100 Happy Days — A Reflection

In September 2020, I took up the 100 Happy Days Challenge on Instagram.

What is the #100HappyDaysChallenge?

This is a challenge created by a guy called Dmitry Golubnichy. He has a really nice website and a TED talk here and here so I won’t steal his thunder and let him describe his own journey, but the short version of it is that in his quest for personal happiness, he asked himself a question, “Can I be happy for a 100 days?” and made this viral challenge to look for small things that allow us to spread positivity in ourselves and others.

Why did I decide to do it?

Many years ago, I thought it was a fun and interesting thing to do and decided to do it with a dear friend of mine, while the friend was super consistent through some really tough times, I couldn’t keep up my consistency and eventually after missing multiple days, I gave up. In September 2020, I retook this challenge when I saw it resurface as some people realised it was the last 100 days of 2020, a very challenging year for a lot of people around the world. I was not indifferent to some of these struggles and took it up once again as an experiment to see if I could finish it this time. No pressure, just going to see where I can potentially find happiness.

Why did I decide to write about it?

Interestingly, many of my friends who follow me on Instagram congratulated me because they thought being happy for a 100 days was practically impossible and were curious to get insights which prompted me to write this. If you are one of these people, I want to give you a massive heartfelt thanks for supporting me and for reading this now. I also want to highlight some ways in which this challenge has benefitted me and what kind of challenges I faced during these 100 days to give you an honest understanding of the road bumps because life is not as smooth as it appears delusionally on social media.

Reflections:

1. I love people (and cats) — While publishing a paper or winning a Toastmasters speech can be big events worth celebrating, these are things that don’t happen everyday. But life happens everyday, and what makes it worthwhile for me is this human connection I have with the beautiful people that surround me. On most days, it was a walk on a bridge with X friend or a coffee with Y. Little displays of love, watching my housemates playing with cats, sharing food and laughter is a far more regular occurence than the bigger achievements that we often tend to bank our happiness upon. It was good to be reminded of how fortunate I am with the genuine connection and support from so many people.
2. Not all days are happy — The most obvious truth ever, and yet it is easily forgotten that we won’t be happy everyday. On Day 33, I lost my credit card and it certainly wasn’t the happiest day but acknowledging this truth honestly and trying to forgive myself and tell myself that I am getting better was a source of happiness. On Day 66, my heart was left broken when someone I was really into (and hopeful about) told me that he has started seeing someone else. Some days I had an overwhelming sense of loneliness and did not know how to talk to people around me about it. But in a strange way it was wonderful to show kindness and love to sad and lonely Jayanti, because when we acknowledge the lows, display courage to be vulnerable, people around us come willingly to help us and once we are out, these lows are what make the highs seem extraordinary.
3. Sometimes happiness is about the necessities — While food and sleep may seem like basic necessities, I realised that a lot of my happiness revolved around good food, getting rest and sleep. Perhaps because these were strong indicators for me to reflect upon how well I was looking after myself, especially when I was going through a difficult period of writing up my thesis and preparing for my PhD final seminar.
4. Loneliness — While I’ve touched upon this subject, I sort of want to elaborate on it more because this was a very vital part of the challenge. I had taken a sabbatical from dating and was immersed in work for long periods. This left me feeling lonely, sometimes even wondering when others seemed happy, if they’d rather be happier without me. Loneliness is a big scary monster, but it pushed me to be brave and ask for help. Vulnerability is courage and we often underestimate the goodness in people’s heart.

Having said all this, the bottomline is that the little things are what makes us happy. Shawn Achor who is a researcher on happiness (this is his wonderful TEDtalk) wrote in his book, “Happiness is a choice, but not an individual choice, it is an interconnected choice”. In a recent dating encounter, I had this realisation that it is super easy to be offended and feel hurt for us as a human from our protective instincts, but it is challenging to look for sources of love and joy. Perhaps that’s why they named this a happiness challenge! I am grateful to have completed this challenge and look forward to receiving my beautiful certificate soon :)