{"id":1897,"date":"2018-12-28T03:50:55","date_gmt":"2018-12-28T08:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/?p=1897"},"modified":"2018-12-23T19:26:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-24T00:26:09","slug":"week-224-celebrate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/?p=1897","title":{"rendered":"Week #224 – CELEBRATE!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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New Year’s Eve 2005 (photo credit: Gina Buongiorno)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[Editor\u2019s Note: Re-post Alert \u2014 because celebrating is never a bad idea!]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Week #224 – CELEBRATE!<\/strong>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many people\u20262018 was another challenging year. Health issues, death, divorce, job changes, financial problems, stressful news cycles\u2026the list goes on and on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Believe me\u2026I know how it feels to want to kick an entire year to the curb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The end of the calendar year seems to be a natural time to look back and reflect on the highs, the lows, what happened, what went wrong, and how we can fix it in the new year ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is exactly why in January<\/a>, I challenge everyone to look forward into 2018 \u2014 and start keeping track of the good stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because it\u2019s hard to love your life when it\u2019s so easy to look back and come up with all the bad things that happened. We have to, as Rob\u2019s friend Rob Nicholson said in a Facebook post at the end of 2014:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKeep moving forward and celebrate and revel in what we have!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I challenged you at the beginning of this year to, once again, look ahead\u2026WAY ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To December 31st of 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the way\u2026that\u2019s Monday!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I asked \u2014 Where do you want to be next year at this time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you remember your answer? If not, don\u2019t feel bad. Because I said at that time that I knew one thing for sure \u2014 It would take REMINDERS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you were one of the ones that kept track of your achievements, high points, and happy moments \u2014 please remember to SHARE and CELEBRATE them with the ones you love!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you didn\u2019t keep track, don\u2019t worry. Take some time this week to go back through your calendar, your emails, your phone \u2014 whatever it takes to come up with enough reminders of all that you accomplished and did right this year!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I promise you\u2026you did! And there is probably a lot to CELEBRATE!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your Happyness Challenge for the week ahead: <\/strong>CELEBRATE the completion of another year \u2014 and another trip around the sun! SHARE your successes with others \u2014 and ENCOURAGE others to do the same! There will be plenty of time to look ahead and set new goals, focus on new targets, and dream new dreams for the year ahead. For this weekend \u2014 look back, and find things to LOVE about 2018! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonus Challenge: <\/strong>Don\u2019t count on yourself to remember everything about the new year going forward! Make a plan to curate the wins just as much as the losses so that you have a complete inventory come December 31st of 2019. Come up with a system for recording your achievements, successes, highlights, and otherwise happy times THROUGHOUT the new year! The most obvious way is to keep a dated list \u2014 in a journal, on your computer, via email, or on your phone \u2014 where you take time each day to review your activities and take note of anything special or significant. I keep a running list by date and habitually recount the day\u2019s activities. To be honest, most days it\u2019s pretty mundane \u2014 but the habit assures that when something notable happens I\u2019m going to capture and remember it. Here are some other ideas from last year\u2019s post:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gratitude Tree \u2014 write what you\u2019re grateful for on little shapes and fill an inside tree or wall mural up throughout the year (works in classrooms, too!).

Photo-journal \u2014 use cell-phone photos in a specific file or on Instagram to keep track of accomplishments. Or print them out to create a physical album you can flip through.

The Joy Jar or Happyness Jar! The idea is simple: you start on January 1st with an empty jar in a prominent location in your home \u2014 and you start dropping notes in it throughout the year about things that went well, things that make you happy, things you\u2019re grateful for, achieved, or accomplished. At the end of the year you have a personal collection of happy memories to review \u2014 or immediate access throughout the year when you need a lift to face a challenge! One woman even collaged them on a monthly basis as a type of word-cloud to record as a journal.

The possibilities are endless \u2014 but the idea is always the same: make it a point to collect the good stuff! Because we need more of that. More focus on the wins. More focus on what\u2019s right. More focus on loving our lives \u2014 so that we can live our lives more fully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spread Happyness \u2014 love your life, THIS year AND next! (CELEBRATE and ENCOURAGE others to do the same!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

12\/28\/18 by Grace Church
\u00a9 Grace Church
grace@spreadhappyness.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Editor\u2019s Note: Re-post Alert \u2014 because celebrating is never a bad idea!] Week #224 – CELEBRATE! For many people\u20262018 was another challenging year. Health issues, death, divorce, job changes, financial problems, stressful news cycles\u2026the list goes on and on. Believe me\u2026I know how it feels to want to kick an entire year to the curb. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1897"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1900,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions\/1900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}