Tag: Joyful June

fitness · habits · health · self care

Great news! It’s too late to do Joyful June perfectly!

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

It’s June 9th so we’ve already missed the first part of the Action for Happiness Joyful June calendar.

Isn’t that terrific?

No, I’m not excited that we missed it.

I’m actually thrilled that we can’t do it perfectly.

Since perfect is no longer possible, we’re all free do what we can – small or large – to find a bit more joy in June.

Here is the Action for Happiness calendar of daily tips for this month.

A multicoloured calendar of daily tips for finding joy in June. The calendar is decorated with cartoon drawings of joyful things, flowers, singing birds, a person building a sand castle, etc.​
A multicoloured calendar of daily tips for finding joy in June. The calendar is decorated with cartoon drawings of joyful things, flowers, singing birds, a person building a sand castle, etc.

(By the way, if you download their app, you can receive the daily tip as a notification.)

Here’s this month’s introductory video:

A YouTube video from Action for Happiness entitled Joyful June with Vanessa King. The still image shows a woman with shoulder length blonde hair and bangs wearing a brightly coloured shirt. Behind her are vases of flowers and some shelves of books.

And here’s a quote that was shared on the Action for Happiness website.

Image description: A quote reading ‘
 every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day, a green rectangular background with a small banner on the bottom that says ‘Action for Happiness’ on the right is a cartoon line drawing of a person looking at a bird in a tree.
Image description: A quote reading ‘
every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day, a green rectangular background with a small banner on the bottom that says ‘Action for Happiness’ on the right is a cartoon line drawing of a person looking at a bird in a tree.

For me, this quote is helpful and hopeful without ‘bright siding’* me.

It’s not asking me to forget my struggles or to pretend everything is great, it’s just reminding me to look for something good to help make my day a little easier.

I can get behind that.

And I hope you can, too.

Good luck with Joyful June!

*I don’t remember if Barbara Ehrenreich actually uses the term bright siding the way I have here but I am referring to the kind of ‘reckless optimism’ and toxic positivity she writes about in her 2009 book Bright Sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America Meanwhile, I read the book a long time ago so I may have stitched her ideas into a quilt with other ideas about the irritating nature of many ‘just be positive!’ messages by this point.