Transcription
I went from pessimistic, unhealthy, borderline depressed to being eternally optimistic and consistent with this 2-minute writing exercise that I credit with making me significantly happier.
Hello, my name is Rich, and for the past 10 years, I've been using a pen to change my life. This 2-minute writing exercise is one that I do every day without fail, and it's the one which has massively improved my happiness. This is how I discovered it.
When my two boys were younger, I ended up in hospital with pneumonia, a burnout through a combination of bad diet, not enough exercise, and working too hard. My body let me know that it was all too much. I came out of hospital and realized I had to make some big changes to my life.
At the time, I was 37 years old, and I was badly addicted to Diet Coke. I knew that I needed to cut down, so I substituted one of the six cans of Diet Coke I was drinking every day with a glass of water instead. Every day that I did this, I would write this down. A tiny step, but a simple win. And every time I wrote down this little win, I would get a dopamine hit.
So, then I started looking for other tiny wins. Things like when I managed to not lose my when my printer lost its connection, or when I was able to laugh when my dog annihilated a bag of compost all over the living room floor. So, it wasn't just the tiny habits that I was writing down as a win, but the times when I was pleased with how I reacted to a challenging situation.
And the really interesting thing about writing down these tiny wins every day was that they compounded. Soon, I was able to halve my Diet Coke consumption, and I started to introduce other habits because I wanted to be able to write them down as a tiny win. I started walking more, I reduced my sugar intake, and every day that I would do this, my list of tiny wins got bigger and bigger.
It's a journaling habit that I subsequently learned is called AMWAP, which stands for as many wins as possible. And I want to go into more detail about exactly how to do this and why this will change your life.
One of the most important lessons in surfing is where you look is where you go. As in, whatever direction you look, your body will follow. And I love this because it's a beautiful analogy for life. If you're looking for negativity and a reason why everything is miserable, then you will absolutely find it. But if you condition yourself to look for tiny wins, for positivity, and for reasons to be optimistic, then your body and your mind will follow.
It's easy to be skeptical, but I want to show you how I find wins on really difficult days. This is my habit tracker here that I use every single day. So, I want to show you in February this year, on Valentine's Day, no less, February the 14th, I had flu. And you can see I've actually highlighted my sleep score, giving that 16 out of 100, which is probably the lowest sleep score I've ever had. And then the highlights column, not that this is necessarily a highlight for the day, but it says, "Temperature of 40.1° C, ill."
So, even though this was a really rubbish day, I did nothing but stay in bed and try to recover, but were things I took as positives. So, I'll show you my AMWAP journal from the day. Here we go.
On Saturday, 14th of February, 2026, I drank over 2 L of water. So, I was flushing out my body with water. One of the habits I'm tracking every day is trying to increase the amount of water that I'm drinking, so I took that as a positive. I ate a ton of fresh fruit. Again, I was just trying to get as many vitamins as possible, and I take that as a win. I slept and slept and slept. So, again, I'm taking that as a tiny win because that is what my body needed to do. I just needed to rest. Notice the evenings are getting lighter. So, even though I was bed-bound all day, I was able to look out the window and appreciate the fact that we were starting to come out of the winter. Listened to more than 2 hours of audiobooks. So, again, this is one of the habits that I'm tracking. I'm trying to read more or listen to more audiobooks, so I'm taking that as a tiny win. And finally, Scotland beat England at rugby 31-20. So, that's not a tiny win. In my book, that is a massive win.
Even when you have a terrible day, there will be tiny wins that you can take from the day if you look closely enough. Sometimes, just getting through a bad day is a tiny win in itself.
I challenge you to do this for the next 30 days, and then read back all of your tiny wins. Then, let me know how you've got on in the comments below because I'd be really curious to know. Keep at it, and this will change your life.
As Henry David Thoreau said, "We find only the world we look for."
If you found this video useful, then watch this one here about 10 ways you can change your life with just a pen. Thank you for watching.