Top 5 Ways To Make Life More Enjoyable

Top 5 Ways To Make Life More Enjoyable

In this article, I want to discuss some things that you can do to enjoy your life a little bit more to make things more interesting, to make things a little more fun. The mindset shifts to embrace as well as actionable stuff to start doing.

Mindset Shift

First, start with this mindset shift. If you have committed to doing something, go one to two steps above the bare minimum. If you are going on a long drive, make your car cozy and create a themed playlist. If you're picking up a friend from the airport, bring a sign with their face on it and their favorite donut. There are definitely a lot of things in life, but I think it's okay to half-ass. We don't need to go all out for all of the things.

When it comes to the little experiences that essentially make up your life, go the extra mile. Those little experiences make up your days your weeks, your months, your life. So even when it comes to more mundane experiences, go the extra one to two steps to make those experiences memorable.

This can be really easy to action when you sit down and you look at your calendar for the week to come, look at each event that you're going to or activity that you're doing and ask, how can I go all-in on this? What's one extra step that I could take to make this a more memorable and enjoyable experience?

Create More Variety In Your Habits

Another way to create a more enjoyable life is to create more variety in your habits. So in Stephen geyser’s book, Elastic Habits, he talks about how the appeal of a slot machine is because you don't know what you're going to get every single time that you go back. There's variety in the experience, it’s exciting, you don't know what's going to happen.

One way to move past this is to create variety in your habits by giving yourself a list of options. So I like to call this a Habit menu. The habits that you could do to support that feeling are things like meditation, a long walk in nature, as well as journaling. All of those things contribute to a feeling of peace. So instead of committing to doing just one every day commit to choosing one of the three, one of the habits from your menu. 

You might wake up and be like, I'm just going to go on a long walk in nature today, no podcast, no music that'll create a feeling of zen, or you are going to journal on your limiting money beliefs, which will create feelings of zen in the future. 

All of those things are going to get you to where you want to go, but you'll also feel a little less trapped and a little less bored during your days. I think this one is for a certain personality type, but it's definitely something that appeals to me.

Add Creative Constraints

Add creative constraints in the areas of your life where you feel uninspired. Maybe there are some areas in your life where you get a lot of enjoyment but now you feel uninspired.

When you have no creative constraints, it can lead to being complacent, particularly if whatever you've done has worked for you. You follow the path of least resistance because that's kind of what our brains are made to do. And it looks good but then ends up feeling uninspired, and that's where creative constraints can come in.

It cloud be in any area of your life. It can be about the clothes that you wear every day. The post that you put up, the articles that you write, the way that you decorate your home. There are different kinds of constraints that you can use to get yourself inspired again and to turn things that were once fun into something that is once again fine.

Firstly, you have input constraints. So things like time, money, materials. So create jewelry but create your jewelry from only things that were once garbage, create a prototype but give yourself only a day to create it. Create an amazing meal, but use only what is in your cupboard currently to make it. You can also create rules to follow. For example, dress for a week, but use the word magic to inspire you. Every outfit has to be inspired by the word magic.

Learn How To Have Hard Conversations

The next way to create a more enjoyable life is to learn how to have hard conversations. And this very heavy lean on the quote. “Hard choices, easy life, easy choices, hard life”. Because obviously having hard conversations is not a fun time. It's usually not enjoyable. But the benefits that you get after the fact definitely make your life more enjoyable.

That hard conversation could be with yourself, sitting yourself down, having a tough conversation, but a lot of the time it is also with other people in your life. If you think about the problems your friends have shared with you recently, a lot of them are going to be interpersonal.

So things like my mom keep not overstepping my boundaries, my friends are taking advantage of me, my boss keeps on undermining major and meetings that my colleague has no idea what they're doing. 

All of those problems require a hard conversation in order to solve them. But most of them don't get one. There's a lot of talking about the problem feeling frustrated about the problem, but rarely do people actually have a hard conversation with the person that they're struggling with. Not all hard conversations immediately solve problems by no means, but by having them you're taking responsibility for the problem, and you're doing something about it.

Deciding On The Mood That You Want To Create In Your Life

The next way to create a more enjoyable life is something that I have been doing lately, which is deciding on the mood that you want to create in your life and then taking just one step of action to create that mood.

So, for example, right now it is winter where I live. I hate that cold weather. I really don't like gloomy days, but I've decided this year that winter will not be miserable. It will be cozy. Creating a cozy mood in my house isn't really an ongoing commitment. There are just a few little steps that I can take to light some candles, getting some really warm lights. So to embrace this mood, it's not like I'm creating a list of daily hi height habits to do in my life.

I'm doing one-step actions that I never really have to revisit. Cozy just means candles. It means very light. It means blankets. It means warm lights in your home. These are little changes that you can make to your environment to create a cozy mood.

And a lot of moods can be created with just one-step actions. Decide on the mood that you want to create for your home, and then take a little one-step action to start creating that mood.

I appreciate you so very much, and I will see you soon.