Yep. It’s me again. Talking about happy stuff. As usual. Geez. Give the corny gratitude shit a rest, you psychopath! Is what I imagine people think when they see yet another “happy” blog post title from me.
The thing is, I am not always happy. I get anxious, flat, sad and angry. And I don’t think it’s realistic to make yourself believe you can be happy 100% of the time. That’s a lot of pressure and a lot of inevitable disappointment, right? But I look for the ‘happy’ I can find, whenever I can. I work really hard at focusing on the positives – sometimes I succeed and other times I suck at it and figure tomorrow’s a new day. And that’s OK.
After 2016, I wasn’t sure what kind of year 2017 would be. I still don’t know – it’s only April! All I knew was that I was tired and that 2016 SUCKED. It had a very heavy, anxious, not-getting-anywhere energy about it. It was full of setbacks and disappointments. Insecurity.
Even though I know that we do not always have control over some of the shit that gets thrown our way, I really really really did not want 2017 to be more of the same. The one thing I could control was my attitude and my actions/reactions (well mostly haha).
When I heard about the #100happydays project, I was inspired. This would be how I’d start the new year. I would take a photo every day for 100 days of something that had made me happy.
An excerpt from the website…
People successfully completing the challenge claimed to:
– Start noticing what makes them happy every day;
– Be in a better mood every day;
– Start receiving more compliments from other people;
– Realize how lucky they are to have the life they have;
– Become more optimistic;
– Fall in love during the challenge.
Sounds awesome, right? I figured it would also help to keep me inspired and improve my story telling ability on Instagram.
So how did it turn out?
Pretty well! Sure, I took over 100 days to actually get there. But 100 photos were taken and lots of memories and cool stuff were recorded! I found myself looking each day for something great to photograph on my iPhone. Posting on Insta had gone from feeling like a sporadic chore to a fun part of my daily life. I found myself saying ‘yes’ to weird and wonderful things (a pumpkin festival anyone?) in order to experience the joy of something new and different! It was fun to capture those moments in photos.
While I admit that this challenge did nothing to quell my social media addiction, it did make me addicted to looking for beauty in each day. Even though I have officially finished the challenge now, I think I will keep doing more of the same. It really did make me feel good.
It’s so great to look back on the amount of life you can fit into 100 days!
I have only included some of the highlights here, but if you want to scroll back through all 100 days, you can visit my Instagram account: @awesomelyunpreparedblog ?
Would you consider doing this challenge? Have you done this challenge before? How did you go?
