A friend of mine fell upon a funny little website the other day and passed it along. I can’t help but share and make it into this week’s Impact Effort. We hope you’ll consider coming along.
The website is Butter Bee Happy (yes, we agree, it’s a really silly name) and simply put, it’s a free site where you can journal “5 happy thoughts a day.” It’s no secret that we can achieve greater happiness just by taking the time to recognize things that bring joy to our lives. Additionally, Nils and I believe that happiness and gratitude are things that can be contagious — or as the website says, can be “pollinated.” Positive emotions generate positive emotions.
So, this week, we’re committing to journaling our happy thoughts “one day at a time.” We expect this exercise to bring us greater happiness, and we hope we can pollinate our friend and family populations with happiness.
What you can do
- Please help us not make this a purely selfish endeavor by reading our “happiness journals” and being happier from the experience.
- Start your own happiness journal either through BBH (which is kind of fun) or at home with your own private journal.
I just posted my “5 happy thoughts” for the day to make the 201,805th happy thoughts thus far journaled on BBH. If you’d like to see what I’m happy about today, go to Butter Bee Happy and click on Explore, you should be able to find me, my user name is 52Weeks_Coco and Nils’ is 52Weeks_Nils (Nils hasn’t yet done his daily happiness journal). If you want to comment or add your own, you’ll have to open your own free “happiness account.”
BBH History
Happy Buzz Words of 2009
Butter Bee Happy was started in October 2007 by University of Alabama student, John Brooks Pounders.
“The internet doesn’t have that many truly happy places for people to go to. I am trying to change this, 5 happy thoughts at a time,” Pounders said.
BBH is based on Harvard University professor Tal Ben-Shahar’s research on happiness and tools he believes can make a difference in life.
I’ve signed up and find that, 5 hours into the day, I’ve already acknowledged my minimum happy quota. This bodes well for the day.
Here goes:
Great meeting over lunch today with women’s organization colleagues.
Friendly people and good conversations.
Studying for biology test with my son. He really knows the stuff!
Making plans to see friends in DC in July.
My old college roomate protesting against BP, via Facebook.
Clearing out some of the paper overflow in my office. Every little bit…
I have more than 5!!!!
My husband cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. Without me asking.
Starting a new novel recommended by a very good judge of books.
It’s cool and rainy on June 1st, but the weather’s supposed to get better soon.
I’ve been writing a ‘Grateful’ journal for a few years now after seeing it on Oprah. Each night before sleep, I write 5 things down that have been good things for the day. It’s the same principle and I’m off to ‘Bee’ to sign up.
But just one buzz for 52 weeks . . .
Finding Corinne and Nils so inspiring!
Thank you!
. And yes, it really is a wonderful exercise. Nils came home today and said, “You know, it really works!”
Five Happy Day Two
1. Saw Corinne, briefly, at a good work meeting (counts for 2!).
2. Cuddled with my dog Daisy, a lot.
3. Got my Skype camera and mic working — finally!
4. Yesterday, finished a big gardening project.
5. No alarm clock tomorrow as it’s a holiday in Austria.
These are many of the things we mentioned as Stress Remedies back in April. Friends, pets, communication, gardening/Nature, sleep.
Think I’ll go curl up with that good novel I’m grateful for!
How could I not love your Happy Day Two list. Especially your #1
. Happy you’re having a happy day.