In May, my friend Jess decided she wanted to focus more on the happy everyday moments. In January one of our best friends had died, so our friend group had been going through a rough few months. The idea of happy moments was poignant and was something that we thought might help us all feel better. Through a quick Google search, she found the website 100happydays.com. The 100 Happy Days website was founded by Dmitry Golubnichy, in an attempt to learn to be happier in his daily life. He wanted to challenge himself to find something to be happy about every day for 100 consecutive days and, through the public tag #100happydays, shared the challenge with the world. Since then, the 100 Happy Days challenge has now been taken on by at least 1,500,000 people from over 200 different countries. When Jess found this website and explained the idea, I jumped on board. On May 14th we posted our first of one hundred pictures and started the challenge. Our 100 days coincidentally carried us through the entire summer and just finished up on August 21st, right before the first day of classes.
Now that it’s over, I’ve realized how much I learned in the process. First, I learned to take more pictures. In the age of digital media, it seems almost odd that I wasn’t taking pictures all of the time. But because I had to take pictures of happy moments, I found myself taking pictures of times that made me smile from the moment I woke up until I went back to bed. It’s a habit I’ve continued since our challenge ended.
Secondly, I learned that you can be surprised by who wants to follow your daily life. People that I was acquainted with but didn’t know well started following my 100 Happy Days Instagram and interacted with almost every picture. It meant a lot to me that even people who weren’t that close to me wanted to hear about my happy moments and may have possibly cared about them. It was heartwarming to see the support we garnered throughout the challenge.
Lastly and most importantly, I learned to find the gifts of happiness that lurk in even the dark corners of life. There were several days in the process that I wouldn’t label as happy days. There were days where grief would creep out from behind me and ruin my days, moments where things didn’t go as planned, and times where it felt like life was falling apart. Even on these days I was challenged to find a smile. Happiness comes in all different shapes and sizes and this was something that quickly became apparent during my hundred days. Some days my joyful moments would be watching “Criminal Minds” or baking a new recipe, eating breakfast on my front porch or finding a new song. Other days it could be the larger things: seeing my boyfriend again for the first time in weeks, going on a mini vacation with my best friends, or finally being able to greet my roommates to our new apartment. I learned that happiness doesn’t have to be something gigantic, something bold, or something incredibly beautiful; it can be those simple little things that you take for granted in each and every day.
I want to end this article by encouraging everyone out there to take on the challenge of being happy for 100 days. This doesn’t have to mean being vocal on social media about it, or dedicating a photo album to it on your phone. It can be as simple as writing something down before you go to bed that makes you happy or just taking time to reflect on a moment in the day that made you smile. If you take the time to look for happiness in your world, chances are you won’t have to look far to find it.