#100HappyPaiges

Once upon a time there was a girl named Paige, and although she generally seemed to have a happy disposition, this was not always the case. Often, she, like so many before her, had bad days. And one day she thought to herself, "I'm done having bad days!"

So she stopped.

haha just kidding. Because everyone has bad days, and that's not just something you can choose to stop doing...(technically speaking).

So Paige is scrolling through her Facebook news feed (or whatever it's called nowadays) and she sees this post from a friend.

"Day 67 of my 100 days is ________. *insert picture* [post talks about why pictured thing makes her happy]." And I (Paige..) think to myself, "wow, this seems really cool."

So I looked into it. (100happydays.com) And it definitely sounded really cool. Basically the premise is this: Be happy for 100 days. What? That seems really hard. What if you have a really bad day? You can't help that. What if something disastrous happens, something you can't recover from. Well, there's the challenge. Now, starting out, it's probably close to impossible to be happy 100% of the time. Okay, definitely impossible. When someone messes up your order at Starbucks Monday morning, our mindsets automatically go to something along the lines of "Monday's suck, I hate today, blah blah blah."

NOT ANYMORE.

So this website, and I suppose yourself, challenge you to find one thing that makes you happy each day. Just one. That's like picking a letter out of alphabet soup. So you find your happy thing for the day and you post a picture of it. whaaaaaaat. that sounds so easy right!

it is.

okay, well most of the time it is. I'm not gonna lie. I've been doing this challenge for about 60 days and a couple of those days, at the end of the day when I sat down to think of my happy for the day, it was very difficult. But that's the cool thing about this challenge. That even on your darkest days, you need to recognize that something good came out of that day. Maybe it was just hearing your favorite song on the radio and that's it.

But that's not it! How awesome is it that you were able to find something good that happened in a day full of gloom? It's not about changing your life. It's about changing your mindset. Instilling positivity into every day.

Lemme tell you about my experience. Like I said, I've been doing this challenge for quite awhile now. At first, it was hard. Sometimes it took me forever to find something happy. But within about a week, I realized that this was something really cool. I began to notice a change in myself, in my days. I was [am] incredibly stressed all the time. But it didn't [doesn't] seem to matter as much. I truly feel like I haven't been having bad days, bad weeks. My days are good. almost all the time too!

You don't think that finding one happy thing a day could do this right? I didn't think so either. It seemed like such a trivial challenge. I thought it would be fun to try. I figured I'd give up within a week. But i didn't! Of course, I missed a couple days here and there (usually because I fell asleep before I even had time to post something) but I always went back and made them up. It's weird to think that such a small thing can (and I don't want to be dramatic here but I genuinely think it's real and true) turn your life around. That's right. I said it. It can turn your life around.

So it's my challenge to you, readers, world, humanity.

Find something that makes you happy every day. Post a picture about it. On facebook, instagram, tumblr, on a word document your keeping to yourself. The point of posting is not to brag to the world that you're happy. It's to share your happiness with the world.

If you need some inspiration or are curious to how it works, you can look at mine (turning394paiges.tumblr.com) or you can just search the hashtag #100HappyDays!

Find one thing every day that makes you happy.

To Share or Not to Share, That is the Question

Often in life we come across many opportunities to voice our opinions. In this great country we are privileged enough to have freedom of speech. I wonder if I take full advantage of this right that I am lucky enough to have. Many a time I have been asked, confronted, put in situations where it is certainly appropriate to share my views. On life, on politics, on situational matters, even just the daily chatter of what is happening in our society today. No matter the situation, I hold my tongue. I, for the most part anyway, try to tell people what they want to hear. I don't know what to do about it. Yes, I should speak my mind, but what if doing that causes everyone I'm working with (on a project or something similar) to hate me, to automatically shut me down, to hate me, to mock me, to be rude to me. I'd like to have as little enemies as possible in this life. I don't want some silly little opinion of mine to affect the way someone feels about me before knowing that one opinion. I'm such a people pleaser. I am working so hard and trying to learn how to voice my opinions and how I feel about things while a) sounding intelligent and well-versed and b) not stepping on peoples' toes. Why let something petty ruin a friendship or the like? I'm slowly beginning to understand that no matter what I do, someone, somewhere won't like me, won't agree with me, may even hate me or my ideas, the standards I live by, or even just the friends I have. I feel this come up most commonly around gossip. First, let me just say, you may judge me for gossiping if you can honestly say you never have (so that would be no one). Especially when you're stuck in the middle, friends of two opposing sides. What if you see and understand both sides. What if you just hate conflict. What if you'd rather not gossip about it at all and you hate confrontation? I'm not the type to be able to say "hey, let's just not" without feeling guilty for some bizzaro unknown reason. It also seems so hard to me to understand when it is appropriate to share how I feel, especially if it will cause conflict. This is one of my greatest faults. I am a people pleaser. I am trying so hard to start to stand up not only for myself, but for what I believe in as well. I will try NOT to sit idly by as others lead life for me.