Why you need The Happiness Planner
Sometimes life can get a bit crazy, so we're always looking for things you can do and products you can buy to help keep your mind on track! One of my absolute favourite things to help with this is The Happiness Planner, a notebook/diary you fill in every day to help keep you focussed and motivate you be highlighting the positive things you've achieved.
You've probably seen them all over your Instagram feed and I can totally see why you might wonder if a notebook can really make you happier, but the beauty of it is that by prompting you to fill it each each day you stay focussed, plus feel happier by being able to map your daily achievements out. I've found it's really helped to highlight what actually makes me happy so I can ensure that I'm always working towards it. Each day you fill in one page which is split into sections such as 'Today I'm Excited About' and 'Good Things About Today' which are great for both reflection and making sure you stay on track. What I've really loved about this is that even on bad days I've always managed to find something to be positive about and that'd kind of the whole point. It's about focussing on the positives and working to change the negatives.
Each page also comes complete with an inspirational quote which I've been finding a real pick me up in the morning. My favourite so far has got to be the classic "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky. I've always suffered from a very real fear of failure and it's something I've been coming more and more to terms with over the last couple of years. If you're interested in TED Talks there's a great one called Do schools kill creativity? by Sir Ken Robinson. In it he talks about how as we grow up we become too worried about being wrong and lose our ability to just give things a go. This must have happened to me at a very young age as I don't think I remember a time when I wasn't worried about getting stuff wrong! Pages in my notebooks had to be perfect and accidental spelling mistakes were a nightmare. As an adult I now realise that you can't always be perfect at everything and sometimes you will fail but you'll never achieve anything you want unless you put yourself out there. Nobody is going to hand you anything and it's important to be brave. So far The Happiness Planner has reminded me of this even more and although I'm not 100% there yet, I'm trying my best.
If you want something with a bit less structure, this sort of thing could easily be achieved with a notebook and some colourful pens - you'd just have to make sure you keep motivated without the prompt of owning The Happiness Planner itself. I couldn't reccomend writing things down more though, just getting stuff out of my head and onto the page has been the biggest benefit by far.
