The Happiness Project One Sentence Journal

‘Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life’ – Omar Khayyam

I always liked to keep diaries as a teenager but they were your stereotypical narcissistic ‘woe is me’ ‘why won’t he notice me’ type teenage stuff that would be highly mortifying were anyone to get their hands on now. I even continued to keep a journal (sounds so much more grown up!) into my early twenties which was just somewhere I could brain dump my thoughts as a kind of stress management tool I suppose.

The older I got the better I became at managing my emotions so no longer feel the need to write essays about my deepest darkest feelings anymore however when my sister in law told me about her Happiness Project One Sentence Journal, it sounded like something it’s enjoy doing.

The concept is really simple; we all have busy lives and simply don’t have time anymore to write pages and pages deconstructing the day and describing in detail how you feel about it all. However now life is so fast paced how do we remember the tiny little bursts of happiness that occur on a daily basis? Are they supposed to just happen, make you smile for a hot minute then disappear into the ether forever more?

The one sentence journal will undoubtedly mean different things to different people, some people may use it as a way to manage their emotions, anxiety or even depression, some people may need it because they have shockingly bad memories and don’t want to forget meaningful things. For me it’s about not being so negative all the time, that no matter whether you thing you’ve had the crappiest of crappy days, there will be something that happened that made you smile.

For example I was having a really tough day at work one day, the kind of day where nothing would work, everyone wanted everything done yesterday, I was making mistakes and seemed to just generally be rubbing everyone up the wrong way. Without the One Sentence Journal I probably wouldn’t have said anything good happened that day. But forced to think about it before I went to bed that night, I remembered that Cheryl bought me a cup of coffee on her way into work without me asking, just because she’s my friend. With one sentence I went to sleep happy that night.

Every day has 5 spaces so you can record all your happy memories for 5 years and remind yourself that happiness isn’t always defined by massive life altering acts, sometimes they’re tiny little simple things, that remind you you’re wonderful and that you’re loved. Or simply that someone cares about you enough to buy you a cup of coffee.