How To Be Happy Every Day

Good health doesn't just happen, and neither does happiness. Achieving or maintaining good health depends on engaging in certain daily practices, and so does happiness..

I’m not gonna lie, I have spent the vast majority of the last five years in a chronic state of near blissful happiness. Keep in mind, that means that for most of a global pandemic, when millions of people around me were dying, even more stressed about their jobs or lack thereof; amidst a seemingly never-ending series of protests and riots in which it seemed like America was burning and democracy was shaken to its very foundations, I was largely living in a state of bliss. I also was not experiencing any of the things that we think we need to be “blissfully happy.”

I was not in a relationship, I did not meet my "soul mate” or the “love of my life”. I did not win the lottery, I did not get any sudden windfall of cash. I did not suddenly get pregnant after years of trying. I did not go on a dream vacation to some exotic locale. Nothing extraordinary happened to me in that time to cause me to be that happy. I was living in the exact same America as every other American, facing all the same fears and realities, but I largely spent most of my time in a state of peace, calm, contentment and, dare I say, joy. To say that it felt almost criminal to experience that level of peace and joy at a time like that is an understatement.

Ironically, during that same time I also experienced an almost overwhelming amount of stress. Looking back, however, I can pinpoint the exact sources of my stress, as well as all of the many sources of my peace and joy. But how can two thing be true at once? How could the first three years of the pandemic be so stressful and so joyful all at once?

Because happiness is fleeting, but so are pain, sadness, anger and stress - if you let them be.

Happiness is a choice, but that doesn’t mean you will be happy every minute of your life.

But you can be happy every day of your life.

What I have come to realize is that by 2020, many of the choices I had made up to that point about what to allow and not allow in my life had caused me to reach a point where my baseline, “natural” or “resting state,” if you will, was one of happiness. Or, more accurately, one of peace, joy, and contentment.

What that means is that while things would happen that made me angry or caused me stress, it never took long to “settle back down” into my natural or resting state of peace or contentment.

If your natural or resting state is one of anger, depression or anxiety, however, whenever anything “good” happens to you, or something happens that brings you happiness or joy, it will not last long before you default back to your “natural” or “resting state” of depression, anger or anxiety.

Although I certainly experienced more than my fair share of financial stress during that time, it turns out that by far the thing that caused me the most stress between 2020 and 2023 was my completely voluntary interactions with social and national media. In fact, I suspect I would have been far less stressed about my own personal financial state if I had not listened to all the doom and gloom forecasts of the national media. This means that by far the largest source of stress in my life was within my power to control! I allowed it into my life! Dare I say even invited it!

In 2015, I started to realize how much stress my interactions on social media were causing me. At that time, I was only on Facebook, but it seemed that every day I found myself engaged in some kind of political debate that left me angry and frustrated. I have perhaps never in my life felt so much like Sisyphus. It was a never-ending battle in which there was never a victory but some new, random foe every single day.

I decided to stop engaging in any kind of political discourse on social media, and the effects were profound and almost immediate. Turns out those algorithms really work. When I stopped commenting on political posts, they stopped appearing on my feed! Interestingly enough, just one year later, I avoided the worst of the vitriol and anger during one of the most heated election cycles in American History. Like so much of the rest of the country, I was shocked when Clinton was beaten, but to this day, I doubt my fighting battles on social media would have had a single iota of impact on changing that outcome.

In 2020, when I made the decision to try and get Robin Thinks going once again, I followed what seemed to be the most common wisdom. I regularly engaged on social media (largely on Twitter this time) to “build a following” through which I hoped to build a subscriber base. Looking back now, that was perhaps one of the worst mistakes I made. Obviously, if I wanted to write “topical” content, I had to keep abreast of what was happening in the world, so I also subscribed to Apple News. It was perhaps the first time in my life that I started following national news coverage.

While I didn’t realize it at the time, my engagement with both social media and national media shot my stress levels through the roof. Part of the reason it took me so long to realize this, however, was that by that time, I had built up so many skills and disciplines aimed at protecting my peace and infusing joy and happiness into my daily existence, it took me a long time to realize how much stress I was living under.

It’s kind of like suddenly starting to stress eat. If you don’t have healthy exercies habits, you may realize fairly quickly (within a few weeks or months) as your waistline expands and your clothes suddenly get tighter. On the other hand, if you have healthy exercise habits, it may take you longer to notice when an unhealthy habit creeps in because you have other healthy habits to counteract it. That doesn’t mean it won’t eventually take a toll; it will just happen a lot more slowly, and you may not notice as quickly.

Ironically, this is what happened to me. Although I knew I was under a lot of stress (obviously) and knew I was stress eating, it took me a long time to realize how much of that stress I was actually voluntarily bringing on myself! Interestingly, since I started limiting my time on social media, avoiding national media entirely and curating my feed more towards cute animal posts, I have started dropping weight. I am actually exercising far less than I did in 2020-2024 and although I have gone back to healthier eating habits (far less takeout, for one), the number one biggest change I have made by far is limiting my exposure to other people’s doom, gloom and anger.

