Couples and Individuals: 21 Ways to Feel Good About Yourself

I came across this wonderful list of things you get to do to feel better about yourself. They’re from Dr.Rick Hanson, who is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley and New York Times best-selling author. His books include Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture. Rick is the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neurocience and Contemplative Wisdom.

If you follow these tips daily your personal sense of self will improve, your relationship or marriage will improve, your relationship with your kids, co-workers and friends will also be better. It takes at least a month to create habits so do this every day for a month and let me know how your life has changed. Rick’s tips are the types of things addressed in therapy.

Here’s the top level of the first 10 of the 21 (read the rest and the details here):
1. Do the right thing.
2. Tend to the causes of accomplishment.
3. Love.
4. Do things that ground you increasingly in a sense of your own beingness . . .
5. Relax “self”.
6. Accept yourself as you are.
7. Accept where you are in the four natural, unavoidable stages of learning and getting better at anything.
8. Serve the world.
9. Exercise your capacities.
10. Reflect on your accomplishments and good qualities each day.

Here’s to your increased happiness. Let it be a pebble in a pond, spreading kindness to yourself and those you encounter in any setting.