100 Happy Days

While scrolling through Facebook yesterday, I saw that one of my friends (vague acquaintance, really) had posted a link to this site. The bright yellow of the page preview was what caught my attention, but after quickly looking through the site, I realized that this is a great part in my journey to positivity/happiness.

Let's take a break here and explain the site, since I'm sure many of you won't actually click on the link. The website is 100 Happy Days. It's a challenge to take a picture of one thing that makes you happy over the course of 100 days. The website states that "71% of people tried to complete this challenge, but failed quoting lack of time as the main reason. These people simply did not have time to be happy. Do you?"


This challenge appeals to me for many different reasons. Before I switched my major to graphic design, I was a photo major, and I've done the 'photo a day for a month' challenges and I've even completed the 'photo a day for a year' challenge. I like being challenged, and I like taking pictures. And now, I'm challenged to take pictures everyday of things that make me happy. This is different than my Mr. Mood app that I've mentioned before, where I simply track my mood. This is forcing myself to find something every single day that makes me happy. 
Since I began this blog, I've already noticed that I'm happier and focusing more on the good things, but I still have bad days, even though they are rarer than they've ever been. This may seem crazy or selfish, but I want to be happier. I want to realize just how good my life is, and I think I've only just begun to realize the really good things in my life. 
100 Happy Days gives some more good reasons to do this challenge.

Why would I do that?

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.

Even just keeping track of my mood has made me realize a few of these points already, but I want to be happy all the time, or at least put on that persona.

My friend that I wrote about in my first post read it, and said that he does have bad days, he just hides it because people respond to positivity and feed off of it. The happier you appear to be, the happier people around you will be. I've realized this after hanging out with him more. I've had one day where I just wasn't feeling happy, but I was around a lot of people. I put on the persona that nothing was wrong, and I realized that people didn't shun me the way they normally do when I'm in a bad mood. It was exhausting to pretend to be in a better mood than I was, but overall it kept me from sulking into an even worse mood.

So this is my next challenge. I didn't want to start it so soon because I'm so busy between school and robots, but I realized that this is the entire point of the challenge: to find time to be happy even when you're super busy. So today I started the challenge. I'm posting my pictures on instagram (@amyznaga) with the hashtag #100happydays. I encourage you to start your own 100 Happy Days challenge and see how great life really is.