100 Happy Days

“We live in times when super-busy schedules have become something to boast about. While the speed of life increases, there is less and less time to enjoy the moment that you are in. The ability to appreciate the moment, the environment and yourself in it, is the base for the bridge towards long term happiness of any human being”.

This is the block of text at the top of the 100 Happy Days website. 100 Happy Days is a project which encourages you to stop and smell the roses, appreciate the moment, think about enjoying what you’re doing, rather than just whizzing along from one thing to the next. The idea is simple. Sign up on the website, then submit a picture everyday of what made you happy to twitter, facebook, instagram or email (if you don’t want to make it public), tagged with #100HappyDays.

I found out about the project via twitter and signed up there and then. I love stuff like this. I write a diary, I reflect on things, I like playing the “three things that were good about today” game; this is just an extension of that. I’ve already lost track of how many days I’ve been doing this (I think I’m on day 6… 7?) but I am really enjoying it and I’m already seeing patterns. It’s come as no surprise that food makes me happy, as do my close friends and family and books. This could be quite a revealing exercise, not only about what makes me happy but the way I think about happiness. January can be a bit mournful and blue so finding good things about each day is quite helpful and puts you in a positive mindset.

Chocolate and candy cane covered pretzel, given to me by a colleague I didn't know on a Very Bad Day at work.

But it’s not always easy. I’ve found myself feeling too embarrassed to take pictures sometimes, or thinking that it would make a really uninteresting picture or not really capture why it made me happy. I scrabbled around on one day to find something to take a picture of that related, vaguely, to the day I’d had in order to make the midnight deadline and I wished I’d been brave and taken the photo I wanted to during the day.

The website seems to suggest that at the end of the 100 days you can receive a little 100 page book with your 100 happy days but I’m not sure how that works yet or what it costs. It’s a lovely idea though.

Book! Oh how I love books. This was my unread stack a couple of days ago (excluding hardbacks which are elsewhere). I've since shortened it by one.

I encourage you to sign up to this or carry out your own project, whether it be finding something that makes you happy each day or maybe writing down 5 things you’re grateful for at the end of each week. If you’re happy to share I’d love to hear about it.