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Happiness hacks: 3 ways to add joy to your life

A clean slate

Anyone hit by power or water problems during the recent freeze no doubt welcomed the return of freshly laundered clothes. Being grateful, instead of groaning over doing another load, is at the center of Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore (Flatiron Books), an endearing, humorous and how-to-filled book by Patric Richardson, written with Karin B. Miller.

Richardson recommends ways to make your laundry area your happy place and offers tips to remove almost any stain (cue the white vinegar and sometimes a spritz of vodka). Almost any garment can be washed at home when you know how. It’s a take-charge attitude that Richardson believes offers a larger life lesson. “So often, we do — or don’t do — things based on fear, when, actually, if we just believed in ourselves, and in others, we would find a better way forward,” Richardson writes.

Good morning, Happy

When Boston entrepreneur Michelle Wax hit the road to discover the keys to happiness, she found that self-awareness — choosing to be happy — consistently rose to the top. Wax chronicles her 2019 journey to interview 500 “happy” people in 50 states in the recently premiered independent documentary American Happiness. Among her tips: Get a proactive start to each day by asking the following questions:

1. What can I look forward to today?

2. What has the potential to stress me out?

3. And what’s my response going to be?

This morning self-check allows you to get ahead of worry and stress vs. reacting to it impulsively, she says. To learn more, head to american-happiness.com/bethegood.

Planning to read? Go outside

Next time you’re ready to curl up with a good book, consider heading outside with that hardback instead. Thanks to science, we already know regular reading can rewire the brain to make us healthier, smarter and more empathetic. Now, a new study reveals reading outdoors may also do wonders for our eyes. The SUNY College of Optometry research, published February in Cell Reports, found visual contrast increases outdoors. Reading under bright light stimulates your visual brain more effectively, allows you to see the letters better, and may also help your eyesight, notes lead investigator Hamed Rahimi-Nasrabadi.

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