By Madison Coleman
I recently read a book called The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. (It was absolutely delightful, and I highly recommend it if you’re on the hunt for new books to read.) In the book, the main character, Valency, lives a pretty monotonous and dreary life—her family constantly belittles her and keeps her from doing anything she enjoys (even if it’s something as simple as reading a book), and she feels like she has to be who they want her to be rather than living the life she wants to live. But all that changes when she learns that she has a fatal heart condition and will likely be dead within a year. Valency decides that she doesn’t want to spend her last year as miserable as the rest of her life had been up to that point—she wants to really live her life and be truly happy. So, she leaves her family and starts to live a dramatically different life; she eventually marries a man whom her family despised but whom she adores, and moves to live with him in a little cabin on a beautiful island, passing her time reading the books she loves and exploring the nearby woods. She becomes happier than she ever thought possible.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “Why in the world are you telling me about this book and what does it have to do with anything?” Don’t worry, I’m getting to that. As much as I adored this book, I think it’s also an example of a narrative that we often see in books and movies, or even in the lives of those around us, that can be harmful if we start convincing ourselves that it’s the only correct narrative. That narrative is: “If I’m currently unhappy, the only way for me to become happy is by making radical changes in my life, uprooting and abandoning everything I have and know to become a different person and start a new life.”
Don’t get me wrong—there are things and conditions in our lives that can be making us miserable that should be abandoned if possible, such as abusive relationships, horrible jobs, or unsafe living situations. However, for most people, making huge changes to our lives is either not feasible or we don’t really have one big thing that’s dragging us down and keeping us from being happy. More likely than not, it’s a bunch of smaller things in your life, or things that you yourself are doing or aren’t doing, that’s holding you back from feeling truly happy. Happiness is not often found through the dramatic, life-altering changes, but through the small, incremental ones.
“A happy—or happier—life is rarely shaped by some extraordinary life-changing event; rather, it is shaped incrementally, experience by experience, moment my moment.”
We can construct a happier life by implementing small changes in our day-to-day routine that simply make our lives better and more pleasurable. For example, let’s say that you have a job that you don’t exactly dislike, but you also wouldn’t say it brings you happiness or fulfillment. If you don’t want to or it’s not realistic for you to change jobs, you could try to modify your job duties just slightly in a way that makes it more enjoyable. For example, you could talk to your supervisor and see if there’s a way to tweak your daily duties so that you’re doing more of the ones you enjoy and that you’re good at, and less of the ones that you feel detract from your enjoyment at work. Or you could ask to be involved in a new project that piques your interest so that you’re learning new things and building new skills, which may make you feel like your job is more personally fulfilling.
That may not be completely possible at your current job, so you could try other changes, such as making an effort to build more meaningful relationships with the people you work with so you look forward to seeing them, or making your life outside of work more enjoyable. You can do this by taking up new hobbies, spending more time with your family, volunteering for a cause that means a lot to you, etc.
A lot of us fall into the trap of thinking that if we come home tired after a long day of work, the way to make us feel better is to just rest on the couch, scrolling on our phones or watching TV for the rest of the day. While this method may be helpful on occasion, what will really make us feel more rejuvenated and happier in the long-run is using our free time to do things that are meaningful to us and that really engage our attention, helping us get into a flow state. This is why taking up new, healthy hobbies—such as learning to play an instrument, or learning to paint—can be such small yet incredible happiness boosters in our lives. We can also use our free time to exercise, get out into nature, meditate, and cultivate our relationships with friends, family members, or significant others; these things are all scientifically proven to improve our happiness, even though they’re relatively small changes to make in our daily routine.
Another small change you can make to your life is just making things simpler. A lot of people are unhappy because they feel so overwhelmed with all the things they’re constantly juggling in their lives, causing them to never have time to dedicate to what they really want to be doing. Although there are some things you may not be able to cut out of your life, such as work and school, there are often things you could say “no” to or spend less time on if you really think about where your time goes each day. By simplifying our lives and cutting out the unnecessary, we leave more time for the things that will make us the happiest.
It’s important to note that you probably shouldn’t make all these changes all at once. That’s like going from 0 to 100 too quickly, and can cause you to burn out and give up on all or most of the new habits and activities you’ve been trying to implement. Remember, happiness is in the small things, the incremental changes. Start by adding in time to work on a new hobby once a week, then start working on it more until it becomes a habit to set aside time for that hobby. Then add in a little bit of workout time. Then maybe cut out some of the unnecessary stuff, then see if you can make any changes to your job or school life to make it more enjoyable. Take things one at a time so you have time to adjust to them and integrate them fully as natural habits before focusing on changing something else.
I’m a living, breathing example of this. If you’d told me a little over a year ago that I’d now be someone who meditates and exercises daily, who makes time to read for pleasure and go on walks, and who generally just feels like a happy person, I’d say you were dead wrong. Back then, I thought I was simply too busy for all that—my school and work life took up way too much of my time and I thought I wouldn’t be happy until I’d finally graduated and had the free time I craved. But by making tiny, incremental changes to my daily routine and cutting out any of the unnecessary things, I was able to add in things that have made me way happier without sacrificing any of the important time I spend on work and school. The change was not instantaneous—it wasn’t some radical, “starting a new life” kind of moment. It was just an accumulation of small changes that have made me into someone I wouldn’t have recognized a year ago.
So if you need some kind of big change in your life to make you happy, and if that big change is within your control, do it! Be courageous and recognize that you have to take your happiness into your own hands and do what’s necessary to be the person and live the life you want to live! But don’t ever fool yourself into thinking that one big change will permanently alter how happy you are. Most of the time, it’s in the small things.