Find your happy spot with simple daily habits

January can be a tough month with its short, cold and grey days. But what if you made space for a bite-sized project — one that allows you to make micro changes that could form the foundation of contentment?

Habits are fundamental to happiness says Gretchen Rubin Picture: iStock 

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,” said the lead character in the iconic 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Gretchen Rubin came to the same conclusion while riding a New York City bus in the early noughties. Realising that the “days are long but the years are short” prompted the former lawyer and beyond-busy mum of two to ask herself, “What do I want from life?” Her answer was simple: I want to be happy.

Since then, Rubin, aged 60, has delved deeply into what it means to be happy, first through research and using herself as a test subject to try out practical strategies around becoming happier — the results of which became a New York Times bestselling book, The Happiness Project.

Latterly, with complementary books, a resource-packed website, podcast, and the Happier app, her happiness project has morphed into a happiness movement.

But is happiness what people really seek? If most people asked themselves, “What do I want from life?” they’d answer, “More money,” I suggest to Rubin when we speak over Zoom.

She points out the flaw in my reasoning.

“Probably, if you said to somebody, why do you want more money, they’d say, ‘because I want financial security’, or ‘I want to be able to pay for things for my kids’, or ‘I want to be able to give to charities that I support’, or ‘I want to be able to travel the world’, or ‘I want to have a backyard or whatever’,” she says. 

And what is the point of those things? The point of those things is that they’re going to make you happy.

Fair point. So how do we get happy? Unsurprisingly, it’s a question Rubin gets asked a lot, but there’s no pat answer, she says, because happiness isn’t a one-size-fits-all deal. “The first step, and this is the step that almost everybody overlooks, is you have to really think about yourself and what is true for you,” she says.

To this end, she created a Habits for Happiness quiz on her website, which, through a series of questions, homes in on what habit would make the biggest difference right now towards achieving your goal of a happier life.

I do the quiz. The result is spot on — ‘To be happier, consider a habit that will help you make meaningful progress by taking consistent action’.

Without question, being more consistent in all aspects of my life would make me happier. But here’s the problem: When I set goals or make resolutions, I rarely get past writing them down. I make endless to-do lists, but I never make any headway.

It turns out the vagueness of my ambitions — such as “get more exercise” — is impeding my chances at achieving happiness-building habits.

Gretchen Rubin is a writer and one of today’s most influential and observers of happiness and human nature.

To get happier, what’s needed are “specific concrete actions”, Rubin explains. “Saying ‘I want to get more exercise in 2026’, that’s too vague. Because what does that mean? What are you asking of yourself? What does success look like? How do you know if you’ve done it?”

Reframing my goal as “I’m going to take a 20-minute walk after I eat my lunch”, makes it both specific and concrete, she explains, and if I then add “I can’t go back to my desk until I’ve done my walk”, I am bolting on the belt-and-braces strategy of pairing.

“The strategy of pairing is that two things always have to go together. If one thing happens, then the other thing happens. You can’t have your first cup of coffee in the morning until you’ve taken your blood pressure medication. It’s not a reward, it’s just those things go together.”

Self-awareness — finding out what the issue is for you — is crucial. Pairing might work brilliantly for me, but for someone else, accountability might be key — for example, agreeing with a friend that you’ll text a thumbs-up emoji once you’ve completed your daily walk might be what gets you started and keeps you going.

Habits are fundamental to happiness, Rubin says, and while there are myriad strategies you can employ to help you keep your habit, “you have to start with doing something that’s specific and concrete”.

Small wins are important. “Anytime we cross something off the list, that gives us that little feeling of success,” she says, noting that a win can be as simple as clearing out one drawer. “Small wins can definitely contribute to a happier life.”

Embracing change

While our paths to happiness may look different, a common thread exists: Other people. “Ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists would agree that relationships are a key to happiness. Maybe the key to happiness,” Rubin says. “Any habit you have that deepens your relationships or broadens [them] is something that’s likely to make you happier, and that is universal.”

Opting to consciously cultivate happiness can have unexpected consequences, and achieving long-term happiness can sometimes involve putting up with short-term unhappiness.

“Sometimes it’s getting the clarity to say OK, I really have to demand something of myself, or deprive myself of something, or push myself to do something very unpleasant or difficult, because I know that for my overall happiness it’s important.”

Some of us live our lives deliberately not acknowledging that which is making us unhappy, Rubin says, but the onset of change — such as menopause or an empty nest — can force us to examine what we’ve been ignoring.

A happiness project, she says, tends to bring such issues to the surface. Often, what results is a reckoning that leads to a break-up or a career change, and ultimately to a happier life.

Happiness goals evolve over time. What gave us the warm fuzzies in our 20s probably hits differently in our 50s. Rubin explains that’s because “the reality of your life is different and what you want changes, which is why a happiness project is an ongoing thing”.

When Rubin first tried to understand happiness and quantify what makes a happier life, she realised it could be broken down into four elements: “Feeling good, feeling bad, feeling right, and an atmosphere of growth.”

Feeling good is about “love, enthusiasm, fun, energy, pleasure”. Feeling bad is about wanting less “guilt, boredom, anger, resentment, jealousy”. Feeling right asks, “Does your life reflect your values?” Lastly, there’s growth, which is inextricably linked to happiness.

We’re happier when we’re growing, when we’re learning, when we’re teaching, when we’re fixing, when we’re improving

Rubin says, adding that although growth can be frustrating at times, it is ultimately very satisfying. It’s also linked “to identity, which is a very important aspect of happiness. ‘I’m a person who practises yoga’ or ‘I’m a person who goes on hikes every weekend’, or ‘I’m a person who volunteers at my church’, or whatever it is”.

It’s not selfish to strive to be happier, Rubin believes. “In fact, the research shows that happier people are more engaged in the problems of the world. They’re more likely to try to lend a hand. They’re more likely to vote, to volunteer, to donate money and time. They make better leaders and better followers.”

When we are unhappy, it’s easy to become defensive and preoccupied with our own problems, she says, but “when we’re happier, we have the emotional wherewithal to turn outward and to learn about all the problems of the world, and to imagine how we might play a role in making it better”.

Sometimes people think “it must be selfish for me to be thinking about my own happiness”, she says, “but it’s actually selfless to want to be happier because this is how you arm yourself to play a bigger part in the business of the world.”

Rubin’s tips to kick-start your own happiness project

• Get enough sleep: Most people need at least seven hours, so make sure that you get enough sleep.
• Make your bed: There is something about this little behaviour right at the beginning of the day. It just makes you feel like you’re calm and in control.
• Follow the one-minute rule: Anything that you can do in less than a minute, do it without delay. This gets rid of the clutter and unfinished tasks that drain people.
• Create moments of connection: This is one of my resolutions for this year. Every time I run into somebody in my neighbourhood, I’m going to take a minute to chat and turn it into a real engagement. There’s research showing that even a [fleeting] moment of connection tends to boost people’s mood.
• Turn your phone to grayscale: Take away the colour. It’s going to be a lot less inviting and compelling if it’s in black and white.
• See gretchenrubin.com