Jenny Cole: The Happiness Project

I was recently given a book by a friend called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and after hearing about it online and then flicking through the book I was inspired to do my own Happiness Project. If you haven’t heard of the book, it is basically about a lady who was tired of feeling run down and miserable all the time, so she decided to do something about it. She started off on a project that would span an entire year. Every month was assigned a theme, and within these themes she came up with a selection of goals to help her reach the happiness theme of that particular month. It’s a really inspiring and thought-provoking book, so I would really recommend giving it a read if you ever get the chance.

So, I decided that I am also fed up of feeling sad all the time. Having depression makes life incredibly difficult and, whilst I know I can’t cure myself, I can be more proactive in my choices, which in turn could lead to an improved state of mind. Conducting my own Happiness Project seemed like the perfect thing to start, what with it being a new year and all that, so I started thinking about how I could do one for myself. I have decided to use the same monthly themes that are talked about in the book, because I feel I am able to come up with relevant goals for each of them, which are personal to me. Obviously no two happiness projects will be the same, because we all have individual challenges that cause us unhappiness and different things that make us feel happy. But I felt I could relate the themes to my own life and come up with a range of goals that cover all aspects of my life.

I thought I would make a series of posts, over the next year, so that you can experience my Happiness Project with me, and perhaps even join me and do a project of your own. I will do a post at the beginning of each month, detailing the monthly theme and the goals I am aiming towards, and then at the end of the month I will do a brief wrap-up about how I have got on over the last month and reflect on how the project is going.

So we are now in March, and the theme for this month is to ‘Aim Higher.’ My goals this month are as follows:

Film more YouTube videos

I’m really getting into this YouTube things and I really enjoy filming my videos for you all. I find I’ve got so many ideas for videos but I just never seem to get them either filmed, or up on time, so this month I want to try and focus on getting more of my videos filmed and uploaded. I think what puts me off is that it just takes so long to upload and export the videos, but what I think I might do is start doing that overnight so the video is ready when I get up in the morning. I’ve already got a bit of a backlog of videos filmed, so I’ve got plenty to keep me going for the next month!

Promote my blog

I’ve found I’ve hit a bit of a wall with my blog followers just recently – they just seem to have stopped going up, which does feel a bit disappointing. I’m by no means doing this to get hundreds of followers, but it is nice to know people are reading what you’re writing and that you’re entertaining people, so I do get a bit dejected when my numbers slow down. So somehow, I need to start promoting my blog a bit more. I haven’t quite decided how I’m going to do this yet, so if you’ve got any ideas or suggestions I’d love to hear them! I definitely want to start commenting on other people’s posts a lot more, as I think it’s always nice to get comments and it’s also a good way to get yourself out there a bit more. This is going to be a bit difficult to measure, but I think it’s just important that it’s something I keep in mind.

Ask for help

This is a more personal goal for March. I’m not always that good at asking for help when I’m struggling. I tend to just let things build up inside me and then they get to the point where I just end up breaking or exploding, and this is something I want to learn how to avoid. So whether it’s at college, with my health or just in my personal life, I want to push myself to ask people for help more. I’m a very independent person, but I need to learn that you can still be independent but still let other people help you, because it’s impossible to do everything in life for yourself.

Enjoy now

Now this is something I’m really not very good at. I’m well known for either fretting over things that have happened in the past, or working myself up into a state about what might happen in the future. Because of this, I don’t often find that I enjoy where I am in the here and now and I think this is such an important thing to achieve. We only get one life and if we don’t enjoy it now, we’re never going to get another chance. This isn’t going to be easy to achieve, but I’m going to really try hard to find some moments that I can just be mindful and enjoy the present, even if it’s only for 5 minutes.

So there we have it. Four different goals to work on this month, and I think that the majority of them are definitely achievable, although some of them are definitely dependent on how much time I have. I’m still planning to work on my goals from previous months, as the idea is that you are meant to carry your goals forward so at the end of the year you are practising everything you set out to do. For my cinema trip for this month I’m hoping to go and see Cinderella, which looks amazing from the trailers I’ve seen, so that’s one of my January goals ticked off for another month! I’m really enjoying taking part in this project and would love to hear if you’ve set yourself any goals this month. If you would like to join me in a Happiness Project and happen to take any photos as part of it, please use #JensHappyProject so I can check out what you’ve all been up to!

Have you read The Happiness Project? Do you have any resolutions you’ve made for this month?