The good day formula
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
The more time goes by, the more I realize the importance of mindset in everything. Your progress. Your happiness. Your work. Your training. Your rehab. Everything.
It’s why I’ve taken such a deep dive into a pile of self-help and mindset books over the past 2 years, and why I emphasize the mindset side of things with my clients and in my own life.
Not every day is going to be a good day. In fact, it’s guaranteed that there will be bad days. But if you have a proven strategy in place, that you know will put you in the best position to overcome friction on those bad days or make the day more enjoyable in some way, you are going to be way ahead in the long term.
I’ve done an audit of my life recently, specifically of the days that I would consider to be truly good days. What I’ve discerned is that there are critical components, essential ingredients that are present on all of those good days. And most of them involve some kind of mindset/mindfulness or intentionality.
Work, vacation, weekend, doesn’t matter. Here are some of the critical pieces of my personal “good day formula.”
Do something active: intentional exercise, ideally something that you enjoy at least a part of.
Connect with someone else: a friend, a family member, someone in the grocery store, doesn’t matter. Interaction and a feeling of community or belonging can be the difference between a good and bad day
Take at least 5 minutes of silence in your own presence to take stock of where you’re at, how you’re feeling, what you’re struggling right now, what you need right now.
Spend time outdoors or in an environment that is spiritual to you.
Read or write. Ideally both.
That’s it.
It’s not a set formula, per se. More so just a collection of ingredients that I’ve noticed are constants across good days in my life. And the more of them I do in a given day, the better that day will be.
Do a little inventory of your own life, of the last few “good days” you’ve had. What were the common ingredients? Can you construct your own reproducible formula, to create more of those days?
