Happiness is Best When It’s Simple and Small
How giving and receiving joy in small ways adds to your quality of life.
Most of us are on a quest for personal happiness. Books line the library shelf dealing with how to find happiness — they cover everything from one year experiments, scientific research, confronting the shadow part of life, and 30 day challenges that will bring more joy.
The self-help niche is also at top competition — there are many voices and the field is hard to break into. There is no shortage of expert opinions on happiness and how to incorporate it.
Just like anyone else, I want to find out the easiest ways to be happy in my everyday life. All of the expert opinions are overwhelming! Knowing where to start in our own lives is more difficult than the experts make it out to be. I’ve discovered the easiest way to start finding happiness is to carve out small moments.
They are simpler than stretching academic concepts around our lives. They are also far easier than swimming in opinions and help us to get to the heart of the matter.
How to Start Setting Aside Time for Small Moments
One of the most helpful ways to find happiness is in giving to others. Often, when we think of giving, the first thing that comes to mind is spending a weekend helping an acquaintance move, giving sums to charity or doing something else that requires a lot of time and money.
Recently, a lady from my church took a few minutes to help my mom out by delivering a care package. It took her a few minutes to throw together a pack with a cookie, candy bar, and can of Rootbeer.
My mom was in a medically mandated quarantine at the time, and it made a huge difference. It reminded her she wasn’t as alone as she felt.
Imagine what would happen if all of us decided to create small moments of joy for others. How life changing that has the potential to be.
The fact is, while these things will make you happier, big sweeping gestures are not the only way to accomplish this mission. There is also the art of small moments of kindness. These come in the form of tiny gestures like:
- holding a door open for someone with their arms full.
- taking out the trash for someone who is older and walks with a cane.
- giving a toy to a child who may not have much.
- taking 10 purposeful minutes to hear someone out.
- baking a batch of fresh cookies for someone who is having a rough week.
While those small actions may not appeal to the “What’s in it for me” mentality, we realize that by giving moments of small joy to others, we find ourselves uplifted and in their response, many times we find joy.
How to Start Seeking Daily Awe
The second way to experience happiness is to enjoy daily awe. This also does not have to be complex. Daily awe has the ability to come in moments like:
- watching the sun rise or set.
- the smile or laugh from a friend.
- finding a new scenic path to work.
- an a’ha moment from something that we have been studying.
- taking 10 minutes to just get into nature and revel.
- seeing the first signs of your favorite season.
Daily moments of awe are everywhere, if we just take the time to open our eyes to them. It takes a searching mindset to find these moments, but once we open our minds and hearts to them, they can be found easily.
These moments of awe provide not only beauty but also inspire us: happiness is not difficult to achieve. By allowing us to take part in them, they remind us of why life is good.
Happiness is easiest to find in tiny moments. They bring inspiration and the ability to recogonize the little things that make life better. These tiny moments add up to greater joy.
The next time you wonder if you’ll ever be happy again, try reaching out or looking around. Often, the sparks of joy are around you. A tiny spark can become a huge fire. Give it a chance.
