A new year is a great time to take stock of your life and figure out what would make you happier or make your life easier. As someone who is fortunate enough to have a roof over my head and enough food for me and my family, there's not much I "need" to make me happier. So I often think about how to make my life (and my family's life) easier. This could be improving some aspect of our lives that's annoying or finally finishing (or starting in some cases) a project that has been on the back burner. And while you don't have to wait a whole year to do something like this, there's something psychological about the new year that makes us want to make a change/fix something/change something/get shit done.

There's the self-improvement category of things we should all be doing: eating better/less, exercising more, sleeping more, reading more, starting meditation, maintaining/investing in relationships with friends/families, etc. The list goes on and there's no shortage of things we should be doing. I typically try to pick a few and start making small steps that will hopefully build into better overall habits. I also like to pick the low hanging fruit that are both easy and enjoyable (means I'm more likely to keep up with them). I try not to overcommit and rather than focus on how I should be doing more, I want to congratulate myself on the progress I'm making. For me, the positive reinforcement is far more encouraging that focusing on the negative.

As I mentioned before, I consider myself luck that there's nothing I need to make my life "happy". I have all the necessities in life and therefore consider everything else I get to enjoy an extra bonus. So the best thing I can do is not get more stuff but invest in making my everyday life easy and stress free (or as close as possible). I look at things in my life that I don't enjoy doing or that cause me stress/anxiety and I focus on how I can either remove it from my life or change my perspective so that they don't feel like a chore or cause stress/anxiety. Some things can be solved with money and you can replace something broken or you can buy something new that automates a process that you used to do manually. And for the things that can't be solved simply by throwing money at the problem, you'll have to get creative with problem solving. This could involve a multi-step solution that might spans months or maybe recruiting your family/friends or maybe just brainstorming/online research on the topic. In any case, taking these types of projects as long-term investments is how I focus my efforts on problems that will make my life easier.

And to end this post, I want to encourage everyone to make a commitment to invest in yourself. Figure out what investment in yourself you want to make and use 2023 to make progress towards that goal. I'll be sharing my progress in upcoming posts.