Smile and be grateful, 5min per day

It sounds as a cliche, but in fact, one of the key factors for feeling happy, is being grateful. Focus on everything that you have and you like, and all those things that went well, instead of spending your time thinking about what is going wrong in your life.

Also, our brain sometimes likes to be tricked. Every time we smile and act happy, it starts believing that we really are and starts producing more dopamine to make us feel even better.

So I decided to put these two thoughts together and try one new thing in my life: Every day I wake up, and I spend my first five minutes thinking of everything that I’m grateful for. It can be a dessert I had last night, as well as people I’ve met and became important to me. I close my eyes and I smile while I’m thinking about it.

I set the alarm and the time flies by while I’m doing that. The five minutes are gone but, somehow, I’m still smiling inside!