Well, I tried the gratitude journal thing.
February's happiness challenge
A daily gratitude journal my February happiness challenge item, and while I didn't manage to get it done every day, I did write in the journal pretty frequently.
Did this make me feel happier?
Well.
I think the concept as a whole is solid, but I don't feel like it had an enormous impact on my own happiness level.
Probably the reason gratefulness journals make us happy is that it makes us think about the upsides in life.
For whatever reason, my brain tends to already be thinking about happy things/things that I am grateful for, and so writing them down didn't add a whole lot of cheer to my life.
However, for people who naturally tend not to be thinking about happy things in life, I can see how having to write down happy things could force the brain to think about the happy things.
I've definitely seen this happen for some members of my own household.
Will I keep doing this?
Probably not, unless I'm having a day where I notice that I'm having a terrible attitude (like last Thursday.)
But as a general habit, I don't think I will.
For me, using my phone less was way more life-altering than doing a gratitude journal.
March Happiness challenge
I have a list of happiness options to choose from, and this time, I chose: take a picture every day.
Making a point of doing this could help me feel happier for a few reasons.
- I already love photography! Doing something I love is a happy thing.
- Taking pictures forces me to notice the beauty that's around me.
- Having photos to look back on offers future happiness possibilities.
And lastly, I might share the photos from this project with you! Sharing photos with other people usually brings me joy.
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I'd love for you to try the photo-a-day project along with me and then share your experience at the end of the month!
I'm really sure this challenge will bring me joy, but I'm super curious to hear if it could also bring joy to people who are less camera-oriented.
P.S. I might just take a photo of whatever strikes my fancy, but there's also this 30-day photo prompt list that I may use.
I wonder if writing a gratitude card and giving it to someone would make a difference in how you felt? My friend makes these cards and writes notes on the back and leaves them for friends, strangers, people he comes into contact with, etc. He has a goal to write 1000. https://youare.cards/
Funnily enough, I have been doing a picture-a-day thing since the beginning of January. I found this app that turns your photos into a little movie of your year, and I thought it would be neat to try.
Results two months in: it actually makes me unhappier. Seeing an endless parade of photos of my commute is DEPRESSING. Seeing it all lined up like that- commute-commute-commute-commute-commute-outdoor time with family-art time at the kitchen table-commute-commute-commute... is just depressing.
That sounds like a really neat app! What's the name of it?
I wonder if perhaps a photo prompt challenge like the one I linked to at the end of this post might help you break out of the commute photos at all. I can completely understand how a string of those isn't fun to look at (I'm imagining photos of cars while you're stuck at a traffic light!).
It’s called 1SE.
The thing is, it’s an accurate reflection of my life right now. Reaalistically i’m Not going to detour to photograph a flower when I am just trying to make it home in time for bedtime. I know it’s just this season of life, but somehow having it all laid out like that is super-depressing.
Ok, thanks! I'll check it out.
I'm sorry you're in a tough season of life right now. <3
I am definitely not camera-oriented. My eldest son chose photography as one of his 4-H projects, though, so I'm helping him through the guide for it. This gives me an idea that perhaps I should have him do a "photo-a-day" journal as one of his projects for that . . .
Hm, a photo a day would mean I need my camera on me all the time, since my phone photos aren't the latest and best resolution. On the other hand, my camera is a point and shoot, so it's not the best either, but definitely better than my phone.
Could I do this? I'm not sure. It is probably worth a try, though.
I can see a happiness journal not really making you happier, if you already can see the upside to many things. Writing it down will at least help you remember it later, but that wasn't the point of this, I didn't think.
I'm not sure if I will mostly use my SLR or my phone! I have a pretty good phone camera, but my SLR still does win for quality.
Lisa over at head in the clouds feet in the dirt dot com had a photo challenge on Facebook in the past that I thought was a neat idea. She would have a topic such as fluid or curves, or even the color red. Everyone would have such neat, variable entry's pertaining to the subject. So neat to see how everyone interpreted the topic artistically.
Hmm. I'm not a naturally happy person (my husband bought me Eeyore pajamas years ago for a reason!), so maybe something like this would help, or at least shove my mindset in the right direction. I'm going to have to think about this, so thank you for the inspiration.
I'm *terrible* about taking photos. Like, it doesn't even occur to me half the time to take pictures until hours after an event, and then I'm like, "Oh...crap." Fortunately, my husband basically has my daughter's entire life recorded, so at least one of us is on the ball!
Haha, the Eeyore pajamas are cracking me up!
My kids got me a jacket one year with Eeyore on it. They said that it was just because it looked warm, but I think that there was perhaps another message there. My mind does not automatically go to positives places and I have to work at it. After years of trying, I'm pretty good at looking at the positive, but it takes effort.
You know, I recently read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. She also tried keeping a gratitude journal and didn't get much from it. As it turns out, research shows we appreciate gratitude when we do it less often. She had success journaling once a week instead of every day. Maybe that'll be easier, mm?
Anyway, I love the picture challenge! I always love your photos. Can't wait to see what you come up with. 🙂
So, I tried the daily happiness journal this past month. Unfortunately, I only wrote about 4 entries for the whole month. It feels like a fail to me, but I am not ready to give up on it. I am generally a happy person, and I would like to document the specifics! Maybe I should carry my journal in my bag, rather than leave it in the home office. Better chance of actually writing in it.
A photo challenge might be fun for me. I always feel like I do not take enough photos...
I'm all about listing and crossing off, but I can't do an actual journal. Doesn't matter what kind of cute Scholastic Book Fair journal, cheap composition book, or Field Notes book I have — can't do it. Turning it into a daily gratitude thing might make it even less appealing.
