The Book Backed By Research
Not long ago I read the book “The How Of Happiness” by Sonja Lyubomirski. It was a good read. From the official website for the book: “The How of Happiness offers a new and potentially life-changing way to understand our innate potential for joy and happiness as well as our ability to sustain it in our lives.”
The author and her colleagues suggest a number of way to improve your level of happiness. Examples included counting your blessings…but not too often for it then becomes more of a routine must-do effort rather than a practice to increase your level of happiness.
An Act That Can Improve Happiness
With all due respect to Dr. Lyubomirsky and her colleagues, they missed one everyday occurrence that can impact your happiness-at least it does for me.
And that occurrence is shopping for dairy products. The shopping by itself isn’t that exciting but what can bring me joy is looking at the expiry dates. Here’s an example from the store today.
And When You See the Expiry Date
Picture this-it’s January 10th-the wind is blowing, the snow is falling and you are tired of putting on jackets, toques, gloves and boots every time you step outside. Then you are in the dairy section of your local grocer and being the wise shopper you check best-before dates as you shop. How great is it to see that the cream cheese is telling you spring is around the corner!! May 12th can’t be that far off if the cheese is guaranteed to be of good quality till then. By then we will have small plants ready to go in the garden, we will be itching to start planting seeds, a few games of golf will be under our belts and the bicycle will be serviced and ready to go!
No need to point out to me though that expiry dates can conspire against happiness and good moods depending on the season. If you buy dairy products on a beautiful late fall day and expiry date is January-well, you get my (snow) drift.
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