5 Simple Things That Amp Up My Happy (aka: Global Happiness and What it's Good for)

You know what I think about a lot? The fact that Eskimos have 50 words for snow. There are so many moments where I wish we had 50 words for something, too. I feel like our language is so ripe with labels and stereotypes—but they're all generalizations. It's so hard to be specific! When someone says they're "happy," it doesn't give us a lot of information. Happy about what? Love? Career? Lifestyle? A compliment she just received? Everything in the universe? It might not seem like it matters to specify exactly what kind of happy you feel, but I've found that breaking it into categories helps me recognize which areas of my life need a little happiness 'maintenance.' I would love to come up with 50 words for "happy," but that would take weeks, so I'll break it down to the two categories I've used to define my own happiness, instead: Personal & Global.

Personal Happiness is all about what we internalize—in short, it's emotional. How are you taking care of your emotional needs? Are you being kind to yourself? Are you allowing yourself to ask for what you need?

Personal happiness is pretty much what we associate with "happiness" in general. It's all about us and our feelings. It's the little bubble that surrounds our bodies every day. It's very "me me me."

Global Happiness is about what we do to create a happy environment for ourselves. It's less about what's happening in our heads and more about what's happening within our lifestyle. What daily rituals are we feeling good about? What are you actively doing in your life that contributes to 'the feels'?

Global happiness can extend to other people, too, because your social life is directly linked to your lifestyle and because there's something very real that we get out of how we treat other people.

Like I said, we tend to associate personal happiness with general happiness, so global happiness is often forgotten. But your global happiness has a huge impact on your OVERALL well-being and can bump up your personal happiness in a really big way. Over the last year or so, I've discovered the following activities have contributed to my global happiness:

Making a ritual out of brewing coffee every morning.

This is one of my favorite moments in the day and it's the very first thing I do. I've come to realize that most people enjoy the convenience of quick-brewing machines and all that—and it might be a little strange to enjoy the time it takes to make pour-over coffee every day—but this has become a serious ritual and I love it. Because I'm an active participant in the brewing process, I have to focus on the task at hand, and for as long as it takes (which isn't even that long) it forces me to slow down and live in the moment. It's like a mini-meditation(ish). Plus the smell is intoxicating and when it's all over, I get my most favorite treat!

Walking my dog.

I've always loved walks. Having a dog to walk makes me feel less like I'm that girl who walks around the neighborhood aimlessly and more like I have a purpose. But really, walking my dog is a cover: it's a way for me to mentally check out and literally smell the flowers. I take lots of deep breaths, do my best to look up at the sky often, and think about how beautiful this moment in time is (even when I'm staring at a cement wall in the rain). Oh, and my dog gets something out of it, too, which also makes me feel good.

Fun fact: before I found Ronin, I volunteered at the local shelter and walked shelter dogs to put my desire for walks to good use. The good feels were amplified knowing I was giving an animal a little taste of freedom. I highly recommend this route if you're big on walks, too!

Attending pilates (or yoga) classes.

I am okay at exercising on my own if it involves running outside. That's about all I can swing solo. I'm not the best at doing crunches on my own volition. Going to classes does something for me that I can't do on my own—it feeds my energy and my attitude. The group environment makes me feel like I'm on a team—it connects me to total strangers for approximately 60 minutes. And when I leave, I feel like I could lift a car off a small child if I had to. Classes are where I typically have the best creative ideas, too. Something about being in the moment... :)

Weekend hikes.

I'm lucky to have a whole lot of hiking options within driving distance and they feed me much in the same way that walks do, but on a larger scale. Instead of inhaling the scent of shrubbery, I'm inhaling something a little bit closer to (but not quite) the wilderness. The expansiveness of the scenery reminds me of how small I am in comparison, which is as exhilarating as it is humbling. This also tends to be where I have the best conversations with friends.

Seeing the ocean.

Again, a perk of living in Los Angeles. But honestly, there are days when my head's in a fog and all it takes is a 5 minute drive to the water. I hardly have to get out of the car—I just have to see the ocean. I just have to witness that it exists. And just like that, I feel centered again. My thoughts, which are often swimming through my head at a million miles per minute, are put on pause. It's like my brain goes, "whoa, look at that," and all my thoughts stop to look at the water, too. It's magic.

So those are the activities that bring me global happiness. My guess is that you have a list like this, too. But have you ever thought about it as being critical to your global happiness? The beauty of defining activities as being critical is that you start to prioritize them accordingly! And the beauty about this list is that all of the items are accessible for me on a daily basis. They're not huge asks, so I don't have to quit my job or change my lifestyle dramatically to have these moments. They're little things that I can do, and appreciate, to feed my happy.

// Don't get me wrong, I also have a wish-list of activities that are not as easy to access (travel abroad, etc) and even though I can't do them daily, when they do happen I'm at the very least aware of what they mean to me. //

What I'm trying to say with all of this, is:

Are you paying enough attention to YOUR global happiness?

This weekend might just be the perfect time to jot down the activities, daily rituals, or habits that contribute to your global happiness. If you find you have been neglecting this area of your life, take some time to write out a list of ideas and start penciling this stuff into your calendar! Is there ONE thing that you can do each day that would boost you up (my coffee brewing thing, for example)? Maybe there are a few!

Figure out a way to do AT LEAST ONE THING that contributes to your global happiness EACH DAY.

Prioritize that ish! Find a way to squeeze it in there—and if you feel like the stuff that's weighing you down (work, etc) is getting in the way of accessing these activities, ask yourself how you can create some wiggle room for you. The goal is to always feel like you have a balance — you can sacrifice time for work, sure, but the way to do that without losing your sanity is to claim some time for you, too.