I hope you’ve all been well and really enjoyed the 21 Days as much as I have. I just wanted to check in and let you know how I’ve been getting on after the initial ’21 Days to Happiness’, which I found really kick-started me in moving more towards a happy life.
The daily emails had me in anticipation of what exciting exercise would come next and Sally’s videos really gave weight and meaning to what exercises we were requested to do. Actually immersing myself in them for a day really proved insightful, whilst Marta’s meditations worked magic on my stress levels.
So…. how has life been after the 21 days? Am I super happy and full of beans all the time or have I just gone back to being well ….normal? The answer is neither. The most important thing that the “21 Days” has done for me is to help me along my happiness journey. It’s gifted me with so many delicious ways to add to my happiness so that I now have an abundance of tools at my disposal for when I need them and interestingly enough the right ones comes to mind just as I need them.
The beauty is, I did find some fail safe favourites that I am using well beyond the 21 days! One of the most powerful ones for me and one that I’m still using now is deciding, out of a scale of 1 to 10, how happy I want to be for the day because wowza, who knew when you commit to a number what your mind-set and resolve will do to keep you there. And this is one of the ones I thought wouldn’t even work for me!!
I’ve also found that I had a flair for making up words to diffuse and deal with stressful moments (as it just adds humour to any situation – what’s not to love about that?!) and I’ve taken great delight in making more up ever since! They will be peppering my subsequent posts.
Did I try out each and every exercise over the 21 days? No. To be honest at times, life just sort of gets in the way of the best laid plans and other times there was just some real resistance around some of the exercises… but what I’m finding now is that I am allowing myself to revisit these aspects that I was so cagey about before. The decluttering exercise made me feel super queasy at first… as I am a serial hoarder but I did manage to reluctantly remove one item a day as suggested by the exercise and interestingly enough (although I am still taking it rather slowly), I have finally started to let go of so many things that were causing clutter in my life, section by section, bit by bit and I truly believe that it was the 21 Days ‘pre’ work that has prepared me for this kind of epical (epic + magical = epical) release!
I’m also warming to the one where you write to a handful of people in your life a heartfelt letter of love and appreciation. Well this was a BIG one for me – with a mountain of resistance… and the surprising thing is I never thought that I would have, as I am naturally quite vocal about how I feel. But somehow putting down my private heartfelt thoughts onto paper makes me feel… well, just a bit exposed. This idea is slowly growing on me though and I can see its merits for both the receiver and writer. I will keep you posted (see what I did there?!)
What I’ve come to know after having done the 21 Days is that I have changed, as I have been choosing more and more to make the choices and use the tools that lead to feeling good, which in turn makes me want to know about more tools because the more that you have in your artillery, the more you have at your command.
Happiness is a journey and it’s about making healthy choices for your mind. It takes continual work, especially if you’re having a bad day or a bad week and some days all you will be able to do is take baby steps in the right direction.
Other days you will wake up feeling blessed and it will be a total breeze. You’ll skip into your mind palace and pick up your tool du jour and go out into the day and feel absolutely fantastic.
And both are okay because where you are is where you are. And where you are is just fine.
Wishing you all sorts of happy on your journey. Never stop adding to your happiness repertoire.
Much love,
Kam xxxx
