Finding Joy in the Everyday: A Mindful Celebration of International Day of Happiness
The United Nations International Day of Happiness happens every year on the 20th of March. This year, Luna Joy wants to commemorate by talking candidly about the ways happiness may show up in your life and how you can invite more opportunities for joy.
With the concepts of mindfulness and gratitude in mind, let’s dig into a mindful exploration of happiness in life together.
Before you begin, remember that our professionals are always here to help
What does it mean to be happy?
This international day of happiness, we hope you can define that for yourself. Do you think of being happy as a state of mind, a mood, or a response to the world around you? Any, all, or none of these answers could be true for you—and you’d be right!
What it means to be happy is a question that you get to answer for yourself. You get to decide what being happy looks and feels like for you.
In general, though, it’s a sense of joy, peace, lightness, and rightness in a given moment. You can have happy feelings for a second, a sentence, a week, or a season. You might feel happiness in bursts, or in waves. To be happy means to experience life with a positive filter over the general goings-on of your day.
But can you be happy when you’re also struggling with your mental health?
Absolutely!
Being happy doesn’t have conditions
There’s no list of qualifications you must have or criteria you must meet in order to feel happy. In fact, you don’t even have to be happy as a core trait or life feature. You may be depressed, or struggling with anxiety, while feeling happy.
If the idea of being happy makes you feel as if you’re being inauthentic to the difficult parts of your life, consider different terminology. Does it feel more accurate to say you feel happiness? Maybe you’re comfortable with the concept of having a happy moment. You can use the language around joy that feels most accurate to your experience or intention with it.
Whether you’re trying to capture your current headspace or change your brain's weather, you can use whatever words you want to communicate the way you feel your feelings—even “happiness.”
It can be hard to feel happy when things are hard
Life, and the world around you, can each have their own way of making the ups feel out of reach when you are down. You might feel like happiness is beyond your grasp and thinking about it could feel overwhelming. Particularly when you’re going through a prolonged hard time or if you’ve recently experienced a loss, you might feel guilt when joy crops up.
But even if life happiness is difficult to grasp or feels impossible to maintain, there is plenty of space to feel your feelings and hold space for joy when it does resurface. You don’t have to be happy all the time, or live a life that feels simple, in order to deserve lightness in heavy spaces.
Here’s how happiness can impact your life
From the right now to the far away, feeling happy can make ripples in your life that become tidal waves. So if you’re already rewriting your language around feelings of happiness and you like the way that’s feeling, what else can you do? How else can self happiness change things for you?
Last year marked a decade of the World Happiness Report. While much of its findings have changed over time, one thing has remained consistent: there is a tangible and undeniable benefit to feeling happiness.
Some of the benefits of feeling happy are:
Stronger immune system
Improved productivity
Healthier heart
Higher pain tolerance
More creativity
Lower stress levels
Have more confidence
There’s a lot of research that supports the benefits of happiness on body and mind, but do you notice any of these things in your daily life when happiness is hanging around?
10 light things to bring happiness to a heavy day
During the holidays, we created a challenge called Ten Tiny Things where we asked you to think of ten small parts of your day that made you feel grateful. We’d like to try that very same challenge together today, but instead we’re going to share 10 little light things to inspire happy feelings for you.
Bubbles. In the bath, gum or from a bottle.
A leisurely wake up with nothing to do.
ZERO laundry to do.
A compliment you weren’t expecting.
Getting a letter from a loved one in the mail.
Jeans that fit without doing the hop and wiggle.
Unexpected free time.
Getting something you want.
Something that smells good.
Stargazing on a cool night.
If you have more to add, meet us on our instagram or in the comments—we want to hear your happy little lights. But in the meantime, we hope this list lands well and inspires some smiles and joy in your day.
Happiness and healing can be yours no matter what else is going on
If you are looking for online support with your mental health, or striving to invite happiness into more of your daily moments, Luna Joy can help. Let this International Day of Happiness put being happy on your personal map, starting right now!
