Stop and Celebrate

Today is Day 27 of my Happiness Hacks series.

At the end of last year, I wrote about the concept of a “reverse bucket list” in an article about year-end reflections. For me, it was a novel concept to take time to stop and reflect on what’s already been accomplished rather than focusing on future goals. I enjoyed the process of thinking about things I was most proud of in my life.

Given my propensity to finish one thing and immediately jump into the next project without skipping a beat, I often neglect to appreciate something that I’ve already done.

Today I was planning on writing about a different happiness hack, but I opened up my website and something caught my eye. Yesterday I published my 200th post here at Sunshine Parenting.

I decided that I would just sit on that accomplishment for a moment and celebrate. 200 posts. That may not mean much to someone else, but for me, that’s significant. You see, when I started writing, I didn’t publish posts with much consistency. It took me a really long time to get something I wrote into a state I felt okay about sharing, because I kept editing and rewriting so many times. Publishing 200 posts shows that I’ve embraced my imperfection and am willing to share what I’ve got to say, even though it may not be “ready.” To celebrate, I prepared myself a hot cup of coffee with heavy cream and toasted myself for this accomplishment.

Today I celebrate 200 posts and what that number represents.