“Re”living My Best Life

A couple summers ago, I caught my friend, Shannon, snapping a picture of her plate of sushi one night on one of our regular sushi “dates”. It’s not weird, lots of people take pictures of their food, but she wasn’t about to post it to Instagram with a fancy filter, she just put her phone away and continued the conversation.

She was doing the 365 Days of Happiness challenge. Every day, she would take a picture of one thing that made her happy that day. This is similar to my journalling resolution.

In order to make this a manageable resolution, my journal is a 1-Sentence Journal. All I have to manage is to write one sentence from my day. If I write more than that, A+, but the idea of just one sentence takes the pressure off. Just like Shannon’s pictures, it’s an easy task with awesome results.

I have found, for the past ten days, that I am reliving the best moments of my life multiple times a day, and that is a great feeling. On Sunday, I read my book in front of a roaring fire in my fireplace while my son napped and my dogs laid by my feet. It was awesome. As I sat there, I was mindful of the situation and thought to myself, “This is going to be my one sentence for today”. Then later that night, I got to relive the moment again as I wrote about it. That means one great moment turned into three.

I asked Shannon how she felt after one year of documenting her happiness moments, she said, “That there was a lot to be thankful for and appreciative of. I have a tendency to convince myself that life is stagnant and boring but it was nice to have things to look back on throughout the year.”

How do you appreciate the small moments that make you happy?

Do you document them in any way?

How do you feel after you look back on happy memories?