gratitude two steps forward = happitude

(a hella zoomed in picture of my brother and I in the ocean - one of my favourite happy journal entries)

I struggle with my mental health. One way this has affected me is that my brain distorts how I perceive daily life. It's like selective hearing - I easily hyper-fixate on the negative aspects of my day, no matter how inconsequential they seem compared to the good.

Except I'm usually seen as a happy person. I was once even told I brightened up rooms with my energy, which is, to this day, the best compliment I've ever received and I think about it multiple times a day with no shame.

What is my secret, you ask? Happy journaling. I consider it a step forward from your classic list-three-things-you're-grateful-for journal entries. They didn’t really help me - I mean, it's recommended you write your gratitude every day. Every. Single. Day. This was unhelpful for me. I'd write the same things in my journal because every day I'm most grateful for those things. The top three are unchanging for me. Everyday would be the basic looking 'family:)' and 'friends:)' repeated over and over, on every page. It starts looking a bit overdone when you're on page one hundred, and every entry before that is identical. I get it! I have family and friends! I understand that for select people, frequent reminders are good. Some struggle with their brain blocking out the more obvious positivity in their lives - they need those reminders to ground themselves. I am not one of them. I ended up feeling worse because I knew there were all these big things to be grateful for, but I still felt like that. It stirred up another emotion: guilt. Despite everything, I was still getting caught up in negativity, with no right to do so.

I've always felt like I have so much potential for happiness - I'm the kind of person whose day can be made with a nice walk or a gesture of appreciation. I am a fantasist. I feel emotions very deeply. There's so much potential to feel in this world, and I wanted to grasp that. So, with that thought in mind, I set a goal - at least once every day, I would find a reason to be deeply happy. But how could I do that when I was so consumed by insignificant negative interactions or the minor disappointment of realising I'd run out of my favourite soup? A happy journal.

A happy journal is a little bit like a diary, but at the end of every day, I write down all the things that, during that day, made me feel joy. Oh, I met a dog? Nice. I wrote something I think is kinda cool? Get it down. Anything, no matter how minor, can go into the happy journal, and I need at least one thing a day. And now, this journal is a massive part of my life. I've conditioned myself to shift my hyper-fixation from negativity to positivity. Over time, I began realising that I was actively looking for things that would make me happy so that I could write them in my journal. If I have a bad day, my entry can be as small as having my favourite store-bought soup. It's honestly a bit overpriced, but inflation gets us all regardless, and this soup makes me pretty happy. It doesn't have to be a big thing. But at the end of all of my days, I know that there's at least one thing that made me happy. My favourite days are when I have whole paragraphs to write about all these experiences that made me smile - they're the days we're alive for.

One of the best parts of writing a happy journal is that after a while, you've got about a hundred entries, and you get to look back on all the things that made you smile. The thing is, emotion is fleeting. Whatever I focused on that made me sad on those days, I never remember. I'd probably forget the tiny moments that made me happy after a while too. Unless it's particularly memorable, every emotion flies away eventually, sometimes along with the cause. But now I have this journal. I read about the joy I felt and all these reasons, no matter how small, that caused them. And I have no memory of the silly little things I dwelled on that would make me irrationally upset. My brain is no longer in control because I've removed the excuses it used to 'justify' my sadness. I've trained myself to not allow my brain to manipulate my feelings. And, best of all, I can no longer simply block out the good I've experienced as I have it all written down to remember.

Look, I'm not saying this is some 'miracle fix' or a secret to true happiness. And I'm not saying it'll heal anyone, because a lot of people need something more substantial than a mindset adjustment. But it does help. It can contribute to healing, even if just a little. The accumulation of a lifestyle can take you closer to a healthy brain. To put it into perspective, imagine the best, most untouchable mindset is one-hundred. Exercise takes you up ten, eating well gives you another ten, and socialisation with people you care about adds a whopping twenty. Happy journals add a good ten to my overall happiness. It's not a cure, but it's a step that helps me and can likely help others, too.

I'd highly recommend starting a happy journal if you, like me, hyper-fixate on irrational reasons to be sad. It's transformed the way I see things. And honestly, I'd recommend it to people who don't feel like me but want to focus a little more on the happy moments in life. Things still upset me, but the negativity that comes with those feelings is more fleeting and far between.

< 78% baked >