Adding happiness to today

I get e-mails from The Happiness Institute every Monday.  Most of the time I skim over them and delete but today I read two of the articles it linked to.  One thing from each article caught my attention.


On the list of happiness killers, the one that got my attention was "focusing all your efforts on trying to fix your weaknesses - instead, spend more of your time working with your strengths".


As a girl who loves anything "how to", and being somewhat perfectionistic (I know, it's not a real word but I like it anyway), I know I am very aware of my weaknesses.  But I'd never thought of that being a happiness killer.  It makes sense, though, that focusing on your strengths and making the most of them would be more likely to foster a sense of happiness and well-being than focusing on your weaknesses.


I wonder what "working with your strengths" actually means though.  Is it focusing on them?  Thinking of ways to incorporate them into your daily life?  Or just trying to discover them and define them?  I'm guessing any of that would probably help build happiness.


I also read about some habits of happiness.  I never knew that doing kindness to others sets off the same pleasure centres in the brain as food and sex!  Actually, I never knew food and sex set off the same pleasure centres :-D


So what am I going to do with these two bits of information today?  I think I need to start with kindness to my son.  We're not having a great morning, mostly because he is a toddler and is still learning what needs to happen when Daddy's trying to sleep after night shift.


So, after Daddy's awake, we'll make cookies like he wants to.  And between now and then I might try a little crafty project with him.  Maybe the cookies could be the afternoon snack at the park today?  And of course, using my nice voice and trying to engage with him rather than telling him off all the time would probably be useful.


And I'll be trying to recognise my strengths today.  Other than organising and filling out paperwork correctly, I'm not really sure what my strengths are right now.  I think I've just forgotten them in the daily grind of parenting and housekeeping.  I'm sure they're there, I just need to rediscover them :-)


So there you go.  Two tasks for the day, aside from the standard.  Speaking of which, I should probably have a shower some time soon!  :-D