The “Better When” Self-Care Method You Need to Try to Tomorrow

Have you ever had one of those days where, for seemingly no reason, you just feel kind of blah? Maybe your work is taking you twice as long as usual, you feel like canceling your social plans, or you just generally feel half asleep while going about your day. Well, those days don’t have to feel so random, a recent TikTok suggests (along with science and psychology). In fact, there’s a simple way to guide yourself to a better day. 

In a recent video, content creator Brigette Muller (who lives in a dreamy Greenpoint apartment) reveals she’s cracked the code to better days. “I figured out how to have better days consistently, and it’s kind of blowing my mind,” she says. What you do is write out a list of things you can do that make you feel good, phrasing each item as “I feel better when ___.” For example, she says, “I feel better when I drink a lot of water. I feel better when I’m in a feel-good outfit. I feel better when I take a walk at night.”

The catch? They all need to be things you are in control of. So, no “I feel better when it’s 70 degrees and sunny with a cool breeze” (though that would be great, if possible!). 

Next, Muller says to assign a point value to each item. Most are worth one point, except for what she calls “heavy hitters,” or things that make you feel extra good. “So for me,” she says, “I feel better when I don’t drink too much caffeine and I feel better when I don’t drink alcohol are worth two points each.”

To put the formula into play, you go about your day trying to incorporate your “better when” inputs. Then, “at the end of the day, you tally up all of your points and then divide that by the maximum amount,” Muller explains. 

If the strategy of doing things known to make you feel good in order to have a better day sounds familiar that’s probably because it aligns with every piece of self-care advice you’ve been hearing for years. Yes, drinking enough water can help you ward off headaches and feel more energized. Taking a joybreak can relieve stress. Creating a dopamine menu can put you in a better mood. (In fact, if you already have a dopamine menu, you can just add a point system to try out the “better when” method). Doing something you love after work will turn your day around. 

But knowing what you could do and actually doing it are not always on the same side of the Venn diagram. 

The “better when” method works because it turns what can feel like a series of mini chores (glugging a gallon of water or getting up early) into a game of how to feel good. “OH you just gamified self care,” reads one TikTok comment. 

“Collectively realizing we are in charge of our own Sims character satisfaction levels😭,” says another, while others compare the process of doing little acts of self-care to tending to a human Tamagotchi. 

“If I get a 20/20 can I get a sweet treat,” says another comment, to which I would like to answer: absolutely. 

“This is so genius because it’s something I can tangibly do to have a better day,” says another commenter, which really sums up the whole point of this simple-but-sweet method. It puts you in the driver’s seat of your day, without having to feel so overwhelmed about where you’re going.

“The first time I did this, I felt like crap that night,” says Muller. “When I tallied everything up, my total was 9.5 out of 20. That’s like a 50%, of course I feel like shit. So the next day, with all of this in mind, I tried to incorporate some of the things … I felt so good by the end of that day and my score was 17.5 out of 20.”

Of course, she says, “there are always going to be extraneous factors that can make your day better or worse that you can’t help. But the whole point is there are things you can help and if you do more of those things, you will consistently have better days.”