Welcome to the Happiness Notebook: Your weekly encouragement with tips to help you live to your best, with less stress and overwhelm.

The happiness notebook is s quick guide with ideas to help you build solutions to common problems or challenges we all face as busy professionals, so we can live our preferred and best lives even in the middle of our challenges.

There are 4 parts to each weekly notebook:

1/ A question of the week based on common issues we all face. Yes you’re normal.

2/ A one word idea or suggestion to help you stay in a solution-focused mindset. It’s normal in our busy and often stressed lives to stay stuck in the problems we have. Your weekly notebook is to help you orient your mindset to helpful solutions. Not fake positivity but real life, meaningful, and honest ways to solve issues based in your beliefs, strengths, and values.

3/ Three life principles for growing the weekly word into your daily thinking and actions.

4/ Journaling exercise

So here we go:

Question of the week: How do I carry out all my tasks without feeling rushed and pressured?

This is something I have to work on each day because I always have a list in my head and pressure to succeed that day (all placed on me by me, so I know what that’s like)

For example, it’s a busy work day and I have clients to see, paperwork to complete, and reports to write. I have to remember to breathe and slow my inner pace.

What do I mean by inner pace? I slow down in my breathing, thinking and moving. I stay focused on this one person, page, or thought process. I breathe, drink water, and look at now. Not later or yesterday. And the task takes me just as long anyway.

It’s finding peace and pursuing it as a goal in itself.

This week’s word of the week: Peace

The peace I’m talking about this week is a sense of inner calm and purpose in every small action or task you complete. It’s a state of mind where you are at rest whether you are working or relaxing. Your mind is calm, accepting, and open to what is happening right now, even if it’s a difficult moment.

For example, if you’re with a difficult person, you are curious and open to see what’s happening without taking on board the negative state of things around you.

I know this is hard and that’s why I draw attention to hard things in this weekly notebook. It’s so we can face things openly and see our feelings for what they are; feelings. We accept and nurture our feelings, but we also find healthy solutions to build our best lives in that moment.

I hope this helps as you step into your week calmly, simply, and with a sense of hope in who you are and what you’re doing.

How to stay peaceful in any task you need to complete:

This week, I encourage you with the following 3 life principles for peace:

1. Seek simplicity

Be mindful of the simplicity of purpose in every small or large action you take. You have larger goals, ambitions, and dreams. But for now you have this small job to complete in the next five minutes. Ask yourself: what is the goal of this task right now and what do I need to get it done?

2. Slow the pace and focus on your run sheet

Slow down and breathe as you perform the task. Look up. Stand up. Move around if you need to. Keeping a daily run sheet can help too. This is a short list of must-do tasks to leave the day successfully, without overwork or sacrificing your rest.

3. Question the cause of the stress in this one task

Take a couple of minutes to question where the inner rush to achieve is coming from. Can you do this task with an 80% success rate rather than 100%?

Journaling exercise

In your journal, place three bullet points down the page and list three thoughts to help you slow day and stay peaceful inside. For example “I will do this task with better quality when I slow it down and take the complexity out”

Why Minutes to Happy?

Remember, Minutes to Happy is a community. I help you find habits that build your healthiest life in your mind, emotions, relationships, and body. These are habits you define and build, based on your temperament, ambitions, values, and needs. This is so you can enjoy each day, succeed in work, and love your life. Please check in each week for your notebook.

All the best for your week.

With kindness and your best wishes for your happiness

Gabrielle