My monthly challenge last month was to focus on things that made me happy. I really did want to update my happiness checklist to see if there were new things I could add and take some old things off. I have been using the same checklist for a while with very little editing. So I felt like it was time for an update.
My plan was to focus my month on what things were making me happy and keeping track of those so I could see what should be on my updated checklist. And that was a really good plan when the month started. That’s just not what happened. What I ended up doing was almost the exact opposite.
Instead of tracking what I was doing each day that made me happy, I noticed things that were not making me happy and seeing if I could eliminate them from my life. And while there are a lot of things I don’t like to do that I have to do, there were plenty of things that I could just stop doing or get rid of. For example, if there was someone annoying me on a dating app, I didn’t try to stick it out. I let them know I didn’t think we were a good match or I wasn’t interested and unmatched with them. I am starting to not feel the desperate need to try to make any match work. I know there are plenty of other guys I will match with. And when dating apps were annoying me in general, I stepped away from them. If I didn’t feel like doing dishes immediately (which I do try to do), I would rinse them off and wait a bit longer before scrubbing them. And when the entire day just felt like too much for me and I needed a break, I took a nap.
While I wasn’t necessarily finding things that made me happy, I was doing things to make my day happier. And I think that is a big accomplishment for me. My checklist might still be the same, but since the overall goal was to be happier I think I did accomplish that.
And my challenge for this month feels like a continuation of last month. I want to put focus on the good things in my life. This was inspired by a podcast I listen to that is all about the good happening in the world right now. There are good things in my life right now, even when it doesn’t feel like it. I am very lucky in many ways and I want to focus more on that.
So I’m going to work on tracking the good in my life each day. I’m going to do this along with my gratitude list that I do each evening. I’m going to try to make at least 2 of the things on my gratitude list things that are good each day. That way, even when I have a bad day I can remind myself that not everything is bad.
I need this challenge as being isolated is getting to me more and more. I don’t want my mental health to be a struggle and I can see how I can get to that point if I am not proactive about it. So this is something I am doing in order to make sure I stay more positive than pessimistic each day. I know this won’t fix everything or magically make my life better, but I know that it will at least force me to acknowledge that I do have good things in my life even when I don’t feel like that is true.
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Taking A Month To Reset (or This Doesn’t Really Feel Like A Monthly Challenge)
An Isolation Monthly Challenge (or Just Trying To Keep Things Going)
My August Challenge (or Being Selfish To Be Happy)
Adjusting Monthly Challenges (or Books And Happiness)
Building Upon My Monthly Challenge (or Continuing To Work On Shopping)
Monthly Challenge Check-In (or Doing My Own Version Of An OTF Challenge This Month)
