What was the best part of your day yesterday?
I’m not just asking to be nosey; this question is today’s Mental Sunshine!
I love to ask this question, rather than the usual “how are you”
At the end of a long day, asking someone “what was the best part of your day” invariably elicits a much more positive response than the bog standard “how was your day”
In asking someone about the best part of their day, you challenge them to find a positive in what might have felt like a long, boring or perhaps stressful day.
It’s a good question to ask yourself too.
Perhaps you could take it in turns to go around the dinner table in the evenings, saying what was the best part of your day.
As humans, we have evolved to be alert to threats. We naturally look for negatives, things that could harm us and ultimately kill us.
That’s what has allowed humans to survive all these years!
But these days, we’re mostly safe.
We don’t really need to be looking out for tigers or rogue tribe members with a club in their hand!
We can train our brains to look for the positives, and asking ourselves and others about the best part of our day is a great way to make a start on this.
You don’t need to have won an award or finished a big work project.
Some days the best part of my day is swimming in a freezing lake!
Other answers recently have been the glorious, clear blue sky on the way to work, a phone call from my wife and making someone laugh on a photo shoot.
There’s one strict rule with this though – your “best thing” in your day absolutely cannot be the absence of something negative.
You can’t say the best part of your day was not getting rained on, or not sleeping in.
The trick with this would be to reframe it as “I managed to arrive at work dry and smiling despite the best efforts of the weather” or “I woke up bright as a button as soon as my alarm went off”
Try doing this, and see how you get on.
I’d love to hear what you think of this one, and whether it’s something you’ll incorporate into your daily routine!
