It is not news to anyone reading this: working in a library is hard. Doing any kind of public-facing customer service work is always hard, and right now a lot of things are coming together to make it more complicated.

We can’t fix that for you. Sorry.

But this semester, we are going to provide small weekly stress-management/happiness builder ideas. They aren’t going to make all your issues magically solve themselves. But, everyone can use a reminder to take a step back and breathe.

Some days things are challenging, and even all the nice tips we have discussed in prior weeks just aren’t working for you. One strategy is just to fake it. Slap on a smile, and think about how a happy person would act and what a happy person would do today.

This is not a tip to follow on a regular basis. This is just something to try once in a while, only to get through one day.

You may have heard the advice “fake it until you make it.” Different self-help groups use it, and it’s commonly mentioned in self-help material. It can be surprisingly useful. There really is a small chemical change in your brain when you put on the air of happiness.

Smiling, even when the day is not going well, can help you to push yourself out of a less than happy mental state. Acting out happiness – talking with people, behaving in a cheerful way – it helps. It helps to push you along the spectrum of unhappiness to happiness. Acting as if does not get you all the way to perfect happiness; but it helps.

If you aren’t having luck with the other ideas, maybe try this today.