Introduction to your 21 Day Happiness Practices Challenge

Module 1: Lesson 1: Hello, and welcome to the 21-Day Happiness Practices Challenge. I’m really excited to get started with you. I hope you’re feeling that way too. If there are any doubts, any trepidation, or any questions you still have, that’s why I’m doing this video. I want you to go into this feeling excited, calm, and motivated. And hopefully, in the next few minutes, I’m going to answer any questions that might be getting in the way of that. So firstly, as you’ll have read about or watched on a video, this is a challenge that I would actually say is less of a challenge and more of an opportunity. It should be an enjoyable, accessible 21 days for you to work with your happiness in a practical way. And I promise you that after 21 days, you will walk away with practices that you really want to keep continuing to slot into your life. And that’s because you’ve tried them, you’ve found that they respond to needs that you have, they’ve supported your positive emotions, and over time they have supported your wellbeing. So not only will you have your own toolbox of practices, you’ll also feel more empowered. And by using these practices over the next 21 days, you’ll hopefully be feeling calmer, more energized, more in control, more present—whatever it is that you feel potentially has room for improvement for you at the moment. So, what am I going to be including? Over the 21 days, or longer if you want to take longer over it, I am including and sharing with you 20 practices. And on the final day, a reflection and planning practice. Of the 20 practices, the majority are what we call Positive Psychology Interventions, or PPIs for short. That means they are exercises that have been tested by Psychologists repeatedly over time with various groups, and have been shown to give an uplift to positive emotions and, when practiced over time, to wellbeing as well. The key thing that makes them even more powerful is that when you are selecting the practice for yourself (rather than being told to do it), there’s an even higher uplift in how it makes you feel. So, for that reason, I’m building some flexibility into the program. Basically: a choice of 20 practices, a final practice to help you re-embed everything, over 21 days if you want, or longer if you need longer. I’m dividing the practices into five different themes, as I’ve done the other times that I’ve run this program. These are: Mind Time, Movement that Feels Good, Gratitude, Self-Compassion, and Pro Social practices. In each of the themes, there are either three, four, or five practices for you to choose from. For instance, with the first one—Mind Time—there are three practices. I’ll talk you through each one, and over the three days I’ve allowed for that theme, you can decide whether you just try one and repeat practicing that because it really resonates with you, whether you try a different one each day, or whether you try two. It’s totally up to you. I’ll also give you some tips on how you can personalize these a little bit more. Some of them are practices that take one minute and you might do them repeatedly throughout the day, spontaneously, when it feels right. Others might be the sort of thing you want to plan for and carve out 15 or 20 minutes for, once over the theme’s period. So, I’ll be giving you tips on each of these. They’re all slightly different in that way. The reason you can feel confident going into this is because, as I mentioned, I’m mainly using PPIs. Where it’s not a specific PPI, there’s a lot of evidence around the practice type chosen—for instance, in Movement that Feels Good we have a couple of practices that have been adapted —and I’ll be sharing the insights around those with you. I’ll also be sharing psychological science on each of the practices, because if, like me, you enjoy reading about that kind of thing, it can give extra conviction. You can think, “Right, okay, if it works for others in that way, then that’s really going to work for me.” If that feels too much, skip past the science and just do the practice. Keep this as easy and accessible as you like or go deep and use this as an opportunity to really learn more about the science behind these practices and why they work. Why 21 days? Lots of people talk about 21 days being the optimum time to change a habit, make or break a. I would say there isn’t a lot of evidence around that but it’s a helpful steer. The length of time needed depends on so much including the habit, how firmly it’s embedded, and how complex it is to integrate into your life. What’s more important is what we know about neuroplasticity... Neuroplasticity refers to our mind’s ability to rewire our brain. So, let’s say you have a habit that’s firmly fixed in place that you want to change. That may have what we call a superhighway in your brain between different neurons. When a certain trigger happens or initiating event or a certain time of day comes, that superhighway lights up, and it’s really easy for you to do that existing habit, for instance, knowing when you go downstairs in the morning, the first thing you do is walk to the kitchen and put the kettle on for instance. This may have been done so many times that you almost do it automatically without effortful thought. Conversely, when we start to integrate a new habit, a new response, a new way of being, or a new thought pattern, we need to start doing that with ‘attention and intention’. It can feel effortful when we’re doing something new. It can feel clunky. That’s because we’re essentially carving out a new mini pathway in our brain between neurons – a pathway that hasn’t been used before. Over time, when those same neurons fire together day by day, week on week, that little pathway becomes a superhighway. The saying used for this is ‘what fires together, wires together’. So when you first try some of these, it might feel effortful. You might think, “Is this ever going to become a habit?” But remember, what with what we know about neuroplasticity (i.e.: our brain’s ability to change), we know that it really is possible. With some of these practices, you’ll do them repeatedly. Others you’ll try and think, “That’s not quite right for me,” and you’ll move on. With the five-theme approach, depending on how much time you have and what appeals, you simply pick what appeals to you and what you find works. For instance, in Mind Time, I’m presenting you with three practices. You might feel like one really speaks to you and you want to do that each day for three days, or you might pick two to try over those three days. Then when we move on to the next theme, you can either leave your Mind Time practices behind (or put them on pause) as you start the next theme, or you can layer up—keeping your favorite practice(s) from Mind Time and add one or two more from the next theme. Flex it as much as you like. The idea is that you feel a sense of community and support from being in this challenge, but it’s not rigid... you may all approach it slightly differently. At all times, you can ask questions in the discussion to help you choose and apply practices, and you can personalize as well. If something feels like the wrong time of day, change it. Personalize these as much as you like so they fit into your life with more ease. One last thing to mention is something called Think-Feel-Do. I use this to simplify our approach to working with happiness and wellbeing. We can work with our Thoughts and focus, we can work with our Feelings, and we can take practical actions and Do things to make us happier—and they all interact with each other i.e.: when we work with our Thoughts, it influences our Feelings, and that can change what we Do and how we show up. Similarly, when we support our feelings, like in the self-compassion theme, that also changes our thinking and how we show up. If that way of thinking about it is helpful for you, great. If not, put it to one side. That’s it. The main thing to say is that it’s bite-size, accessible, and you can personalize as much as you like and I’m here for you to ask questions. Enjoy it. I’ll see you in the first theme!