A Little Bit of Awesome
“Some days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway.”
– Emory Austin
When we're feeling a little helpless and like things are out of our control, it's difficult to know how to proceed.
That's how Neil Pasricha felt when his marriage fell apart and his best friend took his own life. With dark clouds swirling around him Neil was having a hard time thinking of anything good. He decided he needed to shift his focus.
He started up a tiny website called 1000AwesomeThings.com that consisted of posting one awesome thing every day for 1000 days. In his own words "I was attempting to remind myself of the universal pleasures we all love but don't talk about enough." Among these were "peeling an orange in one shot" and "twisting the lid off a jar after nobody else could".
As the days past, his list grew. And slowly over time his mood lightening and his darkness lifted. Since then his blog has won "best blog in the world" twice over, he's a New York Times bestselling author and he's the director of The Institute for Global Happiness.
With the intention of offering a moment of brightness, here are a few of our favourites from Neil's list:
#371 Seeing old people holding hands
#687 Turning off all the lights during a thunderstorm
#530 Listening to couples tell you how they met
#355 When construction cranes have Christmas lights on them
#368 Seeing your hometown skyline appear over the horizon
#36 When there’s ice cream left at the bottom of the cone
#585 Figuring out the plot twist just before it's revealed
#242 When your mug in the microwave stops with the handle pointing towards you
#904 When the phone rings and it's somebody you were just thinking about.
#733 When someone laughs so hard they make no sound at all
Wishing happiness and health to all those you care about.