I have this tiny notebook that sits on my shelf beside my desk most of the time. For the past year, I’ve written in this book whenever I have something to add to it. Honestly, it’s getting kind of full, but I don’t want to buy a new one, so I’ve just started writing tinier. I call this tiny notebook my bliss book. It’s a book where every word, every line throughout it, is dedicated to things that give me that feeling of complete bliss throughout my body. It contains all the things about life that make me smile.
During the pandemic, there were a lot of weeks where I felt hopeless. It seemed like everything around me was bad news and nothing good really seemed to be happening. During this period, I knew I needed to help myself out and find the good things to keep me from spiralling. This is when I started my bliss book. It started out as me just trying to think of happy things so I could bring a smile to my face. I would write stuff like “seeing puppies makes me happy” or “I love hearing people tell jokes”. Most of the stuff I had written made me smile but they were sort of obvious serotonin producers. Seeing cute puppies makes most people happy and jokes are funny so obviously, someone would smile. But I noticed that as I wrote these things, just thinking of being happy helped lift my mood. So, the idea came to me that every time something made me smile in a day, I would write it down. No matter how insignificant it was, even if the joy it brought me was tiny and went away quickly, I would write it down.
The first little thing that made me happy was the smell of the coffee my roommate made before our early morning classes. Waking up really sucked but smelling the coffee brewing helped make it a little better. I continued like this and every time anything gave me the tiniest smile, I wrote it down. Things that were as tiny as I saw someone laughing really hard on the side of the street and bigger things like my best friend came to Waterloo to visit. It all got written down.
After spending several days trying to recognize everything that made me happy, I began to notice improvements in my mood. I was more aware of good things that were happening around me, no matter how small they may be, like that little smell of coffee. It also began to improve my sense of gratitude. I was happier about the little things and not constantly thinking about how I didn’t have a vacation to look forward to or big parties to go to. I was finding happiness in small things. And honestly, when you put all those small things together, they create something pretty great, a substantial amount of happiness throughout my day.
Happiness is a powerful thing. We often don’t notice or even care enough during the times we are the happiest. That wonderful feeling we get makes us wholly unaware of previous feelings of unpleasantness. And in times where we fall into those darker places and can no longer feel that sense of blissfulness, being able to recognize the tiny, good uplifting things can help us see the joy in our lives and be optimistic in even the smallest ways we can.