How by Investing 1 Minute a Day for a Month, Anyone Can Have Happiness on Tap

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MMS, The 3 step system for gratitude on demand

Feelings are much like waves, we can’t stop them from coming, but we can choose which one to surf

– Jonatan Mårtensson

Mo Gawdat, best-selling author of ‘Solve For Happy’, has a nifty two-step trick to see past anyone who upsets you. And let’s face it, people have a knack for doing so.

Let’s say a stranger is rude to you. Perhaps they cut you up or refuse to let your car into the slow-moving queue.

First, remind yourself that you don’t know what they’ve gone through leading up to that moment. Maybe they can’t afford to lose a second from their own journey because they’re rushing home to a sick child.

Second, say out loud three things you’re grateful for. Could be deep, could be trivial. For example, you might be grateful you’re reading this — not everyone can read, not everyone has access to the internet.

There’s a huge body of literature around the science of gratitude, enough to rabbit hole into for days if not months. Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss and many other titans of self developments swear by it. As does Jimmy Carr, the master if controversial comedian and incredibly deep thinker.

Having used it thus for many years, I affirm that gratitude is incredibly powerful for clearing negative emotions. It gives you a powerful impetus so you can acknowledge their existence whilst choosing not to surf them.

The red mist clears and you’re much, much less likely to lust after the satisfaction of visiting bodily harm on them.

Such a simple technique, such a powerful example of your mind steering your emotions for the benefit of all.

Want to learn something even easier with 100x the impact?

We’ll justify this bold claim a little further below.

All you need is a minute a day for a month.

Indeed, ‘month’ is arbitrary.

You could create something of real value after just a few days, or you could spend several months on the prep (but still start using it after a few days). Or never stop, because it’s so enjoyable to do.

Ready?

First, we need to deal with the biggest lie on the internet

Hashtag TrueStory (image by author using Google Sheets)

Well, really showing my age here. I don’t think many still say LOL — the cool kids certainly don’t.

But it’s needed to explain why MMS is the label we’re going to use.

For those under a certain age, you might be amused to know that before the ‘crying with laughter’ emoji 😂🤣, your forefathers and mothers would put LOL, Laugh Out Loud, to indicate their mirth.

Just as you’re most likely not actually crying with laughter, in 99.99% of cases, the sender was not laughing OUT LOUD.

They probably weren’t even laughing, the lying little toe rags.

Made Me Smile

MMS would be much more appropriate.

So four years ago when a friend forwarded me a challenge on Facebook (again, showing my age, but the underlying principle is platform agnostic) to post something that made me happy for a month, I created an album called MMS.

Because it was so much fun, I continued for a second month. Then a third.

Not long after this I had a really bad morning, for reasons I no longer care about.

Sat on the tram and fuming at the injustice of it all, I clicked on my MMS album.

Hey presto, the dark clouds dissipated as I was reminded in glorious technicolour of the many things I had to be uber grateful for.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words

After 90 days of posting to my MMS album, I had a full length novel to lift me up whenever, wherever I wanted.

Easy as 1–2–3

  1. Set up an album / folder / hashtag / tag called MMS. Add a shortcut so you can get to this quickly.
  2. At a similar time each day*, post a picture / video / quote / anything you want, that Made You Smile. This could take as little as a minute.
  3. Add a short ‘What / Where / When’, if applicable. For example, ‘Holiday with the family, Barcelona, 2016’. If it’s a song, book or film, do so for a moment that you associate with it.

Optional: make it public for the world to see. There’s enough misery in the news, MMS is geniune, heartfelt joy we could do with more of.

Do this for a month. Or however long as makes you happy.

Top tip

Associate step 2 with a daily event e.g. breakfast / bedtime / waiting for the bus.

When someone is a douchebag

  1. Remind yourself you don’t know what they’ve gone through leading up to that moment.
  2. Open your MMS album, choose some at random and read out the captions, preceded by ‘I am grateful for’.

Levelling Up

If you have a WordPress blog, there’s a simple way of randomising your MMS’s rather than always see the same things in the same order.

You need two plugins then it’s done in four easy steps:

“Redirect URL to Post”

Screenshot by author

and

“Yoast Duplicate Post”

Screenshot by author

1.

Install and activate both plugins.

2.

Upload your happy memories, one (not necessarily one photo) per post.

Tag each post with ‘MMS’.

For example: https://qltonline.me/parklife-mms/

3.

After activating ‘Yoast Duplicate Post’, you will see ‘duplicate post’ at the top of the screen.

Screenshot by author

Add a new MMS by duplicating an existing one then replacing the title, photo and caption. You’ll save a lot of time with tags and formatting.

4.

Create a ‘random redirect’ by adding this to your website URL “/?redirect_to=random&tag=mms”.

For example, my website is qltonline.me, so my redirect is

https://qltonline.me/?redirect_to=random&tag=mms

I have this as a ‘Show me a random MMS’ link at the top of each post e.g.

Screenshot by author

btw, I also put MMS at the end of the title, for ease of identification in the posts manager.

On our Spiritual Entrepreneurs blog I use this technique to generate a random motivational quote (an MMS of sorts).

https://spiritualentrepreneurs.me/?redirect_to=random&tag=motivational-quotes

Hours of fun to be had, clicking that random redirect.

The more you add, the greater your vault of happiness gold.

Have fun!

Go on then, show me a random MMS

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By Quy
QLT

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