Join me in the 30 Days of Happy Challenge for Mental Health Awareness Month!

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and, as such, I’ve decided to launch a 30 Days of Happy Challenge. I think it’s high time we all got happy. Why? Because according to the World Health Organization, mental health is so important that “there is no health without mental health”.

In order to be healthy, we need to be not just physically healthy, but mentally healthy as well. And I would take that further and say that being mentally or psychologically healthy is more than just being not mentally or psychologically ill; because if you haven’t been diagnosed with an “official” mental illness, but you find yourself frequently feeling stressed, tense, exhausted, frustrated, angry, resigned, or even plain old bored, I would say that you are not, in fact, mentally healthy at all.

It’s an important distinction to make, in my book.

But the problem as I see it, and as Law of Attraction teaches us, is that the more we focus on what we don’t want in our lives and in the world, the more we seem to attract those things to us and the worse they seem to get. So instead of focusing on mental illness and why it’s bad, I choose, instead, to focus on what I do want: mental health for all and a happier, more joyful world.

Let’s get happy!

And that is why I have decided to launch the 30 Days of Happy Challenge.

What is the 30 Days of Happy Challenge?

So what is the 30 Days of Happy Challenge? It’s simple really: For the next 30 days, as part of Mental Health Awareness Month, I’m going to do at least one thing every single day that makes me happy, for no other reason than that it makes me happy. And at the end of each day, I’m going to record my Daily Happy Things; I am going to write them down every day, and at the end of the month I’m going to have a whole lot of Happy Things to make me smile and to re-read whenever I need a mood boost. That’s my commitment to mental health.

So why is that a happy “challenge”?

I think that, too often in our lives, we tend to get caught up in our responsibilities and the have to/ ought to/ should of things, and we give up on the things that make us happy because they are “frivolous” or we just don’t think we have time for them. We get caught up in mortgage payments, bills, fiscal cliffs, fear, and hockey seasons that don’t go the way we want them to.

Trying to find the good in life can be difficult when we’re conditioned to look out for the bad. We give up on happy because it’s just so much easier to focus on the negative things when we seem to be surrounded by them.

But have you ever wondered what would happen if we stopped focusing on what’s wrong with the world and our own lives and started focusing on what’s right? What would happen if each of us stopped for even one minute every day and deliberately thought about what was going well? Do you think that maybe we’d start to build up some positive energy and maybe make the world a little bit of a better place? Or maybe even a lot better of a place?

I do.

And that’s the point of the 30 Days of Happy Challenge: to increase the global “happy quotient” by starting small. Because I believe that mental health should be the responsibility of each and every one of us; because small things can make a big difference, and even the longest journey must begin from where you stand; and because I believe that the more happy people there are, the better our world will be — for all of us.

Being happy is contagious, and I think we should start an epidemic!

The Happy Challenge Rules:

1. No action is too small or seemingly insignificant to count. If it makes you happy, it counts, no matter what it is (e.g. finding a really shiny penny on the street: simple… but the shiny ones are pretty and that makes me happy, so it would count for me).
2. You have to record your Happy Things every day, for the full 30 days.

Simple, huh?

The 30 Days of Happy Challenge Manifesto

I’m doing the 30 Days of Happy Challenge because:

• I believe that mental health awareness is the responsibility of each and every one of us;
• I believe we have the power within us to make things better for ourselves, for our families, for our friends, and for our communities;
• I believe that we can choose;
• I believe that we can help; and
• I believe that, together, we can be the light, be the change, and be the difference!

If you believe this, too, I invite you to join the 30 Days of Happy Challenge with me. Let’s do this together; let’s get happy! 😀

Are you with me?

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