The Happiness Checklist

Every now and then I get really upset at the rate my life is going. I get days that are so very slow, and I get days where I can hardly take a breath. C'est la vie, that's life, etc. But what I hate most are the days, sometimes weeks, that pass without doing something valuable. One should spend one's life doing something new, learning something new, and adding value!!!! The value could be to oneself but it is preferable that the value is added to the world. My favorite quote after all is:"Make a dent in the universe"

If you, dear reader, have been following up with my blog, you would know that I come up with all these plans for action, calls to arms, sudden surges of energy maybe. I never follow up because let's face it, I never maintain anything. It's a missing culture in the world, especially in Egypt. We are not brought up to maintain projects and to keep them running, we try to get on track and once we're on it, we don’t really care anymore whether or not we fall off the wagon, we care about the ‘A’ but we never try to keep it.

So I’ll keep this short, I get really depressed whenever I feel like I should have been doing something and I don’t. So I thought, since I’m so horrible with doing what I plan to do, I am going to create a checklist, yes another one. Duh! I know it doesn’t really work with me all that well. But I thought I’ll make a different kind of checklist this time, I’ll keep it simple and open, I will not limit myself to specific tasks as much as I will limit myself to specific outcomes. I better just give out my checklist and then explain it.

Note: this is daily

1. Write
2. Learn
3. Have fun
4. Socialize
5. Keep the faith
6. Pump the energy
7. Do something to help
8. Work
9. Laugh
10. Family in mind
11. Remember the dead

If I spend a day where I:

1. Write anything, since it's where I feel most productive
2. Learn something new, whether it be at work, through a book, or even some trivia
3. Have fun by watching a movie, going for a walk, or dancing to a nice tune
4. Talk to people, chat with people, meet people, friends, family, anything
5. Make sure I don’t forget my religion by reading Quran, praying extra, or even talking to God
6. Stay energetic, walk, exercise, dance, jump up and down
7. Help someone at work, donate money, help in a charity, teach math to my kid cousin
8. Make sure I work on something really, truly, and from the heart so I feel a sense of achievement
9. Laugh my heart out at a joke, tell a joke, make fun of the world
10. Keep up with my family, close. Or distant relatives
11. And finally, make sure I remember one dead person I care about and something to keep their memory alive on this earth

The best thing is that they’re so easy, I can mix them up, like socialize and keep up with the family, remember my late father as we talk, crack a joke about the old times, and it wouldn’t hurt going for a walk as we do it. If I do all the above, I think I will always be happy. I think if I miss a couple of items the world won’t fall apart, but let's call the above the optimum minimum.
And the best thing about it, anything will do as long as I keep in mind why I’m doing it. Easy right? Oh well, I hope I follow up on that one day and say it works great for me, but meanwhile, would you try it too and tell me if it works for you?

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