A few days I finished a summer of the 100 Happy Days instagram challenge thing, so I thought why not do a little review of it.

Basically if you don’t know what it is, you can read about it here but basically you post a hundred pictures over the course of one hundred days of something that made you happy that day. A good idea in theory.

For me it just didn’t work like that. On days that I had panic attacks or I was anxious and didn’t want to leave the house, obviously I’m not feeling very happy and it’s not because I’m busy or not making time for happiness it’s because my emotions are out of control and I’m trying to take care of that and honestly not very many things are going to be making me very happy. Sure I can find the little joys, but there are many times where I just want to shut off the world, especially social media so no I don’t really want to worry about posting a picture to Instagram.

The second problem I found with this was that when I was having fun or being happy I didn’t think to document. I was enjoying the memory, not trying to capture it so everyone else could see it. I would get home at like 10 on a work night and go to post a picture to see I had none and it wasn’t because I wasn’t happy it’s because I was busy enjoying the moment.

The point of the project is to make someone happy and I think the majority of the time I spent kind of stressed out about finding a picture or trying to get something posted, and that wasn’t supposed to be the point of the exercise. It felt like I had to post a picture everyday or I would be considered a failure, which again would make me anxious. It made me feel bad about myself.

I did notice a good thing, on an average day I took notice of the happy things in life. It was nice to see the good on a normal day, it’s easy to forget everything that’s good or even just forget that there are things to be happy about. In the hum drum of life things slip by and it’s easy just to be in neutral everyday forgetting all the little things that make life great.

Overall I wouldn’t do it again, but that’s just because of the pressure I felt that it put on me. If you don’t feel that things like that are pressured go for it, it will  help you find happiness in the ordinary and that’s beautiful. This is just my take on the challenge, I know Lindsay loved it all and she wants to keep it up, at least the last time we talked about it. It’s one of those things where it works for some people and not for others. It didn’t work for me. The coolest part about it, if you really get into it, you can get all the pictures made into a book or postcards from $15-$35 which is kinda cool. Has anyone else done this? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

XOXO,

Mary.