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It’s that time of year when our eternal pursuit of happiness gets shifted back up the to-do list, as we focus our energies and plans on the big achievements and radical life changes that we hope will make us ‘truly happy’. But what if we could make ourselves ‘default happy’, just by embracing the ordinary?

Author and journalist Catherine Gray’s new book The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary implores us to celebrate the normal and average (but joyful) things in our everyday lives. After she quit drinking, she started exploring how to change her default mode from “dissatisfied and disenchanted” to “content”. Here she tells Woman’s Hour seven things she's learned along the way…

Our brains are naturally negative

“We have this ancient hardwiring to be negative, which was really useful back in the day when we were hunter gatherers. But in today's society it actually works against us and creates all this anxiety and depression,” says Catherine.

“In order to override it you need to use some tricks, such as gratitude, random acts of kindness, and simply noticing the positives, rather than letting our negatively-biased brains autopilot to all the negatives.

“Most of us are living average, normal lives. We have these flashes of extraordinary moments but they don't last very long... most of [life] is workaday and a bit humdrum and pedestrian. So why not embrace the joy of the ordinary? We've got nothing to lose.”

Being thankful for the little things can be life-changing

“It's a wellbeing cliche, but other than exercise and meditation, gratitude is one of the most science-backed things that you can do to give your mental health a boost,” says Catherine.

“Six years ago I was suicidal. When I quit drinking I was still very low so I started researching how to change that. I kept coming up against gratitude and ‘finding beauty in the everyday’, and even though my Britishness was like, ‘that’s way too cheesy and twee for me’, I gave it a go. I joined a gratitude group on Facebook and started writing gratitudes every day and it completely turned my mental health around.

“[I discovered] eight gratitudes a day is the perfect amount, any more and you're diluting it. You don't want to say over and over again, ‘I'm grateful for my dog’. You need to find the specific thing about the dog you're grateful for. Maybe you two had a really nice walk that day? I’ve been doing it for six years which means I’m literally looking for things to be grateful for, which means that I find them. It’s confirmation bias, it’s just psychology. It works.”

Make yourself a ‘happiness list’

“We’re not supposed to be happy all the time, we’re human - we get angry and low and sad and that’s fine, but you can make your day better if you engage in happiness as ‘an activity’,” says Catherine who now swears by her own ‘happiness list’.

“If I wake up and I'm in a bad mood, which happens, I’m not a morning person, then I think of my happiness as kind of a choice. I've got a list of 26 things that make me happy. They range from dancing around the kitchen to stroking a dog to writing... nature features a lot. Most of the things on this list are free, I can access them on an everyday basis and if I pick just a few of them it generally shifts my mood.”

Get off ‘the hedonic treadmill’

“When something good happens to us it wears off really quickly,” says Catherine, a theory that is known as ‘hedonic adaptation’.

“So say we get a promotion or we buy a house, we get married or we have a baby, that will wear off quite quickly - and then we start chasing the next thing. We’re stuck on a treadmill. One of the ways you can override the hedonic treadmill is through gratitudes. You can undo it, it’s just a matter of thinking your way out of it and changing your perception.”

Don’t expect relationships to play out like a romcom

“Romantic comedies tend to set up this notion that you meet someone and that's your ‘happy-ever-after’, and ‘they complete you’ or whatever. That's just hollywood fiction. Relationships are messy and tangled and fraught with misunderstanding. Living together is hard and anyone that tells you different is either in denial or lying!,” says Catherine.

“When you first meet your partner, they're amazing, everything's fresh and new and wild. But you inevitably ‘hedonically adapt’ to them. Even if you're dating Liam Hemsworth or Mila Kunis. So as long as you know that no matter who you're with that's going to happen, then you can adjust your expectations.”

Catherine adds: “The negative bias is really strong in your relationships as well. One study showed that we need five positive experiences in a relationship to outweigh one negative experience. So, bear that in mind. If you have a big argument, try and make the next day a bit better.”

Celebrate your ‘done’ lists

“I love to-do lists, I have three on the go at any time. But there's a really fascinating thing called the Zeigarnik effect which states that people tend to remember unfinished or incomplete tasks better than completed tasks. On the average to-do list you only tick off about six out of ten items. So you’re [naturally] focused on the four that you didn't do. Now I try and remember the things that I have done as well.

“One thing I do in the new year is write myself a letter, to the ‘me’ of a year ago, saying ‘in a year you will have done all these things and experienced this setback, but you dealt with it well...’. Anything, from a tiny thing I've learned, like how to tumble turn when I'm swimming or how to make bread. That boosts my self esteem, because these things just fall out of our heads unless we hang onto them.”

Remember when you wanted what you have now

Catherine quotes a greek philosopher, Epicurus, who said: “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

“That is so true when you think about,” says Catherine. “A year ago I really wanted to live on my own, I was done with house-sharing and I wanted furniture so that I could feel like an adult. Now I have these things, but of course now I'm thinking ‘I want to buy a flat’, and ‘I want to make my flat look like Soho House’. You forget that what you have now is what you always wanted. And you made it happen! So you need to consciously remind yourself.”

You can listen to Catherine Gray's interview, or any episode of Woman's Hour, right now on Â鶹Éç Sounds. Catherine's books The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, The Unexpected Joy of Being Single and The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary are available now.