How to Have a Good Day, Every Day #TBT

Today's blog post was originally published last year:

Today's post is based on a podcast from The Art of Manliness:

We’ve all had those days where everything seems to go just right. We set goals for ourselves and we accomplish them. Instead of frittering away our time on YouTube, we’re focused and get work done. Even when we experience setbacks, we’re able to deal with them graciously and effectively. It’s easy to attribute these sorts of days to luck, but my guest today argues that research from behavioral economics and psychology can show us how we can consistently have more of these good days.

I don't know about you, but having more good days sounds like a good thing to me. What are some of the things we can do to have good days?

If you decide to put yourself in a more positive mood, then you suddenly see the world is a more positive place. The research behind this is really robust … Some people know the term “confirmation bias”, others may have heard the term “selective attention”. The upshot for us is incredibly positive because it means that we just have to be a bit more deliberate about how we go into, I don’t know, everything that matters in a day.

You can do this every morning. You can say, “What really matters to me today? What’s my real aim? What attitude do I want to have? What assumptions do I want to have as I go into the day?” knowing that that will shape what you see. If you’ve got a difficult conversation coming up with someone that you think is kind of a jerk, confirmation bias means that your brain will look for evidence that you’re right. You’ll see everything that will be slightly annoying and you might actually miss anything that suggests that the person is trying to be more supportive or conciliatory.

Another way you can make a better day is to reduce the amount of things you have to think about. If our brain is overloaded, we tend to make bad decisions:

You can save your brain effort if you’re trying to remember to do something by deciding on a particular cue. Instead of saying, “Oh, I must exercise today. I really, really must exercise today”, you say, “When I come out from lunch, I will put on my sneakers, whether they’re Nike sneakers or not, and I will go exercise at that point.” By defining a really specific time and a really specific cue, you’re way more likely to allow your brain to remember that this is actually something you want to do.

These when/then’s as I call them or implementation intentions as they’re called by the behavioral scientists just have been shown to increase your chances of achieving your goals by something, like, three hundred percent.

Often, it's difficult to say no to somebody because it usually puts the other person on the defensive. There is a proper way to say no:

The trick then is actually to say no without putting them on the defensive. It’s not hard to do; it’s just quite different to how we normally do it. The trick is to start with the thing that you’re saying yes to. If you start with the thing that you’re saying yes to … First of all, start with something warm and appreciative and “Thank you for your invitation, blah blah blah”. We often forget to do that when we’re stressed about saying no. 

Then say, “I’m really excited to tell you about this book that I’ve been working on for the last four years and … I think things are going absolutely fantastically. It’s very intense, blah blah blah blah blah. As a result, I’m having to make” – and this is where the no comes in – “As a result, I’m having to make some quite tough choices about what I do and don’t do with deadlines looming. Regrettably, that means I’m simply going to have to say no to your very kind request.”

There's much more to it, these are just a few of the highlights. Go to the web page and listen to the podcast and begin having more good days!

Interesting days

Today - International Whale Shark Day, Grief Awareness Day, Holistic Pet Day, Toasted Marshmallow Day, Frankenstein Day and Slinky Day

Tomorrow - College Colors Day, We Love Memoirs Day, Trail Mix Day and Love Litigating Lawyers Day

Next Thursday -  Fight Procrastination Day and Read a Book Day

September 30 - Mud Pack Day, International Podcast Day, International Translation Day, Extra Virgin Olive Oil Day, Hot Mulled Cider Day and Pony Express Day