Genial January

What if I told you there was a quick and easy way to significantly improve your happiness, that would take absolutely no time out of your busy day. In fact, it will even give you an extra bit of free time.

One of the most common pieces of advice in happiness literature is to keep a gratitude journal. That’s not what I’m talking about here. (I do recommend a gratitude journal – it only takes a few minutes a day. But that advice is hardly novel, and I promised you something that takes no time at all.)

Let’s talk about why gratitude journals work. When you build a habit of sitting down every day to think about someone or something you are grateful for, you are training yourself to focus on what is good in your life. This shift in your perspective will make you happier overall.

By contrast, many people treat social media (especially Facebook) as a sort of ingratitude journal. They write about things that are upsetting, frustrating, contemptuous, or infuriating.

This has the exact opposite effect of a gratitude journal. Those who engage in this behavior are training themselves to focus on what is bad in the world. And by doing so, they are making themselves unhappier. (Along with their friends who read their posts.)

This is a big factor in one of the biggest paradoxes of the modern age: The world keeps getting objectively better, yet people keep getting unhappier.

Changing your behaviors and habits is hard. It wouldn’t be realistic for me to suggest you give up all negativity on social media forever.

But why not try a short-term change? Many people spend one month a year going without alcohol, or meat, or doing some other sort of cleanse. That shouldn’t be too difficult.

This is where I get to how to improve your happiness without taking any time. Because you don’t have to *do* anything. You have to *not do* something you’ve already been doing.

I’ve created what I call Genial January.

The rules are simple: You try to spend all of January without writing any negativity in your Facebook posts or comments. This includes complaints about your day, traffic, stuff that happened at work, politicians, your crazy uncle/roommate/neighbor, the general state of the world, and other people’s opinions.

The rules to Genial January are simple: You try to spend all of January without writing any negativity in your Facebook posts or comments.

But what about important issues that need people’s attention? Well, you can frame those in a positive way, about what actions people reading what you’ve written can do to improve the situation.* Instead of saying “People are suffering from abject poverty,” say “Here’s how you can donate to help people in poverty.”

If you can’t frame things in terms of positive action for people to take, either wait until February, or don’t post it. That’s the point of Genial January.

You may slip up. That’s okay. Nobody’s perfect. If you find yourself writing a negative/angry post or comment, you’re allowed to just stop and not post it. Nobody will know, and you can even pat yourself on the back for doing a good job of self-editing. Or if you’ve already written it, you can go back and delete it. Or just ignore any responses, turn off notifications for that post, and try to do better going forward.

Try this for a month. And as you do, monitor how you feel. Are you happier? More relaxed? Suffering from less anxiety? Do you have a more positive outlook on the world? Are you spending less time on social media and more time doing productive stuff? And is the time that you do spend on social media more pleasant?

If you do find that Genial January is improving your level of happiness, you don’t have to stop after one month. You can continue on to Friendly February, Malice-Free March, and Affable April. Or even Charming Twenty-twenty**, or Loving Lifetime.

But start with a month-long commitment at first. If you don’t like it, you can always go back to your old ways.

* Don’t try to create a loophole by pretending it’s a positive action to tell people to vote a certain way, protest an evil politician, donate to candidates who opposes an evil politician, or change their deeply held beliefs. That’s just cheating yourself and destroying all the benefits you might get from Genial January.

** That’s sort-of alliterative if you say it out loud, but I’m open to better names.