Happiness On Demand

Hello Reader,

Happy New Year!

I hope you’ve had time to sit down and relax during the holidays. I’ve certainly had a good time in the past two weeks, seeing friends and family, resting and relaxing.

This time of year is always special to me and I have a small ritual that I repeat almost religiously.

I sit down, meditate, and look back on the past twelve months. How has the year been? What worked? What didn’t? Where’s room for improvement? I even have a notebook for tracking this and writing down my goals for the next year.

However, this year, instead of the usual reflection, I came to a conclusion:

I realized that in life, what you’ve already done matters far less than what you’re about to do.

It doesn’t mean that reflection is meaningless. On the contrary: Learning from mistakes is wise. Determining what works and what doesn’t (regarding your goals in life) is actually pretty high-level spiritual stuff. That is what spiritually “highly evolved” people do, believe it or not.

What I’m saying is that the focus should be more on the future than the past.

So I did reflect, but this time mostly to track my progress towards my vision.

And that brings me to today’s “lesson”: New Year’s Resolutions. Specifically, why new habits are so hard to learn, and what’s an easier way of creating “a new you” during the year.

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I’m not going to give you another list of “habits of successful people.” I’m also very clear about the fact that willpower alone can’t solve everything. If it did, people wouldn’t quit their gym membership at the beginning of February.

Instead, let’s talk about how habits actually work.

From a psychological perspective, habits aren’t just behaviours we decide to do.

They’re automatic responses to triggers.

There’s something that cues the behaviour: time, place, emotion, environment etc. This usually happens without us noticing.

So I’m going to suggest that instead of trying to force new habits through willpower, it’s far more effective to work with triggers.

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Here's how:

Write down what you want in the present tense, using positive language.

For example, if you wanted to quit smoking, you wouldn't write “I will not smoke”, but you would write “I am living a healthy life.”

Your mind responds to images and words literally, not to rules or negations (the best example why negations don’t work is “don’t think about a pink elephant”). It moves toward what you consistently place in front of it.

When you’ve written your message, place it where you’ll see it often, for example on your fridge, your bathroom mirror, on the inside of your front door.

Or better yet, make it your desktop background or phone lock screen. That way, you’re bound to see it often.

That becomes your trigger. Each time you see it, it interrupts autopilot.

Now you have a trigger for breaking old patterns. But we can do better.

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Most of us already have some kind of vision of who we want to be. Fitter. Wealthier. More relaxed. Traveling more. Living with more freedom. The usual stuff.

Think about your goals or vision for a moment. Imagine yourself living the life you're dreaming of.

Now, when you picture this “future you,” you’ll notice that the fitter, healthier, happier “future you” behaves differently.

They talk, think and act differently from the “present you”.

When you think about your future, maybe you see yourself smiling more, chin up, enjoying life. Sitting somewhere warm with your favorite drink in hand. You get the picture.

Normally, we try to plan our way towards that version of ourselves withs step-by-step actions, carefully thought out goals, adopting new habits and so on. Not to say that this is necessarily the wrong way, but there’s a more playful, more powerful way to approach this.

Instead of mapping your path forward, start mapping it backward from the goal.

Don’t ask “What should I do next?”

Switch to asking: “What would my future self do?”

Think about the person in your vision, your “future self”: how would they think in this situation? How would they speak? How would they act right now?

Then, think, speak, and act now as if you already were that person. You don’t have to do this perfectly or all the time. But little by little, you start to give your mind new instructions, and your behaviour, beliefs and habits begin to change.

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And this is where the two ideas meet: the trigger and the WWMFSD question (ok, that acronym doesn’t really work 😂)

Write “What would my future self do?” on post-it notes and place them around your house. Write it on your bathroom mirror. Make it your desktop background.

This way you’ll have a trigger that will subtly guide you with your “new year, new me” plan, by helping you create new habits, thoughts, and beliefs by working backwards from your ideal outcome.

This will help you focus more on the future which, remember now, is far more important than the past. Because it’s, well, in the future. The direction we’re heading. There’s no use dwelling too much on the past.

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TL;DR:

So that’s it. Instead of New Year’s Resolutions, imagine yourself in 5 years. What would you do differently? How would you speak? What thoughts would you think?

Then, write “what would my future self do?” On places where you can see it.

Every time you see the question, adjust your behaviour accordingly.

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I’ll be back soon with some announcements. New things coming up this year, stay tuned!

Until next time,

Think happy thoughts!

​- Atte

P.S. Every year teaches us something, but some years kick us in the butt and force us to rebuild from the ground up. 2025 was one of those years for me. It brought depression, anxiety, and deep emotional reckoning, forcing me to rethink how I live, how I think, and how I care for my energy. You can read what I consider the four most important lessons—out of many more—on the blog.

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