Join Take Time, Our Caregiving Happiness Project
Can we find happy moments during a difficult time?
In her book, The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin challenges herself to find greater happiness in her ordinary life. She chooses to make adjustments that affect her day-to-day existence in order to achieve and sustain the feeling of happiness. She does this so that when a crisis occurs (she worries about the future health of her husband), she’ll have learned the tools to stay happy.
She’s about finding happiness before the crisis.
What about after the crisis? Can a happiness project help increase happiness then? Can tools and techniques be learned after the crisis to increase happiness? For family caregivers of persons with chronic illnesses, the day can be too full of worries, laundry, hands-on care and medications. It definitely can be an unhappy situation.
But, can it be a happier one?
Through Take Time, our Caregiving Happiness Project, we're setting out to find out. Can we increase happiness during a difficult time in life?
Each month, you'll set goals based on one word: Plan, Replace, Space, Join, Resolve, Let Go, Quiet, Teach, Learn, Rejoice, Save, Say. You can set one goal or more, but try to keep within three goals. You'll keep progress of how well you're doing with the goal(s) and reflect on what's going well. At the end of each month, we hope an effective action becomes a helpful habit.
Each month, when you decide on your action, you'll tell someone about your commitment. Why not ask who you'll tell to join you? Companionship on the journey helps you stay on your road to more happiness. Invite your friends, family members and support group members.
I hope you'll achieve lasting change, that you'll bring each month's accomplishments into the next month. When you do this, you'll have made at least twelve improvements in your life at the end of our 12 months. More importantly, you'll have increased your level of happiness.
As you go through the journey, be open to doing your best, simply because that's what this is about--finding your best during a difficult time of your life.
Perhaps, finding your best means you've also found your happiness.