beautiful people throughout your life.
Get a pen and paper and try to write down some of your own gratitude notes — both macro and micro. I can guarantee that you’ll have a lot to write.
These three tactics are by no means prescriptive: different things work for different people (I know tonnes of people who shriek at the thought of a voice note 😖), so make sure to adapt these to you.
And remember, true happiness is the absence of the search for happiness (more on this in a future blog 😎).
