#100happydays

It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to be negative. It's almost natural. You sleep through your alarm, it's raining on your morning commute and the line at Starbucks is too long. Our first instinct is to think, Oh my God - EVERYONE is getting throat punched today. I do it. All. The. Time. It seems to me that being happy is the hard part. It requires a conscious effort in a world full of things that often seem specifically designed to derail your day. Our minds are so clouded by the jerk who cut us off on the highway that we fail to see the beautiful sunrise on the way to work, or we don't pay attention to the teenager who stopped to help an elderly woman load groceries into her car. I have no idea why we're like this - I have absolutely zero psychological assessment on why negativity is easier than optimism. But it's this whole idea that prompted me to sign up for the 100 Happy Days challenge.

What is it? Exactly that. Challenging yourself to find the happiness in each day for 100 days. Sign up for the challenge and post your happiness photos on your preferred social media platform. Sure, it sounds like a significant waste of social media time and energy, right? This was my first reaction, until I started realizing that it would require me to do one (or both) of these two things: First, I need to stop being so negative so I can find the happiness in each day. Second, I may have to go make my own happiness. Make your own happiness? But that sounds like so much efforttttt. Yep. And that's the point. When every single damn thing has gone wrong in a day, when you can't find the silver lining - you will have to make your own happiness. A cat nap. A friendly gesture. A few minutes of meditation. An iced coffee or a great workout. It dawns on me that it is not the world's job to provide you with epic sunsets, monumental soundtracks and strangers' good intentions so you can snap photos and declare your own kind of happy. It's an independent responsibility to ourselves to make our own happiness - by choosing to see the world differently and by forcing ourselves to squeeze in daily amounts of happiness when you just can't see it in others.

I realize there are a ridiculous amount of people participating in this challenge, so you don't need me to clarify what it means to partake. But before you sign up and start snapping photos of sunrises, think critically about what it's really challenging you to do - it's not about bogging down your Instagram feed or trying to snap photos in an angle that will get you the most "likes" on Facebook. It's for you. All. About. You.

Self-improvement and paving the road towards a more optimistic perspective seems like a no brainer, right? Stick around for weekly happiness updates and what makes me happy - in the meantime, follow me on Instagram at @closerto30 for a daily dose of what makes me smile. I'll do my best to post more than just pictures of my dogs.