Search Amazon.com for books about happiness and you’ll get 33,001 results.

But you don’t need to read a book to find happiness. Here are ten popular and easy habits that can give you a positive boost:

10 Habits of Happiness

1. Smile: Move your muscles into a smile to encourage the same positive emotions that make you smile.
2. Write down three positive things every day.
3. Get enough sleep: Inadequate Zzz’s can wreak havoc on your health and happiness.
4. Do something for someone else: a positive feedback loop could explain why happier people tend to give more and vice versa.
5. Spend time with friends and family: social connections affect our happiness.
6. Express Gratitude.
7. Eat healthier: one study tied a Mediterranean diet with decreased incidence of depression. There’s even a diet that suggests foods make you happy.
8. Exercise: physical activity releases endorphins that boost happiness.
9. Go outside: Vitamin D you’ll get from sunlight exposure increases the feel-good neurotransmitter Serotonin.
10. And the most obvious one: only you know what makes you happiest. Identify what that is and make it a habit:

How to Start a Happiness Habit:

Right Now: Pick the easiest habit on this list and do it. I chose #1: Smile.

Then: If you’re on Lift, add a daily habit that makes you happy or choose the more flexible goal Complete Something That Makes Me Happy.

Image© CC Roona-MBH on Deviant-Art 

I’m 30 years old and have been going through a particularly ugly divorce (I suppose they’re all ugly). When I felt like my life was completely out of control, I discovered Lift. I set out to make my bed and floss every single morning. 

I’ve managed to do both of these things for 100 days in a row, and in the process develop the habit of starting my day on a positive note. It also helped me regain some control in my life, no matter how small.

How could a simple, one minute task like making a bed have had such a profound effect on Dave’s life? It’s his keystone habit. 

Keystone habits create positive momentum that increases your ability to achieve other goals

In The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg explains the unique power of keystone habits and specifically, making your bed:

Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget. It’s not that… a tidy bed causes better grades or less frivolous spending. But somehow those initial shifts start chain reactions that help other good habits take hold. (Duhigg)

Making your bed is an especially great keystone habit because it’s easy to build into your existing routines. It takes just a minute or two to make your bed. Most people know how to do it; otherwise it’s easy to learn. The immediate visual reward of seeing a made bed reinforces the habit. Plus the task fits seamlessly into your morning routine.

That brings us to one more reason that making your bed is such an effective keystone habit: since you do it in the morning, you’ll feel the positive effects all day long. 

Here’s how you can start Making Your Bed today:

Right Now: Add the Make Bed habit on Lift. Set up a Lift reminder for just after you wake up or put a post-it note on your mirror/phone/door if you’ll be too groggy to check notifications in the AM.

Then: Make your bed tomorrow morning! If you need tips, this article is full of them including how to make your bed while you’re still in it.

We’ve received a lot of questions about how, exactly, one should meditate since launching the March Meditation Challenge. We asked Lifters in the Meditate habit to share the techniques they use.

Time of Day

Rise and shine, most people on Lift meditate in the morning. 

Does the time of day affect how quickly you benefit from meditation? Our data says not really. Two-thirds of all survey respondents started feeling benefits within a week and that percentage stayed constant regardless of what time of day you meditated. 

Position

Three-fourths of survey respondents reported that they sit on the floor or a chair when they meditate. If you don’t like to sit, you can lie down, walk, stand, or do yoga. One person reported meditating as they swam. The most important thing is to find a position that you’re comfortable staying in for the duration of the session. It’s hard enough to maintain focus without your foot falling asleep! 

The next most popular position after sitting was lying down. Surely you’d fall asleep, especially if you are one of the 86% of people who close their eyes when they meditate, right?  If you do fall asleep, take comfort in knowing that more than half of survey respondents (58%) had fallen asleep during a meditation session at least once. 

Styles

Choosing a style of meditation may seem like the most overwhelming decision to make when you first start meditating but it doesn’t have to be. Don’t be anxious about about choosing the right style immediately. Experiment with different styles, apps and techniques until you find what works best for you. 

“What style of meditation do you practice?”

We see all sorts of styles on Lift. The most popular include:

• Counting your breath: great for beginners.
• Guided meditation: following the instructions of a teacher in person or via an app/recording. Instructors will take you through various awareness excercises like counting your breath, scanning your body, noticing sounds and visuals around you. Great for beginners.
• Mindfulness Meditation: Defined by expert Jon Kabat-Zinn as ‘moment to moment non-judgmental awareness.’ Related styles are Vispassana/Buddhist. 
• Zazen: Seated meditation with roots in Zen Buddhism.
• Yoga incorporates meditation, too. 

Click on the terms in the word cloud to go to a google search of the word. To learn more about different meditation styles, you can also browse the check-in notes in the Meditate habit & ask questions using the comment feature. pjk

Length of Session

We mentioned this in our last post, but when you’re just getting started begin with small sessions and build up the duration over time. Most people on Lift meditated between 3-5 minutes per session when they first began the habit.

Don’t feel like you need to work up to a crazy session length, either.  Lifters meditate an average of 16.8 minutes per session.

Need more help?

44% of people who signed up for the March Meditation Challenge are meditating regularly for the first time. The same percentage of people reported feeling frustrated during their sessions.

What do first-timers struggle with?

• Fitting the habit into their current schedule
• Not enjoying their session/getting bored
• Fidgeting or being unable to concentrate during a session
• Anxiety over whether they’re doing it “right” 

You might be surprised to learn that frustration with your meditation practice didn’t correlate to experience level: you had a 50% chance of feeling frustrated regardless of how long you’d practiced meditation. As a wise Lifter told us:

“Give it time – meditation is a process, not a goal. Follow your own rhythm & you’ll get the results you need.”

If reading this post helped you, please share it on Twitter.