Happify!

Despite my strong spiritual backbone, I’ve struggled off and on with depression in the last few years. During times when I have every reason to be blissfully happy, somehow I am not. I often feel a gnawing worry. While I try to use meditation to keep my mind in check, I struggle with overwhelming negative thoughts, fears, and worries.

It is for this reason that I was offered an opportunity to try out a new website called Happify.

The idea is that they’ve taken the latest research on what makes people happy and used it to create exercises and games that will help one increase their own happiness. When you first log in there’s a quick quiz that helps them determine which “track” to suggest. There’s a ton of different tracks to choose from, some free and some available with a paid subscription. Each track has particular exercises that unlock as you follow the path. There’s a bunch I’d like to try, such as kickstarting a healthier lifestyle. And even though I don’t need marriage help, there’s one by Dr. John Gottman, whose research about happy relationships I admire a lot!

The website suggested a stress reduction path for me so I go ahead and start that.

I feel a little silly playing a game popping balloons with happy words on them but then again, it can’t hurt! Then there’s listing things I’m grateful for. I try to do that every day but it’s good to have a reminder. Except I can’t earn website points unless I share it with the whole community and I feel self-conscious about it. I hate feeling like I’m bragging!

But I do like earning points and getting website medals and things like that. Gamifying my life has always worked well for me.

My favorite thing so far is a section of articles to read and it’s a whole page full of nothing but positive articles and good news. That’s a welcome change! It’s a relief to have somewhere to go where I can find lots of articles about good things happening in the world. There’s more than enough sites about the bad things!

I’ll be curious to see if the site is able to help me build on my own disciplines to keep depression from over running my life.