Surviving #100HappyDays

MANILA, Philippines – I survived being happy for 100 days in a row.

You read that right, I consider myself a survivor of the viral happiness initiative that took social media by storm just a few months back.

Like most of those who jumped on the bandwagon, I thought this would be a cinch. Simply document being happy for a little over 3 months sounded like it would be a walk in the park.

In barely half a year’s time, I was schooled about the reality of life and what it means and takes to be happy. Here’s what I learned about happiness in my journey to the 100th day:

You can be happy even when you are alone

For an extrovert, this concept used to be unthinkable. Being happy meant talking and laughing with other people. I never considered myself as happy whenever I took a “me-day” and spent it holed up in my room, alone.

It was during the first “me-day” of the challenge that I got to thinking about it: How could I be happy even though I’d just spent the entire day alone? I needed a photo for the day and I was at a loss.

This was when I realized: I didn’t need other people to be happy. I could have my own fun and find happiness within myself. Who cares if I enjoy the casual conversation and laugh trip while alone? Nobody would know either way.

Happiness is a matter of perspective

A theory I’ve always gravitated toward but never had the energy to test – until Day 22 when I was stuck at home with a cold. I had spent the entire day in bed nursing clogged sinuses, a dry mouth, and a pounding headache. There was nothing photo-worthy about those circumstances at all.

But, having nothing else to do, I took a few random photos and came up with one that was usable – a photo of the bed that had been my partner throughout the whole get-better initiative.

So the next time you’re down in the dumps, perhaps all you need to do is to tilt your head to the side, squint one eye, and take another look around. It may sound silly, but sometimes you can get a little bit of happiness out of a little bit of silliness.

Happiness takes effort and creativity

If finding happiness was like taking a walk in the park, then it would be a very muddy park on a dark and rainy night with crackheads lying everywhere and thugs lurking behind trees.

They say you can’t appreciate the sun without the rain. Well, you can’t appreciate either of them if you stay stuck indoors. You have to be willing to get up, get dressed, and get out before anything can happen.

Yes, on some very special days, happiness finds you no matter where you are. But on most days you’ll have to work at it. You’ll have to cook a meal, change your sheets, or even *gasp* take an actual stroll in the park just to get that happy feeling – and photo – for the day.

Sometimes, you just have to fake it

As everyone knows, not every day is a good one. Some days are so bad that deep breathing is all you can do to keep sane. Then there are those days when you can’t take a deep breath because you’re already choking on your tears.

Those types of days are usually few and far in between but when they come it’s with a vengeance. Forget about putting in effort to find happiness, you need all your effort just to stay afloat!

Days 17 and 49 were those days for me. These days’ photos are the most pathetic ones in my pile of 100 but they actually did help. By forcing myself to make up a happy moment for those days, I felt just a little bit better. It’s like smiling when you’re sad – the feeling just comes.

Life always has something better in store

This is the story of the final weekend. I knew that my 100th day fell on a Monday so I’d planned a trip to Enchanted Kingdom with a friend weeks in advance. I had intended to go out with a bang.

As life goes, my friend got sick and had to cancel the Friday before. All weekend I scrambled to salvage my seemingly ill-fated final day but it was too short notice to reel anyone in for a random getaway.

I still didn’t give up, though. All throughout Monday morning I kept trying to make last minute “consolation” plans to save my day, all of which kept getting blown off at every turn. Even the plans I’d made that involved just myself were derailed when I got off the bus at the wrong stop.

So I gave up and stomped my feet all the way home. I seriously wasn’t going to even post a photo for that day – that’s how miserable I felt.

But something magical happened: I got home and was greeted by a dear, dear friend. I say it’s magical because her plans for the day had also gone awry and we hadn’t even planned on meeting up, yet there she was to make my 100th day truly a happy one.

It turns out, I was holding on too tightly to my image of the perfect day that I didn’t give life any room to work its magic. The moral of this story? Trust. Things will always work out in the end.

Never break a promise you made to yourself

This is the most important lesson I learned from this whole experience. There were many times I wanted to just give up and save myself the hassle of having to take a special photo every day just for this.

I’m not used to Instagram-ing every moment of my life so there were a lot of uncaptured moments that would have been perfect, and realizing that always irritated me so much because then I’d have to find something else to photograph.

Day 4 was when the novelty began to wear off and figuring out what to do for the day became a hassle. But I had promised that I would see this through to the end and if I couldn’t keep a promise I made to my own self, how much worth could I give any other commitment I make?

Difficult but worth it

Those 100 days of happiness were harder to get through than I’d anticipated but I’m glad I stuck it out.

Taking a photo every day might have been a hassle and it might have looked silly to others but it was in the process of trying to be happy for 100 days in a row that I realized, however impossible the task, it was going to be OK. 

I didn’t have to be happy for 100 days in a row, that’s just not how life works. The point is that I never gave up on trying to be. – Rappler.com

If you joined the #100HappyDays initiative as well, share your experiences with us in the comments section below.