3 Surefire Ways to Enhance Your Happiness at the Happiest Place on Earth
Our family has recently returned from a major bucket list destination and once in a lifetime vacation to Disneyland. It was a magnificent, magical and memorable trip. Without a doubt, Disneyland lived up to its aspirational tagline that it has had for the past almost-70 years since it opened, the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’.
However, as an author who has written 3 books on happiness, I thought it could be a fun challenge to find ways to be even happier at the Happiest Place on Earth.
I did not want to rely on my outside circumstances — being at Disneyland — to determine how happy I was. I wanted to use the tools I have researched and practice every day to enrich my joy levels.
As I state in Crappy to Happy, being happier is harder than not being happy. As most thoughts are negative, your brain tells you everything is either scarce or scary, and fear leads the way, it is easier to complain, grumble, and be discontent. Being happy is a habit built from determination and discipline. It takes work. This is true whatever you are doing and wherever you are, even at Disneyland.
Here are 3 surefire ways to enhance your happiness at the Happiest Place on Earth…
1) Savoring
To savor means ‘to delight in / enjoy’. It is not just about noticing but extracting enjoyment from the moment or activity for as long as you can. Savoring, or its associated words, luxuriating, reveling, marveling, relishing or basking are simple methods of finding pleasure in everyday moments. Savoring allows you to lean into your senses without feeling overwhelmed. It is so simple yet so profound and that is reason that ‘savor’ is the first step in the recipe to rediscover your sparkle.
Disneyland is a magical place with lots of fun attractions to go on, colorful characters to meet and interesting food to try. Although we had a solid plan in place to prioritize our family favorites, the sheer size and scale of the place and all the offerings felt overwhelming at times.
Combine that with enormous crowds, long, hot days, non-stop Disney music blasting from every speaker and the aroma of popcorn and churros that you cannot get away from and it is very easy to let thoughts of being annoyed, frustrated and exhausted override any happy ones.
It was very difficult not to try and maximize every second of our time at Disneyland by quickly getting to the next fun thing but sometimes I would look into my kids’ weary faces and realized the best thing we could do in that moment was stop.
Finding a shady spot to rest for a few minutes while taking in all the sights, smells, tastes and sounds of Disneyland are now some of my favorite memories of our time there. We would often accompany our stop with a delicious treat, notice a Disney character or two in the distance, try and figure out what Disney music was playing at the time or spot a ‘hidden Mickey’. I honestly believe you could have an incredible time at Disneyland without going on a single attraction.
2) Gratitude
Cultivating gratitude creates awareness of the good in your life and invites in some more positive thoughts that will start to nudge out some of the many negative ones.
Yet many of us are not all that appreciative. Why? As Brené Brown says in The Gifts of Imperfection, practicing gratitude can be a vulnerable act and we must tolerate some of the discomfort of vulnerability to whole-heartedly soak in gratitude or else it will be accompanied by our scarcity mindsets and fear of loss. The absolute best way to get over the discomfort of scarcity fears attached to appreciation is to practice — incorporate gratitude in your daily life at any opportunity.
The key method of tapping into appreciation at Disneyland was to say thanks and give compliments. Cast members (Disneyland employees) work long hours interacting with crowds of people. A smiling thank you was often all that there was time for but where I could I would go specifically mention how their actions had helped us. One cast member told my son about the little-known single rider line at a ride so he could go on the attraction again quickly. A server at one of the restaurants gave us a free drink. And a tech-savvy cast member helped us with a Disneyland app issue. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
3) Rituals
Rituals help you feel settled and provide a sense of control and predictability plus they give you space to make other decisions and think creatively. Hence, they are a surefire but kind of secret way to enhance happiness.
At Disneyland I tried to enact a ritual of our family high-fiving after coming off each ride. Due to the fact that this was difficult to logistically implement in the middle of a crowd this ritual did not stick. However, when I suggested that we rate each attraction as we walked to the next one, this became a firm family ritual immediately.
Providing a rating out of 10 gave us lots to talk about. Was there one top favorite we could all agree on? Which attraction was worst? And why would one of us love a ride that another one of us disliked immensely? A few weeks later, I can’t remember what our ratings were except that I scored the Matterhorn 1 out of 10 (too bumpy!) whereas the kids loved it. But at the end of the day, the ratings we gave did not matter. The family ritual around rating provided us with stability when there was so much out of our control at Disneyland.
The Happiest Place on Earth?
Even at Disneyland, the Happiest Place on Earth, with the crowds and the heat and the long lines, it is easy to not be as happy as you think you should be. Fortunately there are some simple happiness tools that anyone can practice at any time. Some surefire ways to enhance your happiness at the Happiest Place on Earth — or anywhere! — include savoring, being grateful and creating rituals.
All three of these happiness tools have an added bonus of aiding the sinking in of happy memories. Taking the time to savor, appreciate and engage in a ritual allows the mind to override its default-to-negative mechanism and build connections that remind us that is okay to bask in happiness.
I am so very grateful we had a family vacation at the Happiest Place on Earth that is full of joyful memories… well of everything except the Matterhorn.
