I did it!! And my general happiness level feels like it has improved. I feel such a sense of accomplishment. Thank you to everyone who came along on this journey with me. If you don't follow me on
Instagram I put together a slide show with all #100HappyDays hashtagged photos.
Some days were easy. Some were really hard. I tried not to make every happy moment about food, but sometimes that was the best thing to happen to me. When I signed up for the challenge the website gave a statistic about people being too busy to find happy moments, and that was why they failed. I didn't ever feel too busy, but sometimes finding that happy thought was a struggle.
I had an idea about the kinds of things that would present themselves over the course of my 100 days, but I'm a little surprised by what didn't appear. I had no agenda. No checklist. But overall, I think it is a fairly accurate representation of my life.
I've had mixed emotions since I completed the challenge. Relief tinged with a current lack of purpose. I've had followers encourage me to keep going for another 100 days. I don't know that I could honestly come up with 100 more happy things without repeating some over and over again.
I highly recommend this challenge. Don't do it to compete with anyone else. Do it for yourself. Some of my favorite snapshots are when I tried to create a moment that didn't quite work out and something else presented itself that put a smile on my face.
Sometimes you have to pay close attention to what is going on around you to capture the little things that add up to big things. I was talking with a couple of people about the completion of this journey and one of them commented, "Oh, like Pollyanna!" I responded, "Yep! I've been playing the Glad Game." When you look for the positive, the negative has a tendency to fade. My life needed this pick-me-up.
There is a real-life human behind the movement and his name is Dmitry
Golubnichy. The 27-year-old lives in Switzerland and embarked on his own
challenge last November in an attempt to stop and remember what makes
him happy. He says, "I believe that being happy is a choice and everyone
can be happy just by appreciating little things in life one has instead
of engaging in the constant chase for ever rising internal &
external expectations, which leaves no time for being happy."
Visit
100happydays.com and register yourself. Use any platform you choose (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or email). And at the end you have the opportunity to put your photos into a book, print them as thank you notes or other options. (I kind of want the book).
The world could use a little more happiness. Why not do your part?
