150 Days of “Happiness Is…”

There’s a person that I went to high school with whose mission in life is to spread joy. She’s known it since high school, and I’ve always admired her for it.

You can find her personal story here, but I’ll tell you from my perspective too. Do you ever have those random memories that stick in your mind so vividly for no reason at all? The start of this is one of those stories. I guess in some ways, this blog post has been about 10 years in the making, and I’m so excited to share it.

The start of it all

I distinctly remember when Liz started talking about her idea of “happiness is.” We were in the same gym class, and I also knew her from being in Band together. She was a Senior and I was a Junior. We were in the locker room one day and she was explaining how she decided to post on Facebook, “Day 1: Happiness is…” She’d decided to look for little moments of joy each day and share them with her Facebook friends. I thought it was a genius idea; something so simple that could spread joy to others. I wanted to do it too. I figured maybe she’d do it for 100 days and then maybe it would become a social media fad or challenge or something. I thought maybe others would start doing it too, and then I could join in.

But then it became her thing. 100 days passed and then 200 and then 300 and she kept going. I was inspired by her commitment to this project, and how no matter how many days passed, she would continue to find new and unique things in each day that brought her joy. It never became a fad or social media challenge; it was just her thing. I remember wishing I’d thought of it first, but I don’t think I was ever actually jealous; I just admired and respected her for it.

When Liz went off to college, her mission to spread joy grew from a few hundred Facebook posts to a non-profit organization called The Smile Project. Through it, she brought people together and inspired people to spread joy through intentional acts of kindness.

Fast forward to 2020

In October 2020, The Smile Project launched their Ambassador Program. In their words:

“Smile Project Ambassadors are joy recorders. When you commit to finding something positive in each day, your mindset shifts to one of gratitude and awareness. Ambassadors are encouraged to share their daily joys on social media (using #SmileProjectAmbassador) to inspire others with positivity.”

The Smile Project Ambassador Program

Yes, in theory, I could have recorded my own version of “happiness is” each day starting 10 years ago, but for some reason I felt like I needed permission, so I was very excited when they announced this program.

There’s also other awesome programs they’ve launched in the past that I could have gotten involved with but just never did. I always just admired from a distance. But this was the permission I was waiting for for literally a decade. Maybe that sounds stupid, but I just never wanted to take away from what she was doing. I didn’t realize that sharing my own joy wouldn’t take anything away from her, it would only spread the message.

At the time the Ambassador Program was launched, I was using another journal to record daily gratitude. I thought I could keep up with both, and I did for a few days, maybe a few weeks, but consistency can be hard.

First there’s the challenge of building the habit of writing each day, and just remembering to do it. Then there’s the challenge of intentionally searching for unique joy and gratitude in each day. It turned out to not be as easy as Liz made it look.

Then I just stopped recording gratitude and daily joy all together. I was moving and it was the holidays, and I was just so busy, so I felt like my excuses were valid. But I did get a pang of guilt every time I got notifications from other Ambassadors sharing their daily joy on the Facebook group, and when I got the monthly email update, and worst of all when Liz reached out and personally asked how the program was going for me. Of course she didn’t mean for it to be an accountability message; she genuinely wanted feedback on how her team was doing. But it made me realize my excuses and re-commit to the program.

Since March 1, 2021, I’ve recorded a “happiness is…” daily and just reached the 150 day milestone.

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What I’ve learned

1. You have to find a system that works for you – For me, posting on Facebook daily wasn’t something that actually appealed to me. When I go on Facebook, I can never just post and then hop off, I’d get sucked into scrolling and probably waste hours of my life. I couldn’t afford to do that daily. I thought journaling would work, but the problem with that was that at the end of the day, I’d close the journal and put it back on the shelf and forget to pull it back off the shelf the next day. What ended up working for me was having a bright yellow printed sheet that lives on my counter. You can’t miss it, so it’s really easy to remember to record every day. Having it pre-numbered also keeps me motivated to continue to track my joy day after day.
2. It gets easier once it’s a habit – After the first month of daily recording, it became part of my evening routine. As with any habit I’ve tried to build before, after 30-40 days of consistency it became easier to remember and moments of joy became easier to think of too. When you know you are going to have to think of something that brought you joy at the end of each day, you start to look for those moments throughout the day—and searching for moments of joy can change your entire mindset.
3. There are moments of happiness even on the worst days – We all have tough days when it just seems like everything is going wrong. It turns out that Smile Project Ambassadors are not immune to those. Even going into each day with a positive mindset and looking for goodness doesn’t prevent bad days from happening. But even on the worst days, there are still moments of good. On those days, there would always be something I would notice that would be a moment of relief or gratitude. A “well at least…” moment. Often it was a pep talk from a loved one, one time it was literally flying over a rainbow, and sometimes it was self-induced joy such as a good meditation.
4. You find out what makes you happy – Looking back at all the bits of happiness I collected, I can find trends in the things that consistently bring me joy. I think that when you know very specifically what brings you happiness, you become able to cheer yourself up when life gets rough. Things that stand out to me are spending time with loved ones, doing relaxing things like walking on the beach, yoga, and meditating, creating and baking, good food, and feeling challenged and fulfilled at flight school.
5. Happiness and gratitude go hand-in-hand – I also found that when I was recording daily happiness and daily gratitude, they often overlapped. I think you could replace “Happiness is…” with “Today I am grateful for…” To me, either way, it’s a beautiful practice of noticing the small miracles that God gives us each day. Sometimes we just have to open our eyes to see them.

Get involved

If you’re interested in becoming a Smile Project Ambassador, you can find more information and sign up here. To learn more about The Smile Project and their other programs, visit https://www.the-smile-project.com or find them on Instagram @thesmileprojectofficial.

If you like what you read here, follow Genuine Sunshine Blog by Sarah Ritchie on Pinterest and @genuinesunshineblog on Instagram. Look for new posts here at genuinesunshineblog.com every Sunday to start your week with sunshine!

Cheers!

Sarah