April 23, 2013
If you are like me, and most everyone else in the world, there are days when you struggle to find inner peace, contentment and happiness in your life. Yet, if you reflect back at the end of each day, you will find that you can see happy moments in every day.
Erica Rodefer Winters wrote about her efforts to find happiness at Yoga Journal‘s blog, The Good Life. Winters suggest a keeping a “daily happiness log” as journaling method to find contentment:
Each day before I go to bed, I sit down and try to recall the one happiest moment of my day. I allow myself one line on my ruled paper notebook to express the moment (because I know I need to keep it short if I’m going to do it every day). At the end of each week or whenever I’m feeling down, I read what I’ve written, re-living each happy moment one by one. It always brings a smile to my face. I look for themes—things that make me happy time and time again, such as listening to my daughter laugh—and I know these are the things on which I should focus my energy.
One of the loveliest parts of this exercise is that when I’m keeping the journal, I know I’m going to need to write something down at the end of the day so I start to really look for the happy moments. I realize that I make mental notes of a lot of happy times throughout the course of the day. I’m starting to feel more contentment in this beautiful life I’m living. It doesn’t mean that I stop working toward my goals. It just means that even if I never reach them, I can still slow down and be happy with where I am right now.
What a fabulous idea… You keep it short and simple… And then reflect back on the list weekly. I love this idea so much, I’m going to start my happiness journal tonight!
