Today marks one year since I published my first post at Primrose Ponderings! Yay! :)
Such a milestone is worth celebrating, not only because of my doubts when I started this blog, but more so because so many of you have come along for the ride. :)
Any journey that takes more than a day (my arbitrary assessment) is worth celebrating, but one that involves a year of consistent time, attention, and effort must be celebrated. And YOU are a big part of this journey. If you weren’t here, I’d not have a reason to write… so THANK YOU for being here!
OK, so here we are… but are we happier today than we were a year ago?
If you weren’t here from Day 1, go ahead and play along from whatever point you discovered Primrose Ponderings or whenever you began your happiness journey in earnest.
Can you identify ways in which you are happier (or not) since last year?
Unless you have a journal to refer back to, you may not have a sense of whether you are happier or not. That’s one of the challenges of wanting to proceed with the work required. You may not be sure that it’s even worth the trouble.
Because I think about this subject every day, I perhaps have a better sense than my readers of how Primrose Ponderings has increased my happiness. Of course, I’m much more deeply entrenched in the material I write than you are; so I get benefits that you don’t, but I have to do the work, just the same as you do.
I’ve learned many things through this year of writing, but I’ll highlight just a few today:
Find gratitude
Connect with others
Do the work
Use the right tool
I’m not happy all the time!
Find Gratitude
The most obvious difference for me after taking my own advice1 for a year is that I’m much more adept at identifying things for which I can have gratitude. Even though you are probably tired of hearing about it (sometimes I get tired of hearing myself say it!), having gratitude is truly the foundation of any happiness journey.
“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” — Willie Nelson
But is finding gratitude the only lesson? Not at all.
Connect with Others
I’ve known for a while now that connection with others is important to me. But by “connection” I don’t mean just being in a room with others. I mean truly connecting with others by getting to know them and by letting them see who I truly am. This involves being vulnerable and in sharing and/or listening to stories that I might not feel totally comfortable with.
While I don’t engage in public discussions (yet) with my readers, I do engage with many of my readers that I know in real life.2 I’ve heard some of your stories and, in particular, I love it when someone tells me how they connected to my story or to a particular post or when they share with me a story that they are reluctant to share with others.
Connections with others breathe life into our routine existence. We can spend days, weeks, or months (or years, but I hope not!) not truly connecting to anyone, but that is just existing, not living. To truly live, we must find a way to share a piece of ourselves with another human being.
Do The Work
I’ve learned that I have to do the work of happiness.
Just as I have to keep up with eating healthy food, taking time to exercise, and getting enough sleep if I want to be healthy, I have to do the work of happiness if I want to build my happiness muscles.
For me, this involves keeping up with my Gratitude Calendar every day. I have also chosen to say “thank you” more often, whether for large acts of kindness like my birthday gifts or for more mundane ones, such as a stranger holding a door open for me.
Another significant bit of work that I’ve barely touched on thus far here at Primrose Ponderings is in learning how to accept all of my emotions as they come, whether I enjoy them or not. I’ve already mentioned that emotions are just information and I’ve been taking more time to explore this wisdom within my emotions.
These are just two examples of the kind of work that I need to do. Sometimes I may not enjoy the actual doing of the work, but I definitely enjoy the results of the work. If you find yourself unhappy and unsure why, explore whether you’ve been keeping up with the happiness exercises that have worked for you in the past (or try new ones if none have worked thus far).
Find The Right Tool
One of my goals with Primrose Ponderings is to help you find the proper tools for your happiness journey. The reason I write about such a wide variety of modalities, ideas, and concepts is that no single tool is going to work for everyone.
For example, even though gratitude is indeed the foundation of our happiness journeys, we won’t all choose the same method for finding or expressing gratitude. I am consistent with my Gratitude Calendar, but not with my Gratitude Journal. I do well writing thank you notes, but I’m less adept at offering thanks to folks in person. Spending time outdoors and doing yoga calm my mind, but I’m still working on experiencing everyday activities, such as doing dishes and laundry, as a meditative exercise.
Just as with physical exercise, the best exercise is the one that you will actually do. What happiness tools have worked consistently for you? Where do you still struggle in your happiness journey? What tools have you not yet tried that might break through the wall if you’re stuck?
As I’ve presented ideas to you, I’ve explored these ideas myself. This has become useful because I now have a larger set of tools in my happiness toolbox. On any given day, I can choose the tool that resonates with me that day. Ideally, I hope that you will explore many of the tools I’ve discussed (and more to come in the future!) to find out what works best for you.
I’m Not Happy All the Time!
Last but not least, I am going to point out something I’ve learned that might at first seem obvious, but upon further inspection may not be: Even as one who writes about happiness and focuses it on it daily, I don’t find happiness in every moment.
I sometimes wake up grumpy. I sometimes fall asleep with worries on my mind. I often get angry or annoyed or anxious. I fear the future. I regret past mistakes. I live in a sea of human emotions, many of which are distressing.
Being a happiness “expert” doesn’t make me less prone to the daily ups and downs that each of us faces. But what I do have is knowledge that, for whatever I’m facing on any given day, there is a tool somewhere in my toolbox that I can pick up and use. If I haven’t found the right tool yet, I need to keep searching.
Here’s To Our Next Year of Happiness! :)
After a year of writing about happiness, I’ve discovered that I’m becoming clearer on what brings me happiness consistently. Just as importantly, I’m learning what doesn’t bring me happiness and that I can let go of those unfruitful patterns of striving.
I hope you are finding your own way toward greater happiness. Your journey won’t look like mine but there will be some common themes that we share. The most important takeaway from our year together is that we need to continue on our journeys, using the wisdom we’ve gained from the previous year.
My goal for the next year of Primrose Ponderings is to bring you more ideas, perhaps some that might even be outside of your comfort zone. I hope to hear more from you, my readers, and I hope that together we can teach others how to find more happiness in each and every day.
What do you want to achieve on your happiness journey this year? How will you get there? How can Primrose Ponderings help?
Whatever your course of action, keep striving for the ideas that bring more happiness into your life. A year from now, you could be quite pleasantly surprised by how much happier you’ve become! :)
I say it’s “my” advice, but I’ll give away a secret here: I believe there is a Source wiser than myself that tells me what to write about. When I listen to that Voice, I am usually amazed at the wisdom it conveys to me.
If you don’t know me in real life, you can always drop me an email at tinarenee@substack.com if you want to discuss what I’ve written at Primrose Ponderings. I’ll do my best to answer everyone who writes to me. Also, my paid subscribers can comment on my posts, so if you want to share your thoughts publicly, become a paid subscriber! ;)
Tina, congratulations on your first year! You are very good at this and I'm glad to be along for your journey to wherever the heck stardom and awesomeland you're headed to. :)