While I never watched the news, during that time, I did regularly read news columns from various sources (preferably those that offered the most balanced reporting, although their biases almost always remained patently clear). Eventually I stopped paying for a news service subscription and just started reading the headlines every day. All I need to know is what is happening, not what I am supposed to feel about it. Now I rarely even do that. Believe it or not, I am as up-to-date as I want to be and know all I need or want to know about what is happening in the world. Which is actually far more than I really need to.

What I have learned is that just like exercise, if you do something every day that makes you happy,. those small actions over time have a profound cumulative effect. So, here are some of the things I do almost every day (or as often as possible) to help lower my cortisol levels and increase my serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin levels.

1. Get in, on or near water

One thing I have learned about myself is that water heals my soul. It is next to impossible for me to be near water without wanting to be in it, even if it’s just my feet. (Water here gets cold!) This is a creek that is just 30 minutes from my house, and I credit it with doing more than almost anything else to help maintain my peace, joy and calm throughout the tumultuous chaos of 2020-2023.

I spent almost every weekday afternoon here and I believe it had a profound impact on my mental, spiritual and emotional health, which in turn obviously has profound effects on my physical health. In fact, I think if I would have just done all the things I did to maintain good mental health, but stayed off social media, I would have sailed right through the pandemic, with very little stress at all.

What’s interesting is that long before I learned about grounding (also known as earthing), something deep inside me led me to take off my sandals and just stand on the rocks barefoot for a few minutes every time I was there.

Although this creek has a very short swimming season (that water is COLD - but also great for cold plunging!), thankfully, I can paddleboard for a much longer portion of the year. Extra bonus: This particular lake has no cell service!

2. Go For A Walk

I am also grateful that there is a beautiful park with a small lake and an untouched “nature area” around it just a few minutes from my home. At the very least, I try to get in a 30-45 minute walk every day, although sometimes I only get in 15-20 minutes if it’s cold. If the weather is warm enough, I also try to spend some time walking barefoot through the grass. Although this probably doesn’t qualify as “forest bathing” there’s definitely enough nature to lower my stress levels and give me an emotional and spiritual boost.

2. Cuddle with my dog

Like many people, my social life pretty much tanked in 2020. To be honest, I haven’t put a great deal of effort into rebuilding it since then. I can remember a time when I spent most of my life feeling desperately and painfully lonely. Ironically, I often felt more lonely in a crowd of people than when I was actually all alone. Not once in the last five years can I remember spending a single minute feeling lonely.

Perhaps that is due to spending almost every waking moment with my dog, or finally coming to a place of feeling at total peace with myself, or maybe some combination of the two. Whatever the reason, I haven’t really felt the need to re-establish a bustling social life, because I haven’t felt lonely.

I have friends that I occasionally go out to eat with or go paddleboarding with, but I would say that I spend about 90% of my time alone or just with my dog for company, and honestly, I’m very happy with that. Perhaps it may not be healthy over the long term, but for the past five years at least, it has done me just fine.

In addition to helping me feel less lonely (or not at all) multiple studies have found numerous mental health benefits to spending time with a dog, including lowered stress and anxiety, lowering blood presser and heart rate and increasing oxytocin! (Which might also go a long way towards explaining why I haven’t felt lonely in so long!)

3. Get a massage

Obviously, this is not a daily practice, but I do try and get a massage at least once a month. I do this for several reasons and I believe it offers multiple benefits to physical, spiritual and emotional health.

The first is that I do understand the need for human touch and connection. I do not have a romantic or intimate partner, so therapeutic touch is part of my personal health care regimen (again, possibly a big part of the reason why, in spite of living alone, I am not lonely). Massage therapy has also been shown to have a profound impact on a wide range of medical and mental health conditions, including:

• Anxiety

• Depression

• Digestive disorders

• Fibromyalgia

• Headache

• Insomnia

• Nerve pain

• Postoperative care

• Scar tissue

• Soft tissue strains and injuries

• Sports injuries

• Temporomandibular (TMJ) disorders

I may be one of the few Americans over the age of 50 who experiences zero pain on a daily basis. I don’t have creaky joints, joint pain, back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, hip pain, or - in short - any kind of chronic pain whatsoever. In fact, I feel almost as loose and limber from the minute I get out of bed until the moment I go to bed at night. Although I don’t consider massage therapy to be solely responsible for this, I do consider it to be one of the key factors.

4. Happy Shoes

I love shiny, sparkly things and even more so if they are pink. I also love new shoes. Although I don’t have any waiting on tap right now, (I haven’t been shoe shopping since before the pandemic) I will almost always have a pair of brand new, shiny or bright pink shoes waiting in a box somewhere for when I am having a really bad day or just need an emotional pick-me-up. On any normal bummer of a day, however, there is little that will give me a quicker mood boost that popping on a pair of shiny, sparkly, glittery or bright pink shoes.

So what about you? What is or would be on your happy list if you had one? What are some practices that you can engage in every day to inject a bit of happiness or fun into your day to make sure that you too, can be happy every day?