Happiness is not in winning the lottery. Happiness is in the small everyday things that we tend to ignore. If everybody would take that bit of happiness out of the ordinary world, what a happy world this would be! Neil Pasricha started this blog after hitting rock bottom. Writing about one awesome thing a day, he is steadily filling his personal site 1000awesomethings.com.
He is currently short of the halfway point of 1,000 things. Day for day he finds something outstanding or miraculous that we might take for granted. Not content with just listing the little miracles of life, he always adds some explanation ranging from the personal to the scientific. Both, the observation and the explanation tend to bring a smile to my face.
The range of events he offers range from the silly to the miraculous; starting with silly as in celebrity baby names, going through the profound like receiving a letter with a hand written address, and ending in miracles as when running for the bus and actually catching it. Once you start reading it, you’ll notice 1,001 things a day you ignored beforehand.
When have you last found money in your pockets? Do you remember the days when as a child you got a piggy back ride? Do you like the smell of a sizzling barbecue? These and over 400 more things may be found on Neil’s page. Cracking an egg perfectly, using a fork, and peeling an orange in one go may give you more joy when you see the beauty of it.
Are you in a physical place you don’t like? Are you in a situation you don’t relish? Maybe you should start your own journal of awesome things that happen to you every day. It could help you find a happiness of your own by appreciating the little miracles life has to offer. Finding your own happiness will be life changing as it makes you truly independent from any other person as well as taking you out of the rat race. After all, what is there to compare your egg with the one the Joneses crack?
There are always people who enjoy their own misery, recounting their mostly imaginary sicknesses without end or boring you with their trials and tribulations. Trying to introduce such persons to the awesome things of life is mostly useless as they define their happiness through their feeling wretched. But the awesome things will help you staying up beat while you lend a sympathetic ear to some such.
Ready for a smile a day? Go get Neil’s blog.