I think it goes without saying that every single person in this world strives to find his or her happiness and live a positive life. We may not all agree on how to obtain this, but ultimately we all want to live a life in which everyday we are content and have smiles on our faces.
However, in looking for happiness in the outside world, there are a lot of barriers to stop us from doing this. It becomes very easy to get caught up in the negativity of our daily lives with things like weather and traffic and cranky people around us. These things all contribute to us being brought down. However, this is where most of us go wrong—happiness is not about the world around us, but rather what is inside of us. We will never be able to completely avoid the bad weather or the traffic or the cranky people, but the way we deal and respond to these obstacles is what can help us shape our happiness from the inside out.
Let's be honest, it is human nature to focus on the negative. Whether it is a negative circumstance that has happened to us or someone else, we just love to talk about it and hear about it. According to a New York Daily News article from 2009, experts say that 80 percent of our conversation is purely gossip. With advances in technology and social media since then, it only makes sense that gossip surrounds us in our daily lives. We almost cannot help but compare ourselves to others, judge people and complain. But the key word there is almost. The least we can do is try.
This is where the idea of the positivity challenge comes in. To take a second, sit back and reflect on yourself and your actions to try to live a more positive life, while monitoring yourself at the same time. The challenge is simple and even better if it is done with friends so you can keep each other in check. Take a bracelet, hair tie,or even a loose rubber band, and put it around your wrist. The first day you start this challenge, try to be as normal as possible by talking and thinking as your normally would.
However, every time you catch yourself making a negative remark, judging someone (either out loud or in your head), complaining or anything else that just is not positive, take your bracelet and switch wrists. If you're being honest with yourself, you will probably notice you are switching wrists a lot throughout the day. The second day is when you try to make a change –– really try to think before you speak, act or pass a judgement to stop yourself from switching. Day by day this will get a little bit easier, and then the end goal is to not even have to think about seeing the positive, because it will just start to come naturally.
They say (and by they, I mean a quick Google search) it takes 21 days to break a habit. So does this mean 21 days until you find happiness? Probably not, but it's a good way to start. Honestly speaking, it is impossible to never be negative, but the target of this is to just simply be a little less negative. You will notice yourself starting to look for something positive in even the worse situation, so when you go to tell people later your conversation might start with the negative thing that happened but follow up with something in which you saw the brighter side.
For example, you may say something like "Today I tripped over my own two feet and landed on my face in the middle of the side walk and my nose started bleeding. But on the bright side it only bled for four minutes, and I managed to not be late to work." (OK maybe that was a little exaggerated, but you get the point.)
If you decide to accept this challenge for positivity I hope it works well for you. Maybe it will last two days, maybe it will last two months, or maybe you'll lose your bracelet within the first hour, but whatever the case is there is no harm in trying! The more people you know that try, the more positivity that will start to surround you and the easier this will get. Good luck!
