50 WORDS

Happiness As A Habit

Thrifty Word Challenge #26: Happiness

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

I still remember the shock I felt when our marriage counsellor asked my husband and me what we did together for fun. Fun! Why the hell would we need counselling if we knew how to have fun?

What I’ve learned since then is that fun — and by extension, happiness — can be cultivated. The first thing we needed to do was notice when we were having it. It wasn’t self-evident. After all, when last did you say to yourself: This is fun? Or, I feel happy?

Clocking happiness is not something we are taught to do, unless and until we run into emotional problems. But it really should be up there with the 3Rs. The fact is, happiness is a habit. Practice doing the things you know make you happy, and sure enough, you will recognise when you feel happy

I’m happy to report that our marriage survived counselling and that we did discover a lot of fun, and happiness in our relationship.

Recently I was up until midnight helping my seventeen-year-old put the finishing touches on her university application when I looked across at her and was suddenly flooded by feelings of warm happiness. I realised that these days, nothing says happiness more for me than being asked for help by my teenager — and being able to help her.

What makes you happy? Do you know? Can you remember the last time you felt happiness course through your veins? Maybe you can recollect something immediately, or perhaps you’ll need to meditate on it awhile. You have time. The deadline is Friday 26th February at 5 pm GMT.

Happiness. 50 words. Go!

Submission guidelines

STOP! Please read the submission guidelines all the way through. Also, please check out Demeter deLune’s How to Build the Sexiest Article You’ve Ever Seen before you submit your Thrifty Words stories to The Bad Influence. Improperly formatted stories are soon be rejected. Special emphasis on kicker, title, and subtitle.

Remember, in order to be considered for the challenge, you need to write exactly fifty words (contractions such as ‘you’ll’ and ‘y’all’ count as one, as do articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ ‘and all 23 auxiliary verbs ‘am’ ‘is’ ‘are’ etc. Hyphenated words count as one word.)

Please use the kicker 50 WORDS and ‘Thrifty Words Challenge #26: Happiness’ as your subtitle. All stories submitted by the deadline will be released the following morning in our weekly roundup at 12 pm EST / 5 pm GMT.

A reminder: we will only publish one story per author to the roundup. If you submit more than one story, it is most likely that the first story submitted will be chosen for the roundup. If you submit 50 Word stories outside of the theme challenge, they will be published in the Thrifty Words section but not included in the theme challenge roundup.

Need inspiration? Here’s last week’s roundup, and The Pointer Sisters.