Lifestyle/Mental Health: Project Happiness 2019

December is a good month for reflection. A time to reflect on the past year and all of your accomplishments and mishaps. It is also a good month to brainstorm on what you want out of life, what to look forward to and set goals to works towards in the coming year.

The month of December 2018 was difficult for me. I stressed over everything. Stressed about the holidays and money. Stressed about the beautiful weather that’s not allowing me to enjoy any trail time. Stressed about having goals and not doing shit about them. And stressed about my relationship because every little thing irritated the heck out of me.

I knew the reasons why I was so stressed out and I knew what needed to be done. I knew I needed a major change in my life and what better way to start than with the new year. One of my new years resolutions this year is to read more books. I forgot how reading made me feel after getting lost in a really good book for a couple of days. But who has time to read a book? I most certainly do. Especially when I decided to break up with Instagram. I would spend nearly 14+ hours a day just scrolling through my feed, double tapping and commenting on photos of strangers who seemed to be living their most best lives.

Lucky for me, I had a list of books that I’ve heard great things about and wanted to check out. “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin was the first book I purchased and read this year. It was the first “self-help” book I ever purchased and read. It was almost too good to be true but, I believe there is a reason that this was the first book I picked up. After about a day or two, I couldn’t put the book down. It was like Gretchen was speaking directly to me, so I needed to take notes, pay attention and keep an open mind to change.

This entry will not be a book report on “The Happiness Project”, but to understand a little better, I’m going to summarize the book in my own opinion. As a writer, a wife, mother, friend and simply human being- Gretchen dedicated a year to focus on the things that brought her happiness. She created a list (or goals) of things that she wanted to work on each month. They were obtainable goals. Simple goals. Not goals to travel the world in 365 days. But goals such as: be serious about play, boost energy and pursue a passion.