However, I've started keeping a notebook as part of my 19 for 19. I spend way too much time on facebook, so my thought was to write in a Field Notes what I'd typically post off the cuff, and then I can edit into a single longer post every few days. It is mostly working, and, shock, reveals that I may have it in me to journal, after all. It also pulls me out of my phone and off the laptop, which, like your reduction in phone use, I have found to be tremendously helpful.
Back to your photo idea for the next round, I do facebook but I don't insta, which likely would be a better fit for my has-become-normal Lent project to post one black and white photo per day, with or without explanation. (I hashtag them #fortybw even though as far as I can tell, hashtags are useless on facebook.) It is incredibly difficult to shoot in bw and come up with something that is interesting day after day after day. And it's such a relief to return to life in color on Easter. (The potential for parallels there is pretty deep, but let's just say all of them apply and move on with today.)
I'll do it with you!! Sometimes I surprise myself with how long I go between taking pictures or videos of my kids. So I know that most of the pictures will be of my kids, but I'm good with that. 🙂
Kid pictures make for wonderful memories. I sometimes get lost in a happy side trail of looking through old photos of my own kids.
I'm trying very hard to get in the habit of keeping a journal, but one of the challenges I find is that I don't really benefit from it. I'm doing it because I want to have it to remember my life by as I age, but I'm not someone who processes thoughts through writing. It often feels like a chore, and sometimes, it makes me feel worse. If something bad is going on, writing about it forces me to spend an extra half-hour dwelling on it, which I don't find offers me any additional clarity; it just reinforces whatever negative emotions I have! I do most of my processing by talking to myself; I find that I can sort of give myself a talking to (or validation, or whatever) in a way that's hard to do in writing. In writing, I find that I have a hard time deciding on what to include for the sake of honesty, or exclude for the sake of my current emotional state.
I think that if journaling does't help you, then you should feel free to ditch it. 😉 Or maybe you should talk to yourself first, and then write out what's left after you work through the bad feelings.
What works for other people just might not be what works for you.
Haha thanks! I think you're right. What sometimes winds up happening is that once an unpleasant thing is over, and I'm in the "Well, I it's in the past" phase, then I can write it down in brief. It may lead to a more scrambled journal, temporally, but it's not like I'm aiming for publish-ability!
I would challenge parents to take candid photos of their children, (which Kristen does). Scrolling through facebook, I painfully notice how often the subjects are lined up, fake-smiling, and looking right at the camera. Great paintings, (think Vermeer), are of people engrossed in their own thoughts or actions, not standing with their teeth locked and posture stiff while several almost identical shots are taken.
I loved seeing your pictures each day when you did the 365 project several years back (I'm sorry that I can't remember the exact name of it). If this will be anything like that I'm looking forward to it!
I found having a gratitude journal to be too cumbersome and one more thing "to do" which weighed on me. Instead, once my head hits the pillow at night, I think about three things I am grateful for from the day. It leaves me feeling happy and calm before I drift off........
I like the idea of 30 days of photos! I'm not a photographer by any means, but I think it's fun to take pictures.
And for the other commenters here who aren't good at taking pictures, I would encourage you to take some anyway. Pictures are more than artwork. I find that pictures (whether beautiful or not) spark my memory and I can remember things more clearly because I can see a moment of time.
Taking a picture of what you're grateful for could be a good alternative to journalling! (not to mention faster...) I think it would make for some interesting pictures too!
I'm in!
If you make up a hashtag for the challenge, it would be great to follow along with other people's pictures as well!
I was just having a talk about gratitude lists with somebody the other day, and I think the place where they tend to fall flat for me is that I end up just writing down three things I like every day: "coffee, my kids, sunny days," "coffee, my kids, books," "coffee, my kids, yarn," or maybe if I'm feeling super-spiritual "coffee, books, Jesus." But I already know I like coffee and my kids a lot. It's good to remember that if I'm feeling super cranky, but for the most part I don't think it makes me happier. More useful is looking at something hard that happened that day and being thankful for that, but it doesn't fit as easily into a gratitude journal and I'm not sure I want to look back on a list with things like "stomach bug" and "fraudulent charge on our credit card" even if I could at the time think of reasons I was thankful for them.
I like the picture idea. My mother was just mentioning in passing that she hasn't gotten pictures of the kids in a while...
I hear you...I wrote this list while sitting in bed each night, and I kept wanting to write down, "warm bed with fuzzy sheets". Ha.
I find I'm happier when I stay off FB for a day or two. It depresses me to no end to see constant stories of abused animals, see all this horrible political stuff and then when I see local accidents/people dying, etc. The icing on the cake is when I see posts that a police officer died in the line of duty. I'm married to an LAPD Sgt and those types of posts nearly give me a heart attack.
Kristen, I finally had an aha moment reading this post. I have never been able to keep a gratitude journal and I think you might be onto something. I'm a naturally happy and positive person, easily delighted by small things already. And true, I have found like the once or twice a year I "made myself" write a gratitude list are the days that felt hard.
I started keeping a journal last October. My husband had just deployed, and I needed a place to debrief my day, so I wrote down one thing that was really great that day and one thing that was really hard. On the days I wanted to ditch my kids (3, 3 with medical needs, and 4, no twins) at someone else's house, it allowed me to see that even in the bad they were doing the best they could. And it gave me a space to set aside the hard thing, or if it had turned from hard to downright ugly, a place to figure out what to do differently the next day. Most days it took 5 minutes max. On really really tough days, maybe 10 minutes. It was my sanity when I was on my own.